[71] D'Argentré, Collectio Judiciorum de Novis Erroribus, II, p. 340. John Laillier, a Doctor of Sorbonne, declares, in 1484, against the tyrannical domination of the hierarchy. "All ecclesiastics," says he, "have received equal power from Christ. The Roman Church is not the head of other churches. You ought to keep the commandments of God and the Apostles; and, in regard to the command of all the bishops and other lords of the Church, care no more for it than you would for a straw; they have destroyed the Church by their tricks.[72] The priests of the Eastern Church sin not in marrying; and, believe me, neither shall we in the Western Church if we marry. Since St. Sylvester the Church of Rome has been, not a church of Christ, but a church of State and money. We are no more bound to believe the legends of the saints than the Chronicles of France." [72] Ibidem. John of Wessalia, a doctor of theology at Erfurt, a man of great spirit and intellect, attacks the errors on which the hierarchy rests, and proclaims the holy Scriptures to be the only source of faith. "It is not religion" (that is, the monastic state) "that saves us," says he to some monks, "but the grace of God. God has from all eternity kept a book in which he has entered all his elect. Whosoever is not entered there will not, through eternity; and whosoever is, will never see his name erased. It is solely by the grace of God that the elect are saved. He whom God is pleased to save, by giving him grace, will be saved, though all the priests in the world were to condemn and excommunicate him. And he whom God sees meet to condemn, though these should all wish to save him, will be made to feel his condemnation.[73] How audacious in the successors of the apostles to order, not what Christ has prescribed in his holy books, but what they themselves devised, when carried away, as they now are, by a thirst for money, or a rage for power. I despise the pope, the Church, and the Councils, and I extol Jesus Christ." Wessalia, who had gradually arrived at those convictions, boldly announces them from the pulpit, and enters into communication with deputies from the Hussites. Feeble, bent with age, and wasted by disease, the courageous old man, with tottering step, appears before the Inquisition, and, in 1482, dies in its dungeons. [73] "Et quem Deus vult damnare, Si omnes vellent hunc salvare, Adhuc iste damnaretur." Who is condemned by God's decree, Assuredly condemned shall be, Whoe'er they be would save him. (Paradoxa Damnata, etc., 1749, Moguntiæ.)