Page:The letters of John Hus.djvu/174

judged?^[1] What of this: If thy brother sin against thee, reprove him?^[2] Why, instead of giving your brother in the first place a loving reproof by your self alone, you publish a damaging calumny!^[3] And you have had the audacity to put your sharp teeth not only into an honourable master, but into great communities. Bohemia did not suffice you but you must fix a charge of heresy (which I trust is a false charge) upon the Slavonic people before the students with diabolical rashness, and with no firsthand knowledge. Judging the hidden things of the heart (forsooth!), you wrote that they were “heresiarchs and schismatics,^[4] carrying honey on their lips and holding the fatal poison of asps in their hearts.”^[5] This is the way you unjustly judge your neighbours, supposing also that they are attempting to stir up a mad revolt against the clergy. God is standing ready to judge. Granted that in name you are a professor of theology, yet if you do not in very deed confess the truth and do penance for this offence, you will have to give an account for every word to the strictest^[6] of all judges. Is it part of your professorial calling^[7] to fall into confusion as to individuals, to charge your brothers with heresy, and to gather together lies in different quarters against your neighbours? Surely you have been badly instructed in the theology of love! May God grant you the spirit of truth to speak that which is holy and right

 

1. Matt. vii. 1.
2. Luke xvii. 8.
3. Read with H.: injuriosa diffamacio.
4. P. omits.
5. Evidently a quotation from the letter (see Doc. 512).
6. P.: districtissimo. H.:discretissimo.
7. H.:Estne professoris in officio personas confundere. P.:Es ne tu professor, in incerto personas oonfundere.