Contra Anglicum Joan Stokes is interesting. It refers to the conflict between Hus and the English ecclesiastic, John Stokes, which took place at Prague and which has already been mentioned. Hus has in this treatise reproduced the contents of the speech against Stokes which he delivered at the university. Stokes had stated that whoever read the works of Wycliffe or studied them would in the course of time become a heretic, however good his disposition might be, and however firmly his faith might be grounded. The treatise is valuable as it indicates Hus’s attitude with regard to Wycliffe, which was by no means one of blind and unreasoning admiration, as has been frequently affirmed. Hus declines to give a positive answer to the question whether Wycliffe was a heretic or not, but in view of the obscurity of the question he thinks it more charitable to adopt the more favourable view and to hope that Wycliffe obtained salvation.[1]
Perhaps of yet greater interest is another polemical treatise entitled Contra occultum adversarium. Though Hus does not give the name of his adversary, the person referred to is known to have been the Bohemian priest Marik or Mauritius de Praga, surnamed Rvacka. Marik has already been mentioned as having been employed by King Venceslas in negotiations for the purpose of terminating the schism.[2] He was a determined opponent of church-reform and secretly attended Hus’s sermons, taking notes there concerning those points in which he believed that Hus’s words were contrary to the teaching of the Church of Rome. Marik affixed to the pulpit of the Bethlehem chapel a written statement—given in full in Hus’s treatise—in which he declared that Hus had by his last sermon attacked the law of God and the authority of the clergy. The
- ↑ “Ego autem non credo nec concedo quod Magister Joan Wicleff sit haereticus, sed nec nego; sed spero quod non est haereticus cum in occultis de proximo debeo meliorem partem eligere, unde spero quod Magister Joan Wicleff est de salvandis.” (Contra Anglicum Joan Stokes, Nuremberg edition of Hus’s Latin works, 1715, vol. i. p. 136.)
- ↑ See p. 99.
