Letter from Hus - 1415
Jan Hus led to the stake.
Introduction
Jan Hus was a reformer in fifteenth-century Bohemia. Lured to the Council of Constance by a promise of safe conduct, he was seized and condemned to death by its bishops. He taught that priests should live godly lives, that the church must conform to God’s word—not the other way around—and that both the bread and the cup should be given to the laity during mass. On this day, 26 June 1415, ten days before he was burned to death, he wrote a letter to Lord Wenceslas of Dubá and Lord Jan of Chlum from which we take this excerpt. In it he urged them to a high standard of behavior and showed from Scripture that the Communion cup was for all Christians, not just priests. In two paragraphs he argued that the council was fallible.
Quote
“You already know now the behaviour of the spirituals, who call themselves the true manifest vicars of Christ and His apostles, and proclaim themselves the holy Church and the most sacred Council that cannot err. It nonetheless did err: first by adoring [Pope] John XXIII on bended knees, kissing his feet, and calling him the most holy, although they knew that he was a base murderer, a sodomite, a simoniac, and a heretic, as they declared later in their condemnation of him.…
“The Council has also erred three or more times by wrongly abstracting the articles from my books, rejecting some of them by corrupting and confusing [their meaning]; and even in the latest copy of the articles by abbreviating some, as will be evident to those who compare the books with those articles. From this I have plainly learned, along with you, that not everything the council does, says, or defines is approved by the most true judge, Christ Jesus. Blessed are those therefore, who, observing the law of Christ, recognize, abandon, and repudiate the pomp, avarice, hypocrisy, and deceit of Antichrist and of his ministers, while they patiently await the advent of the most just Judge.”
https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/study/module/hus/