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HUSS'S RESISTANCE TO THE POPE

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Glossa ordinaria also agrees in its comment on the words: "the powers that be are ordained of God" [Romans 13:1]. The Master of Sentences also agrees, 2:44 [Migne's ed., p. 246].

Perfect obedience is that whereby the person obeying places all his willing and not willing—velle et nolle—in the will of his prelate, to do the acts commanded, so long as the command does not gainsay the divine will or good morals or the necessities of life, and so long as it does not conflict with the commands and counsels of the Lord Jesus Christ. And because obedience appertains to commands and counsels, the difference is to be noted between a command and an evangelical counsel, so far as they may be distinguished as opposites.^[1]

A precept or command is a general teaching of God, obligating every man under pain of mortal sin—namely, in cases in which he has fallen away from the command. Hence the saints who for a period of their life lived hypocritically sinned mortally for that period. So also the damned, by persistent false living sin persistently in hell.

A counsel is a special teaching of God, obligating under pain only of venial sin and for the period of this life. And so the doctors say that precepts are for the imperfect, obligating them for the reason that they are servants. But

↑ Huss is making the distinction between the mandates of the Scriptures—præcepta—such as the duties enjoined by the Ten Commandments and the evangelical counsels or counsels of perfection, evangelica consilia. He takes it up in his Com. on the Lombard, pp. 482, 488 sqq. The counsels are voluntary poverty, voluntary chastity and absolute obedience to the earthly ecclesiastical superior, as to an abbot or a bishop. Origen made the distinction in the third century and based it on two kinds of morality. The mandates are for all Christians and must be kept in order to salvation; the counsels of perfection for the higher Christians or saints. By observing the counsels of perfection one secures a higher grade of merit and a higher place in heaven. I Cor. 7:25 and Christ's words to the rich man are taken to justify the distinction. The Protestant Reformers set it aside as unscriptural and tending to place those who take the three vows above all ordinary mortals who follow Christ in the usual daily avocations of life. Thomas Aquinas sets it forth at length, Summa, 1: 2 sq., 108 sqq. [Migne's ed., 2: 894 sqq.].

[1] Huss is making the distinction between the mandates of the Scriptures—præcepta—such as the duties enjoined by the Ten Commandments and the evangelical counsels or counsels of perfection, evangelica consilia. He takes it up in his Com. on the Lombard, pp. 482, 488 sqq. The counsels are voluntary poverty, voluntary chastity and absolute obedience to the earthly ecclesiastical superior, as to an abbot or a bishop. Origen made the distinction in the third century and based it on two kinds of morality. The mandates are for all Christians and must be kept in order to salvation; the counsels of perfection for the higher Christians or saints. By observing the counsels of perfection one secures a higher grade of merit and a higher place in heaven. I Cor. 7:25 and Christ's words to the rich man are taken to justify the distinction. The Protestant Reformers set it aside as unscriptural and tending to place those who take the three vows above all ordinary mortals who follow Christ in the usual daily avocations of life. Thomas Aquinas sets it forth at length, Summa, 1: 2 sq., 108 sqq. [Migne's ed., 2: 894 sqq.].

[1]