John Huss and the Hussite Wars - James Aitken Wylie

and ambition of the clergy, and the growth of
heresy. "The Church," exclaimed the preacher, "has
no greater enemies than the clergy. For who are
they that are the greatest opposers of the
Reformation? Are they the secular princes? Very
far from it, for they are the men who desire it with
the greatest zeal, and demand and court it with the
utmost earnestness. Who are they who rend the
garment of Jesus Christ but the clergy? – who may
be compared to hungry wolves, that come into the
sheepfolds in lambskins, and conceal ungodly and
wicked souls under religious habits." A few days
later the Bishop of Lodi, preaching from the words
"Set thy house in order, for thou shalt die and not
live," took occasion to inveigh against the Council
in similar terms. It seemed almost as if it was a
voluntary penance which the Fathers had set
themselves when they permitted one after another
of their number to mount the pulpit only to draw
their likenesses and to publish their faults. An ugly
picture it truly was on which they were invited to
gaze, and they had not even the poor consolation of
being able to say that a heretic had painted it.
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