Page:The letters of John Hus.djvu/51

with this regulation that I am now forced to make a statement to the effect that incestuous and criminal persons are escaping rigorous correction.^[1] They go about without restraint like untamed bulls and runaway horses with outstretched necks, while humble priests who pluck away the thorns of sin and fulfil their duties under your rule in an excellent spirit, who shun avarice and give themselves freely for God’s sake to the work of preaching the gospel, are thrown into prison and suffer exile, as if they were heretics, for preaching this same gospel. Reverend father, where is the piety of preventing the preaching of the gospel—the first duty Christ enjoined on His disciples, when He said: Preach the gospel to every creature?^[2] Where is the discretion of restraining from their toils diligent and faithful labourers? In very truth, I cannot think it is your grace, but the madness of others, that sows such seed. What poor priest will dare to attack crimes or to inveigh against vices? Truly the harvest is great, but the true labourers are few. Therefore, father, pray the Lord of the harvest that He may send faithful labourers into the harvest.^[3] For it resteth with your grace to reap the entire harvest of the kingdom of Bohemia, to gather it into the Lord’s garner and to give an account for every sheaf in the day of death. But how can so large a multitude of sheaves be stored up by your grace in the Lord’s garner if you take away from the reapers their sickle, to wit, their power of speech, at the whim of indolent persons, who neither reap themselves nor suffer others to do so, when their

 

1. P.: absque rigo (sic) correctionis; read rigore.
2. Mark xvi. 15.
3. Matt. ix. 37, 38.