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the doctrine of its infallibility. The great Gallican champion of Councils, Cardinal d’Ailly, admitted that General Councils may err and have erred even in matters of Faith[1]: but that concession did not in his view interfere in the smallest degree with the duty of submission on the part of individuals to the decisions of those Councils. It was this exaltation of a humility falsely so called into the position of the crowning virtue of the religious life, which converted not a few of the most strenuous opponents of the moral corruptions of the Mediæval Church into zealous champions of its doctrinal corruptions. Huss was, however, not for one moment to be persuaded that it was his duty to smother, or by the use of forced interpretations and ambiguous language to make the smallest effort to smother, the dictates either of his reason or of his conscience.
Physical exhaustion has often proved a severer trial to the constancy of brave men than the prospect of a cruel death. To the illness from which Huss had been suffering all through his trial in consequence of the closeness of his confinement, there had now been added the torture of the stone. His last days were further darkened by the brutality which his enemies showed on their visits to his prison. On one occasion he heard Michael de Causis say to the gaolers, “By the grace of God we shall shortly burn this heretic, who has cost me many florins.”[2] Palecz came to him “at the time of his greatest weakness,” and said in his hearing that “since the birth of Christ there had not arisen a more dangerous heretic than Wyclif and he,” and that all who had attended his sermons were affected with this heresy: “The substance of the material bread remaineth in the Sacrament of the Altar.”[3] Ill at ease in his conscience at the reflection which could not have failed to suggest itself to him, that he was bringing to the stake one whose opinions he had once to a large extent shared, Palecz seems to have felt it necessary to persuade himself that in spite of all denials Huss must be heretical on this cardinal doctrine of the Theology of the time; though it is difficult to understand how he could suppose that one who was ready to die rather than recant one heresy, should so obstinately repudiate another, had he really held it. But, at last, even Palecz was touched by Huss’ gentleness and unmistakable sincerity. Huss asked him to put himself in his place. “What would you do,” he asked, “if you were sure that you had not held the errors attributed to you? Would you abjure them?” “It is a hard case,” said Palecz, and he began to weep. A few days before his end, Huss asked that Palecz might be his confessor. “Palecz,” he said to the commissaries, “is my greatest enemy; I should like to confess to him: or send me some other
