HUS AS A BOHEMIAN

and He would

PATRIOT

121

be able to direct it even if there were

no temporal Pope, or if a woman occupied the papal throne.^ As with the Pope and the cardinals, so with the prelates and the clergy generally. There is a double The former clergy, that of Christ and that of Antichrist. live according to the law of God, the latter seek only worldly advantage. Not every priest is a saint, but every saint is a priest. Faithful Christians are therefore great in the Church of God, but worldly prelates are among its lowest members, and may indeed, should they be presciti, not be members of the Church at all.

The Latin letters of Hus will be mentioned later in

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is

An allusion to the story of Pope Joan. Vyklad, i.e.

" Exposition of

the

Ten Commandments,"

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is

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connection with those written in Bohemian. Of greater literary interest than the Latin works of Hus are those written in his own language. The latter are written in a more independent and popular manner, and it is on them that his value as a writer depends. That Hus was a strong Bohemian patriot hope, evident even from this short sketch of his life. Almost his first sermon referred to the oppression of his countrymen by the Germans, and no one more energetically aided the Bohemians in their endeavours to secure the control over the national university. Yet Hus was by no means hater of Germans, as national fanatic or has been so often stated. sufficient to refer to " his often-quoted words knew foreigner of any country who loved God more and strove for the good more than my own brother, would love him more than my brother. Therefore good English priests are dearer to me than faint-hearted Bohemian ones, and dearer to me than bad brother." good German chap, xliii.