Luther himself is absolutely silent as regards having arrived at his ideas through Wiclif and Hus. He evidently considers himself quite independent. In his earlier years he even speaks very strongly against the Bohemian heretics and the Picards, as he frequently calls the Husites. In his Commentary on the Psalms he regards them simply as heretics,[247] and in his lectures on the Epistle to the Romans he once instances the “_hæresis Pighardorum_” as an example of the wilful destruction of what is holy.[248] Later, however, at and after his public apostasy, and even shortly after the Leipzig Disputation, he defends some of Hus’s doctrines, and the result of his perusal of Hus’s work, “_De ecclesia_,” was to make him more audacious in upholding the views it contains.[249] This quite explains the great sympathy with which he afterwards speaks of Hus and his writings in general, and the passionate way in which he blames the Catholic Church for having condemned him. He says in 1520: “In many parts of the German land there still survives the memory of John Hus, and, as it did not fade, I also took it up, and discovered that he was a worthy, highly enlightened man.... See, all ye Papists and Romanists,” he cries, “whether you are able to undo one page of John Hus with all your writings.”[250] That book of Hus’s sermons which he found as a young student of theology in the monastery library at Erfurt (p. 25), he declares that he laid aside because it was by an arch-heretic, though he had found much good in it, and had been horrified that such a man had suffered death as a heretic; as he had at that time convinced himself, Hus interpreted Scripture powerfully and in a Christian manner.[251] We also know that Luther relates that Staupitz had told him of Proles, his predecessor, how he disapproved of Johann Zachariæ, one of the most capable opponents of Hus, and that Staupitz had agreed: the latter also held that “Zachariæ had gone to the devil, but that Hus had been unfairly treated.”[252] This opinion reinforces that of Grefenstein, mentioned above.[253] Nor does Luther, when speaking of his later development, ever admit having read Hus and other heretical books, or being in any way indebted to them. On the other hand, he tries always to place himself above Hus. What Hus, according to him, discovered was quite insignificant (“_minora et pauciora_”); he only commenced bringing the light which had in reality to come from him (Luther).[254] He only “reproved the abuses and the life of the Pope,” he says on a later occasion, “but I put the knife to his throat, I oppose his existence and his teaching and make him merely equal to other bishops; that I did not do at first,”[255] i.e. I did not commence that way. It is certainly true that at the beginning he made no attempt to oppose the Papacy and the power of the Church.