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A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN LITERATURE

the authors of the accusation "had chosen their quotations from the treatise (De Ecclesia), falsely and unfairly abbreviating some in the beginning, some in the middle, and some at the end, and inventing matter that was not contained in the book." Hus immediately published his defence, proving that he had taken many of the passages in his works that were attacked from the writings of Augustine, Gregory the Great, Bishop Grossetête of Lincoln, and other writers of unimpeached orthodoxy; he also complained that the quotations from his book were incorrect.

New material for accusations against Hus had been meanwhile brought forward. After his departure from Prague, one of his pupils (Magister Jacobellus of Mies[1]) had defended the necessity of communion in the two kinds, afterwards the distinctive doctrine of the Hussites. The followers of Hus at Prague appealed to him, but he confined himself to declaring in his letters that communion in the two kinds was permissible. When, however, the Council of Constance had, on June 15—after the last day of Hus's trial and a few days before his death—entirely forbidden communion in the two kinds to laymen, Hus went somewhat farther. He declared the prohibition of communion in the two kinds to be in direct contradiction to the Gospel,[2] and advised those among his friends who were uncertain with regard to the new teaching of Jacobellus, no longer to oppose it, as unity among the Bohemians was necessary in view of the dangers that, as Hus foresaw, would shortly menace the country.

  1. See Chapter IV.
  2. The passage which Hus had in view is in the Gospel of St. Matthew, chap. xxvi. vers. 26-28.