Luther learned directly from Huss, but Luther's assertions show that he not only took Huss under his protection, but that he was confirmed in his opposition to the pope by his regard for Huss and by his writings. Not to quote again what I have quoted in another place, Luther said: "I rejoice that Huss, a true martyr, is rising before this, our century, that is to be properly canonized even if the papists are broken to pieces. Oh! that my name were worthy to be associated with such a man.[1]
Luther's definition of the church is embodied in the Augsburg Confession. It was due to Luther and Zwingli that the terms visible and invisible were used to designate the true church from the body of the baptized.[2]
True to the mediæval conception and only six months before the nailing up of the XCV Theses, Leo X confirmed Boniface's Unam sanctam, and in reply to Luther Prierias declared the church to be in essence the community of believers but virtually the Roman church and the Roman pontiff—ecclesia universalis essentialiter est convocatio credentium, virtualiter ecclesia Romana et pontifex maximus. The catholic polemic of the seventeenth century, with Bellarmine at its head, made the rule of the papacy of the essence of the definition of the church. He expressly repudiated as heretical the definition of Wyclif, Huss and Calvin.[3] Still true to the medieval idea, Pius IX, in 1873, in a communication addressed to the German emperor, William I, declared that all the baptized are in some sense subject to the Roman pontiff.[4]
Several matters in Huss's treatment call for passing note.
- ↑ Letter to Otto Brunfels, 1524, who edited some of Huss's writings, 1524. See Mon., 1: 423.
- ↑ In his Com. on Galatians, Luther spoke of the church invisible, est invisibilis habitans in Spiritu, etc., and Zwingli seems to have been the first to use both terms, in his Expos. fidei, 1531—est autem eccles. aut visibilis aut invisibilis. The XXXIX Articles use the term invisible. Schwane, Dogmengesch., p. 510, says: "Huss rejected the definition that the church is a visible community of believers in Christ."
- ↑ Lib. III de Eccles., chap. II.
- ↑ Jeder welcher die Taufe empfangen hat, gehort in irgend einer Art und in irgend einer Weise . . . dem Papste an Mirbt, Quellen, p. 371.
