which is to come. Therefore I exhort you by His mercy to give heed to His gospel and especially to His most holy commands. My noble Baron Wenzel [Duba], take to yourself a wife,[1] live holy in matrimony, and forsake the vanities of this world. And you, Baron John [Chlum], now that you have left the service of earthly kings,[2] abide at home with your wife and children in the service of God; for you see how the wheel of the world’s vanity turns, now lifting a man up and anon setting him down, while it gives but a brief solace to the man it lifts up, for thereafter ensues the eternal punishment in fire and darkness.
You know now the manner of life of these spiritual folk, who assert that they are the true and evident vicars of Christ and His apostles, proclaiming themselves the Holy Church and the most Holy Council which cannot err; though indeed they did err when at the first they offered homage on bended knees to John XXIII., kissing his feet, and calling him most holy, when they knew he was ‘a shameful homicide, a Sodomite, a simoniac and a heretic,’ as indeed they afterwards phrased it in their condemnation of him.[3] Now they have cut off the Church’s head, they have torn out the Church’s heart, they have drained the Church’s unfailing spring, they have made utterly to fail the all-sufficient unfailing refuge of the Church to
- ↑ See p. 272, where we find that by June 29 Wenzel Duba had determined on marriage. This is another factor in settling the date as after Jane 15.
- ↑ Chlum, it would appear, had left Sigismund’s court, though the Latin might be construed as an exhortation to leave (cf. infra, p. 269).
- ↑ Hus is quoting the words of the condemnation; see Hardt, iv. 196–208, 228–55. For the value of these charges see my Age of Hus, App. C. John was deposed on May 29.
