member of the church while in fact he is not, his faith or his believing will be false. Therefore, a pastor is expected, by giving instruction in works that are more virtuous, to influence those under him to believe that he is such. Hence, if an inferior does not discern the works of his superior to be virtuous, he is not bound to believe that he is a member of the church by the law of present righteousness, or to believe with godly fear and conditionally that he is such genuinely, simpliciter, namely by virtue of predestination. And, if he certainly knows his sin, then he ought to conclude from his works that at that time he is not righteous but an enemy of Jesus Christ. And so it is clear that the third conclusion is false. For there is no confusion in the church militant, by reason of the fact that without revelation we do not know certainly who are members of Christ's mystical body on earth.
Up to this point the objection is: Seeing that grace makes sons of the church, just so sin makes members of the devil and also unbelievers, it is clear that a man may become a member of the church after being an unbeliever, just as from being a member of the church one may become a member of the devil. For who doubts that Iscariot, when he was a true apostle, was not also a member of the church?[1] Even so Paul, when he was a blasphemer, was separate from holy mother church. What is here said is said because the church is conceived of in a true sense or in a nominal sense—in the true sense she is, as has been said, identical with the predestinate; in the nominal sense the church is called the
- ↑ Huss is constantly using Judas as an example of how a prescitus, a reprobate, may be a pope or a bishop, having present righteousness, it may be, but not among the elect. Judas was legitimately elected, as Christ says, John 6:70, and yet he had a devil. So a pope may well be elected according to the ritual, and yet be of the lost, Replies to Palecz and Stanislaus, Mon., 322, 323, 339, 340, etc. In his Com. on Peter the Lombard, Huss says, p. 188: "In truth, Judas Iscarioth wanted to be a bishop, and it pleased God to choose him to the episcopate. But what good did he get thereby? Certainly he lost his episcopate because he committed simony; and he gave himself up body and soul to damnation because he would not conform his will to the will of God."
