Luther’s attitude towards the followers of Hus is made clear enough by his own statements. He had been induced to read the story of Hus’s career before he had entered on his actual contest with Rome. He had even then been impressed by the greatness of the Bohemian Reformer, but he had thrust the book aside as likely to lead him into evil. Something of this old feeling still hung about him in the early part of his struggle. And, when Eck brought against him the charge of favouring the Bohemian heresy, he had been inclined to repel it with indignation. Yet it was that very charge which had induced him to return to the study of Hus; and he soon began to express so earnest an admiration for the Bohemian leader that his enemies spread the rumour that he was himself a Bohemian, who had been educated in Prague on the writings of Wyclif. Nay, they even went so far as to Bohemianise his name--a change in which they doubtless took a malicious pleasure, for the Bohemian word “Lŭtr̆e” means a scoundrel. Several letters of encouragement from scholars and clergymen at Prague were addressed to Luther in the earliest years of his struggle; and he declared that he would himself have come to Bohemia had he not feared that such a visit would have seemed like a flight from his enemies.
But he very soon began to recognise the distinction between his own position and that of Hus. This difference he has referred to in several of his writings; and perhaps the passage in his “Table Talk” is the one which will be best remembered, from the vigorous metaphor by which he illustrates his opinion: “Hus,” he said, “cut down and rooted out some thorns, thickets, and chips from the vineyard of Christ, and chastised the abuses and evil life of the Pope. But I, Dr. Martin Luther, have come into an open, flat, and well-ploughed field, and have attacked and overthrown the doctrine of the Pope.”
If this distinction between the attacks of Hus on the immorality of the Papacy, and his own attack on its doctrines, seemed to Luther to put the earlier Reformer in a less important position than that which he himself occupied, he must have felt this difference still more strongly with regard to the later Utraquistic movement. Very few of the leaders of that movement had ever desired that complete separation from Rome which Luther soon perceived to be an absolute necessity. They had been driven, against their will, to combine the assertion of their national independence with resistance to the authority of the Pope; but, when the deaths of King George and Rokycana had removed at once the main ground of Papal hostility to Bohemia, and the most determined asserters of an independent national Church, the Utraquists began to show an even painful eagerness for a reconciliation with the Papacy. They felt the need of a priesthood which possessed the dignity and legal stability secured by the consecration of Romanist bishops; and they not only sent their clergy to Italy to obtain this privilege, but they even welcomed in priests of other countries, who had been appointed to their offices in the orthodox manner.