from us! Away with words which puff up vanity[1] and wound love!" From the words of this holy pope the deduction is to be drawn that he may be easily puffed up who is called most holy father, though he perhaps lives in sin and is struck through with flattery or through ignorance lies.
Therefore, Gregory most notably says: "I desire not to be advanced with words but by a good life." Alas! not thus do modern pontiffs think who, destitute of good lives—morals—glory in a bare title, imagining to themselves that the name, Holiness, befits them in virtue of their office or ecclesiastical dignity. But if this reasoning held, then Judas would have had to be called holy apostle. But blessed be the Lord, who, in order to remove this cloak, said to his disciples: "Have I not chosen you and one of you is a devil?" John 6:70. This he said before Iscariot had betrayed his master.
Hence holy men, when they have been praised by men, have humbled themselves and have burdened their minds with fear, lest praise should cast them down from a meritstill more worthy. Therefore, Peter, Christ's apostle, when he was called by messengers went humbly to the Gentile, Cornelius, and when he was on the way, Cornelius went to meet him, instructed by an angel of Peter's holiness, and worshipped at Peter's feet. And Peter, taught of God about Cornelius and assured through revelation of his blessedness, did not permit Cornelius to lie at his feet as do modern pontiffs in whom not a scintilla of holiness is seen. Nay, often they are conscious of their sin in allowing themselves to be reverenced and, on that account, make the more ostentation, and if the ostentatious title—titulus pompositatis—be omitted, they at once shake with anger.
- ↑ Vanitatem, Huss's text has wrongly unitatem, unity. This famous letter (see Mirbt, p. 77, for the full text), addressed to Eulogius, patriarch of Alexandria, by Gregory the Great, 598, is a strong testimony, constantly appealed to, against the exorbitant claims of the papacy. Six hundred years later, one of Gregory's successors, Innocent III, added to the other papal titles that of Vicar of God.
