Lord Zbynek, the archbishop of Prague, to secure a bull from Pope Alexander that in the chapels the Word of God should not be preached to the people. And from this bull I have appealed and never have I been able to secure a hearing. Therefore, being cited, I have on reasonable grounds not appeared because this excommunication was secured through Michael de Causis,[1] after we had made an agreement, and now at last they have procured the interdict with which they vex Christ's common people who are without guilt.
Therefore, I could wish that the doctors, who say that in the acts of procedure nothing absolutely good is forbidden, nor anything absolutely evil enjoined but only things intermediate, would prove that these things are so, and that they would prove that an interdict so general is a thing intermediate, something between what is absolutely good and what is absolutely evil, depriving the innocent of the sacraments and sepulture, interrupting the exercise of the divine ministries and leading to no good, but to offences, distractions and hatred. And how would the doctors be able to show that it is lawful to excommunicate God's people from the sacraments and sepulture and from divine ministries? For it was about this, as has been said, that that most able doctor of the church, St. Augustine, confutes Bishop Auxilius. And the proof of the doctors, which is a combination of hypocritical excuse and the reasoning of rustics, would not satisfy Augustine as reasonable when they say: "According to the method customary with the church and the Roman curia and observed by it." See what a hypocritical excuse that is! "Before the fathers of our fathers." What a rustic method of reasoning that is! "Here only things indifferent are commanded." O doctors, of what church is this the
- ↑ Michael the Pleader, a title given to the Prague magister, Michael of Deutschbrod, by the pope. At first Huss's friend, he became one of his most bitter and persistent enemies. No sooner had Huss reached Constance than Michael posted up charges against him and went about stirring up the members of the council against him.
