THE COURAGE OF JOHN HUSS
Behind all else in Huss’ teaching stood his devotion to the Scriptures as the ultimate guide of life and thought. Here we run decisively upon one of the major issues dividing Roman Catholicism from the whole movement which issued in the Protestant Reformation. According to Roman dogma one did not believe in the church because the Scriptures say so, but believed in the Scriptures because the church says so. When Prierias answered Luther’s Theses, he put the matter unmistakably: “Whoso does not rest upon the doctrine of the Roman church and the Roman pope as an infallible rule of faith, from which even the Holy Scriptures derive their authority, he is a heretic.” A century before Luther, Huss broke with that position. To him the Scriptures were primary and authoritative. He said that, when he stood before the judgment seat of Christ, he hoped it would be found that he had not denied a single iota of what the…
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