The other reason why Luther failed is, because he could not make a Pharisee of himself, which is only another name for hypocrite. The Law of G.o.d had such a terrible meaning to him because he applied it as the Lawgiver wants it applied, to his whole inner life, to the heart, the soul, the mind, and all his powers of intellect and will. It is comparatively easy to make the members of the body go through certain external performances, but to make the mind obey is a different proposition. The discovery which disheartened Luther was, that while he was outwardly leading the life of a blameless monk, his inward life was not improved. Sin was ever present with him, as it is with every human being. He felt the terrible smitings of the accusing conscience because he was keenly alive to the real demands of G.o.d"s Law. The holy Law of G.o.d wrought its will upon him to the fullest extent: it roused him to anger with the G.o.d who had given this Law to man; it led him into blasphemous thoughts, so that he recoiled with horror from himself. Does the true Law of G.o.d, when properly applied, ever have any other effect upon natural man? Paul says: "It worketh wrath" (Rom. 4, 15), namely, wrath in man against G.o.d. It drives man to despair. That is its legitimate function: No person has touched the essence of the Law who has not pa.s.sed through these awful experiences. Nor did any man ever flee from the Law and run to Christ for shelter but for these unendurable terrors which the Law begets. That was Luther"s whole trouble, and that is why he failed as a monk: he had started out to become a saint, and he did not even succeed in making a Pharisee of himself. If Rome has produced a monk that succeeded better than Luther, he ought to be exhibited and examined. He will be found either an angel or a brazen fraud. He will not be a true man.
9. Professor Luther, D. D.
Catholic writers greedily grab every opportunity to belittle Luther"s scholarship. Incentives to study at home, they say, he received none.
His common school education was wretched. During his high school studies he was favored with good teachers, but hampered by his home-bred roughness and uncouthness and his poverty. He applied himself diligently to his studies, but gave no sign of being a genius. At the University of Erfurt, too, he was studious, but he seems to have made no great impression on the University. "He paid little attention to grammatical details, and never attained to Ciceronian purity and elegance in speech and writing." When he made his A. B:, he ranked thirteenth in a cla.s.s of fifty-seven. He did a little better in his effort for the t.i.tle of A.
M., when he came out second among seventeen candidates. But Melanchthon is declared entirely wrong when he relates that Luther was the wonder of the University. His theological studies preparatory to his entering the priesthood were very hasty and superficial. Still less prepared was he for the work of a professor. His duties in the cloister left him little time for learned studies. Yet he went to "bibulous Wittenberg," to a little five-year-old university, and lectured "as best he could." By the way, our Catholic friends seem to forget that "bibulous" Wittenberg was a good old Catholic town at the time. All things considered, Luther"s advancement was all too rapid; it was not justified by his preparatory studies, which had been "anything but deep, solid, systematic." "The theological culture he received was not on a par with that required now by the average seminarian, let alone a Doctor of Divinity." He accepted the t.i.tle of D. D. very reluctantly, being conscious that he did not deserve it. A feeling of the insufficiency of his education tormented him all through life. "It cannot be denied that he was industrious, self-reliant, ambitious, but withal, he was not a methodically trained man. At bottom, he was neither a philosopher nor a theologian, and at no time of his life, despite his efforts to acquire knowledge, did he show himself more than superficially equipped to grapple with serious and difficult philosophical and religious problems. His study never rose to brilliancy." Thus runs the Catholic account of Professor and Doctor Luther.
We have not quoted the worst Catholic estimates of Luther"s scholarship.
He has also been called a dunce, an ignoramus, a barbarian. Again it seems to escape the Catholics that this ill-trained, insufficient, half-baked Doctor of Divinity is a product of their own educational art.
Whatever advancement he received in those days was actually forced upon him by Catholics. All his academic and ecclesiastical honors came from Catholic sources, came to him, moreover, as a good Catholic. Also that highest and n.o.blest distinction which made him a duly called and accredited expounder of the Holy Scriptures. If there is fault to be found with anything in this matter, it lies with the Catholic method and process of making a young man within the s.p.a.ce of ten years a Bachelor of Arts, a Master of Arts, a priest, a professor, and a Doctor of Sacred Theology; it does not lie with the innocent subject to whom this presto!
change! process was applied.
But does this estimate of Luther square with the facts in the case? For a dunce or a mediocre scholar Luther has been a fair success. His little ability and scanty preparation makes his achievements all the more remarkable. The most brilliant minds of the race, for whom the home, the Church and the State, religion, science and art, had done their best, have accomplished immeasurably less than this poor and mostly self-taught country boy. G.o.d give His Church many more such dunces!
The net results of Luther"s learning are open to inspection by the world in his numerous works. Able scholars of most recent times have looked into Luther"s writings with a view of determining how much learned knowledge he had actually acquired, even before he began his reformatory work, They have found that Luther was "very well versed in the favorite Latin authors of the day: Vergil, Terence, Ovid, Aesop, Cicero, Livy, Seneca, Horace, Catullus, Juvenal, Silius, Statius, Lucan, Suetonius, Sall.u.s.t, Quintilian, Varro, Pomponius Mela, the two Plinies, and the _Germania_ of Tacitus." He possessed a creditable amount of knowledge of General History and Church History. He had made a profound study of the leading philosophers and scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages: Thomas of Aquinas, Peter Lombard, Bernard of Clairvaux, Duns Scotus, Occam, Gregory of Rimini, Pierre d"Ailly, Gerson, and Biel. Two of these he knew almost by heart. He had studied the ancient Church Fathers: Irenaeus, Cyprian, Eusebius, Athanasius, Hilary, Ambrose, Gregory of Nanzianzen, Jerome, and such later theologians as Ca.s.siodorus, Gregory the Great, and Anselm of Canterbury; Tauler, Lefevre, Erasmus, and Pico della Mirandola. "He was quite at home in the exegetical Middle Ages, in the Canon Law, in Aristotle and Porphyry." "He was one of the first German professors to learn Greek and Hebrew." Moreover, Luther possessed, besides knowledge, those indispensable requisites in a good professor: "the faculty of plain, clear, correct, and independent thought, resourcefulness, ac.u.men" (Boehmer, p. 179 f.). He had the courage to tell the Church that it was a shame, that a heathen philosopher, Aristotle, should formulate the doctrines which Christians are to believe and their pastors are to teach. He threw this heathen, who had for ages dominated Christian teaching, out of his lecture-room, and took his students straight to the pure fountain of religious truth, the Word of G.o.d. He publicly burned the Canon Law by which the Roman Church had forged chains for the consciences of men, and which she upholds to this day. His lecture-room became crowded with eager and enthusiastic students, and the stripling university planted on the edge of civilization in the sands along the Elbe became for a while the religious and theological hub of the world. The students who gathered about Luther knew that they had a real professor in him. The world of his day came to this fledgling doctor with the weightiest questions, and received answers that satisfied. That part of the intelligent world of to-day which has read and studied Luther endorses the verdict of Luther"s contemporaries as regards his ample learning and proficiency as a teacher.
More learned men, indeed, than Luther there have been. Some of these have also made attempts to introduce needed reforms in the corrupt Roman Church. Rome met their learned and labored arguments with the consummate skill of a past master in sophistry. Those learned efforts came to naught. Rome will never be reformed by human learning and scholarship.
Scholars are rarely men of action. It is because Professor Luther taught _and acted_ that Rome hates him. He would have been permitted to lecture in peace whatever he wished--others in the universities were doing that at the time--if he had only been careful not to do anything, at least not publicly, against the authority of the Church. That was the unpardonable blunder of Luther that he wanted to live as he believed, and that he taught others to do the same. For this reason he is a dullard, an ignoramus, a poor scholar, a poor writer, in a word, an inferior person from a literary and scholarly point of view.
In Numbers (chap. 22) there is a story told of the prophet Balaam, who went out on a wicked mission for which a great reward had been promised him. He rode along cheerfully, feasting his avaricious heart on the great h.o.a.rd he would bring back, when suddenly the a.s.s that bore him balked. The prophet began to beat the animal, but it did not budge an inch. All at once this dunce of an a.s.s which had never been put through a spelling-book began to talk and remonstrated with the prophet: "Am I not thine a.s.s? What have I done unto thee that thou hast smitten me?" To his amazement the prophet was able to understand the a.s.s quite well.
This dumb brute made its meaning plain to a learned man. It was an intolerable outrage that an a.s.s should lecture a doctor, and balk him in his designs. Luther is that a.s.s. Rome rode him, and he patiently bore his wicked master until the angel of the Lord stopped him and he would go no further. The only difference is that Balaam had his eyes opened, left off beating his a.s.s, and felt sorry for what he had done. Rome"s eyes have not been opened for four hundred years. It is still beating the poor a.s.s. It does not see the Lord who has blocked her path and said, You shall go no further!
In 2 Kings, chap. 5, there is another story told of the Syrian captain Naaman, who came to be healed of his leprosy by the prophet Elijah. With his splendid suite the great statesman drove up in grand style to the prophet"s cottage. He expected that the holy man would come out to meet him, and very deferentially engage to do the great lord"s bidding. The prophet did not even come out of his hut, but sent Naaman word to go and wash seven times in Jordan and he would be cleansed. Now Naaman flew into a rage, because the prophet had, in the first place, not even deigned to speak to him, and, secondly, had ordered a ridiculously commonplace cure for him. He stormed that he would do no such thing as wash in that old Jordan River. He had better waters at home. Let the prophet keep his old Jordan for such as he was. And he rode off in great dudgeon. Rome is the leprous gentleman, and Luther is the man of G.o.d who told her how to become clean. The only difference is this: Naaman listened to wise counsel, and finally did what he had been told to do, and was cleansed. Rome disdains to this day to listen to the ill-bred son of a peasant, the theological upstart Luther, and remains as filthy as she has been.
10. Luther"s "Discovery" of the Bible.
Since Luther"s study of the Bible has been referred to several times in these pages, it is time that the righteousness of a certain indignation be examined which Catholic writers display. They pretend to be scandalized by the tale that in Luther"s time the Bible was such a rare book that it was practically unknown. With the air of outraged innocence some of them rise to protest against the stupid myth that Luther "discovered" the Bible. They claim that their Church had been so eager to spread the Bible, and had published editions of the Bible in such rapid succession, that in Luther"s age Christian Europe was full of Bibles. Moreover, that age, they tell us, was an age of intense Bible-study. Not only the theologians, but also the laymen, not only the wealthy and highly educated, but also the common people, had unhindered access to the Bible. The historical data for Rome"s alleged zeal in behalf of the Bible these Catholic writers gather largely from Protestant authors. For greater effect they propose to b.u.t.tress, with the fruits of the laborious research of Protestants, their charge that Luther"s ignorance of the Bible was self-inflicted and really inexcusable.
What are the facts in the case? The whole account which we possess of Luther"s "discovery" of the Bible is contained in Luther"s Table Talk.
(22, 897.) This is a book which Luther did not personally compose nor edit. It is a collection of sayings which his guests noted down while at meat with Luther, or afterwards from memory. From a casual remark during a meal Mathesius obtained the information which he published in his biography of Luther, _viz.,_ that, when twenty-two years old, Luther one day had found the Bible in a library at Erfurt.
Now, we do not wish to question the general credibility of the Table Talk, nor the authenticity of this particular remark of Luther about his stumbling upon the Bible by accident. But it is certainly germane to our subject to strip the incident of the dramatic features with which Catholic writers claim that most Protestants still surround the event.
Did Luther say, and did Mathesius report, that up to the year 1505 he had not known of the Bible? Not at all. He merely stated that up to that time he had not seen _a complete copy of the Bible_. Luther himself has told scores of times that when a schoolboy at Mansfeld, and later at Magdeburg and Eisenach where he studied, he had heard portions of the Gospels and Epistles read during the regular service at church. Some pa.s.sages he had learned by heart. Luther"s guests would have laughed at him if he had claimed such a "discovery" of the Bible as Catholic writers--and some of their Protestant authorities--think that Mathesius has claimed for him and modern Protestants still credit him with.
What Luther did relate we are prepared to show was not, and could not be, an unusual occurrence in those days. "Even in the University of Paris, which was considered the mother and queen of all the rest, not a man could be found, when Luther arose, competent to dispute with him out of the Scriptures. This was not strange. Many of the doctors of theology in those times had never read the Bible. Carolostadt expressly tells us this was the case with himself. Whenever one freely read the Bible, he was cried out against, as one making innovations, as a heretic, and exposing Christianity to great danger by making the New Testament known.
Many of the monks regarded the Bible as a book which abounded in numerous error." (Mosheim, III, 15.) The spiritual atmosphere in which Luther and all Christians of his time were brought up was unfavorable to real Bible-study.
But before we exhibit the true att.i.tude of Rome toward the Bible, it will be necessary to examine the Catholic claim regarding the extensive dissemination and the intensive study of the Bible among the people in and before Luther"s times. Before the age of printing one cannot speak, of course, of "editions" of the Bible. The earliest date for the publication of a printed edition of the Bible is probably 1460-- twenty-three years before Luther"s birth. That was an event fully as momentous as the opening of the transatlantic cable in our time. Before printing had been invented, the Bible was multiplied by being copied.
That was a slow process. Even when a number of copyists wrote at the same time to dictation, it was a tedious process, requiring much time, and not very many would join in such a cooperative effort of Bible production. Besides, few men in those early ages were qualified for this work. A certain degree of literary proficiency was required for the task. The centuries during which the papacy rose to the zenith of its power are notorious for the illiteracy of the ma.s.ses. It was considered a remarkable achievement even for a n.o.bleman to be able to scribble his name. Among those who possessed the ability few had the inclination and persistency necessary for the effort to transcribe the Bible. The cloisters of those days were the chief seats of learning and centers of lower education, but even these asylums of piety sheltered many an ignorant monk and others who were afflicted with the proverbial monks"
malady--laziness. It is to the credit of the pious members of the Roman Church in that unhappy age that they manifested such a laudable interest in the Bible. The achievement of copying the entire Bible with one"s own hand in that age is so great that it palliates some of the glaring evils of the inhuman system of monasticism. But if every monk in every cloister, every priest in every Catholic parish, every professor in every Catholic university, could have produced twenty copies of the Bible during his lifetime, how little would have been accomplished to make the Bible available for the millions of men then living!
Reading is the correlate of writing. The person who cannot write, as a rule, cannot read. For this reason the Bible must have remained a sealed book to many who had ample opportunity to become acquainted with it. The wide diffusion of Bible knowledge which Catholic writers would lead us to believe always existed in the Roman Church is subject to question. It is true that in the first centuries of the Christian era there was a great hunger and thirst for the Word of G.o.d. But that was before the Roman Church came into existence. For it is a reckless a.s.sumption that the papacy is an original inst.i.tution in the Church of Christ, and that Roman Catholicism and Christianity are identical. It is also true that in the early days of the Reformation the people manifested a great desire for the Word of G.o.d. It was as new to them as it had been to Luther. They would crowd around a person who was able to read, and would listen for hours. At St. Paul"s in London public reading of the Bible became a regular custom. But between the early days of Christianity and the beginning of the Reformation lies a period which. is known as the Dark Ages. No amount of oratory will turn that age into a Bright Age.
"From the seventh to the eleventh century books were so scarce that often not one could be found in an entire city, and even rich monasteries possessed only a single text-book." (_Universal Encycl.,_ 2, 96.) These conditions were not greatly improved until printing was invented. Luther had to do with people who were emerging from the sad conditions of that age, the effects of which were still visible centuries after. He writes: "The deplorable dest.i.tution which I recently observed, during a visitation of the churches, has impelled and constrained me to prepare this Catechism, or Christian Doctrine, in such a small and simple form. Alas, what manifold misery I beheld! The common people, especially in the villages, know nothing at all of Christian doctrine; and many pastors are quite unfit and incompetent to teach. Yet all are called Christians, have been baptized, and enjoy the use of the Sacraments, although they know neither the Lord"s Prayer, nor the Creed, nor the Ten Commandments, and live like the poor brutes and irrational swine." (Preface to the Small Catechism.) Remember, these people lived in that age when Luther was born and grew up, which Catholic writers picture to us as a Bible-knowing and Bible-loving age.
The invention of printing wrought a mighty change in this respect. This glorious art became hallowed from the beginning by being harnessed for service to the Bible. But even this invention did not at once remove the prevailing ignorance. We must not transfer modern conditions to the fifteenth century. In 1906, one of the many Protestant Bible Societies reported that it had disposed in one year of nearly 80,000,000 Bibles and parts of the Bible in many languages. The Bible is perhaps the cheapest book of modern times. It was not so in the days of Gutenberg, Froschauer, Luft, and the Claxtons. Even after printing had been invented, Bibles sold at prices that would be considered prohibitive in our day. When the Duke of Anhalt ordered three copies of the Bible printed on parchment, he was told that for each copy he must furnish 340 calf-skins, and the expense would be sixty gulden. (Luther"s Works, 21b, 2378.) But even the low-priced editions of the Bible, printed on common paper (which was not introduced into Europe until the thirteenth century), cost a sum of money which a poor man would consider a fortune, and which even the well-to-do would hesitate to spend in days when money was scarce and its purchasing power was considerably different from what it is to-day. At a period not so very remote from the present a Bible was considered a valuable chattel of which a person would dispose by a special codicil in his will. For generations Bibles would thus be handed down from father to son, not only because of the sacred memories that attached to them as heirlooms, but also because of their actual value in money.
Everything considered, then, we hold the argument that the Bible was a widely diffused book in the days before Luther to be historically untrue, because it implies physical impossibilities. With the magnificent printing and publishing facilities of our times, how many persons are still without the Bible? How many parishioners in all the Catholic churches of this country to-day own a Bible? The modern Bible societies are putting forth an energy in spreading the Bible that is unparalleled in history. Still their annual reports leave the impression that all they accomplish is as a drop in the bucket over and against the enormous Bible-need still unsupplied. Catholic writers paint the Bible-knowledge of the age before Luther in such exceedingly bright colors that one is led to believe that age surpa.s.sed ours. They overshoot their aim. n.o.body finds fault with the Roman Church for not having invented the printing-press. All would rather be inclined to excuse her little achievement in spreading the Bible during the Middle Ages on the ground of the poor facilities at her command. Every intelligent and fair person will accord the Roman Church every moiety of credit for the amount of Bible-knowledge which she did convey to the people. We heartily join Luther in his belief that even in the darkest days of the papacy men were still saved in the Roman Church, because they clung in their dying hour to simple texts of the Scriptures which they had learned from their priests. (22, 577.) But no one must try and make us believe that the Roman Church before Luther performed marvels in spreading the Bible. She never exhausted even the poor facilities at her command.
Far from wondering, then, that Luther had not seen the complete Bible until his twenty-second year, we regard this as quite natural in view of his lowly extraction, and we consider the censure which superficial Protestant writers have applied to Luther because of his early ignorance of the Bible as uncommonly meretricious. When we bear in mind the known character of the Popes in Luther"s days, we doubt whether even they had read the entire Bible. Luther"s "discovery" of the Bible, however is not regarded by Protestants as a discovery such as Columbus made when he found the American continent. Luther knew of the existence of the Bible and could cite sayings of the Bible at the time when he found the bulky volume in the library that made such a profound impression upon him.
And yet his find was a true discovery. Luther discovered that his Church had not told him many important and beautiful things that are in the Bible. He became so absorbed with the novel contents of this wonderful book that the desire was wrung from his: heart: Oh, that I could possess this book! But this enthusiastic wish at once became clouded by another discovery which he made while poring over the precious revelation of the very heart of Jesus: his Church had told him things differently from what he found them stated in the Bible. He was shocked when he discovered that in his heart a new faith was springing up which had come to him out of the Bible,--a faith which contradicted the avowed faith of the Roman Church. Poor Luther! He had for the first time come under the influence of that Word which is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow (Hebr. 4, 12), and he did not know it. Some of the n.o.blest minds in the ages before him have had to pa.s.s through the same experience. With the implicit trust which at that time lie reposed in the Roman Church, Luther suppressed his "heretical"
thoughts. He said: "Perhaps I am in error. Dare I believe myself so smart as to know better than the Church?" (Hausrath, 1, 18.) Yes, Luther had really discovered the Bible, namely, the Bible which the Roman Church never has been, and never will be, willing to let the people see while she remains what she is to-day. This "discovery"-tale which so offends Catholic writers could be verified in our day. Let Catholic writers put into the hands of every Catholic of America the true, genuine, unadulterated Word of G.o.d, without any glosses and comment, and let them watch what is going to happen. There will be astonishing "discoveries" made by the readers, and those discoveries will be no fabrications.
11. Rome and the Bible.
Catholic writers claim for the Roman Church the distinction which at one time belonged to the Hebrews, that of being the keepers of the oracles of G.o.d. They claim that to the jealous vigilance of the Roman Church over the sacred writings of Christianity the world to-day owes the Bible. The pagan emperors of Rome would have destroyed the Bible in the persecutions which they set on foot against the early Christians, if the faithful martyrs had not refused to surrender their sacred writings.
Again, the Roman Church is represented as the faithful custodian of the Bible during the political and social upheaval that wrecked the Roman Empire when the barbarian peoples of the North overran Rome and Greece.
Only through the care of the Roman Church the Bible is said to have been saved from destruction in the general confusion.
The reasoning of Catholics on this matter is specious. In the first place, the early Christian martyrs were not Roman Catholics. The claim of the Roman Church that the papacy starts with Peter is a myth. In the second place, much patient labor has been expended in the last centuries to collate existing ma.n.u.scripts of the Bible for the purpose of removing errors that had crept into the text and making the original text of the Bible as accurate as it is possible to make it. In these labors mostly Protestants were engaged. Fell, Mill, Kuster, Bengel, Wetzstein, Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, have through three centuries of untiring research cooperated in placing before the world the authentic text of the Bible.
To-day we have not a single one of the autograph ma.n.u.scripts of the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament. If the Roman Church existed in the days when Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, Jude, and James wrote, and if she exercised such scrupulous care over the Bible, why has she not preserved a single one of these invaluable doc.u.ments? We suggest this thought only in view of the unfounded Catholic boast; we do not charge the Catholic Church with a crime for having permitted the autographs of our Bible to become lost, we only hold that the Catholic Church is not ent.i.tled to the eulogies which her writers bestow upon her.
Even the condition of the copies that were made from the autograph writings of the apostles does not speak well for the care which the Roman Church took of the Bible, a.s.suming, of course, that she existed in those early centuries. "It is evident that the original purity (of the New Testament text) was early lost. . . . Irenaeus (in the second century) alludes to the differences between the copies. . . . Origen, early in the third century, expressly declares that matters were growing worse. . . . From the fourth century onward we have the ma.n.u.script text of each century, the writings of the Fathers, and the various Oriental and Occidental versions, all testifying to varieties of readings."
(_New Schaff-Herzog Encycl.,_ II, 102.) Our sole purpose in calling attention to this fact, which every scholar to-day knows, is, to bring the fervor of Catholic admiration for the Bible-protecting and Bible-preserving Church of Rome somewhat within the bounds of reason. We do not charge the Roman Church with having corrupted the text, but if the claim of Catholics as to the age of their Church is correct, every corruption in the copies that were made from the original doc.u.ments occurred while she was exercising her remarkable custodianship over the Bible. That officials of the Church, especially as we approach the Middle Ages, had something to do with corrupting the sacred text is the belief of the authority just quoted. "The early Church," he says, "did not know anything of that anxious clinging to the letter which characterizes the scientific rigor and the piety of modern times, and therefore was not bent upon preserving the exact words. Moreover, the first copies were made rather for private than for public use." Not a few were found in sarcophagi; they had been buried with their owners.
"Copyists were careless, often wrote from dictation, and were liable to misunderstand. Attempted improvements of the text in grammar and style; efforts to harmonize the quotations in the New Testament with the Greek of the Septuagint, but especially to harmonize the Gospels; the writing out of abbreviations; incorporation of marginal notes in the text; the embellishing of the Gospel narratives with stories drawn from non-apostolic, though trustworthy, sources,--it is to these that we must attribute the very numerous "readings" or textual variations. It is true that the copyists were sometimes learned men; but their zeal in making corrections may have obscured the true text as much as the ignorance of the unlearned. The copies, indeed, came under the eye of an official reviser, but he may have sometimes exceeded his functions, and done more harm than good by his changes."
All this happened while the Roman Church, according to Catholic writers, was keeper of the Bible. The honor which these writers a.s.sert for their Church is spurious. If there is any cla.s.s of men for whom the glory must be vindicated of having given to the world the pure Word of G.o.d in a reliable text, it is the band of textual, or lower, critics who have gathered and collated all existing ma.n.u.scripts of the Bible. What an immense amount of painstaking labor this necessitated the reader can guess from the fact that for the New Testament alone about 3,000 ma.n.u.scripts had to be examined word for word and letter for letter. The men who undertook this gigantic task, arid who are always on the watch for new finds, do not belong in the Roman fold, and did not receive the incentive for their work from the Roman Church. This work started soon after the Reformation, and the intense interest aroused in G.o.d"s Word by that movement is the true cause of it. The Protestant Church, not the Church of Rome, has given back to the world the pure Word of G.o.d in more than one sense.
The official Bible of the Roman Church to-day is the Latin Vulgate. This Bible, which is a revision by Jerome and others of many variant Latin texts in use towards the end of the fourth century, has been elevated to the dignity of the inspired text. The original purpose was good: it was to remove the confusion of many conflicting texts and to establish uniformity in quoting the Bible. The errors of the Vulgate are many, but while it was understood that the Vulgate was merely a translation, the errors could be corrected from the original sources. Little, however, was done in this respect before the Reformation, and since then the Roman Church has become rigid and petrified in its adherence to this Latin Bible. In its fourth session (April 8, 1546) the Council of Trent decreed that "of all Latin editions the old and vulgate edition be held as authoritative in public lectures, disputations, sermons, and expositions; and that no one is to dare or presume under any pretext to reject it." "The meaning of this decree," says Hodge, "is a matter of dispute among Romanists themselves. Some of the more modern and liberal of their theologians say that the council simply intended to determine which among several Latin versions was to be used in the service of the Church. They contend that it was not meant to forbid appeal to the original Scriptures, or to place the Vulgate on a par with them in authority. The earlier and stricter Romanists take the ground that the Synod did intend to forbid an appeal to the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, and to make the Vulgate the ultimate authority. The language of the council seems to favor this interpretation." We might add, the practise of Romanists, too. At the debate in Leipzig Eck contended that the Latin Vulgate was inspired by the Holy Ghost. (Koestlin, I, 455.)
Whatever knowledge of Scripture the people in the Middle Ages possessed was confined to those who could read Latin. Catholic writers claim this was at that time the universal language of Europe, but they wisely add: "among the educated." One of them says: "Those who could read Latin could read the Bible, and those who could not read Latin could not read anything." Exactly. And now, to prove the wide diffusion of Bible-knowledge in their Church before Luther, these Catholic writers should give us some exact data as to the extent of the Latin scholarship in that age. Fact is, the Latin tongue acted as a lock upon the Scriptures to the common people. Hence arose the desire to have the Bible translated into the vernacular of various European countries.
This desire Rome sought to suppress with brutal rigor. The b.l.o.o.d.y persecutions of the Waldensians in France, which almost resulted in the extirpation of these peaceful mountain people, of the followers of Wyclif in England, whose remains Rome had exhumed after his death and burned, of the Hussites in Bohemia, were all aimed at translations of the Bible into the languages which the common people understood.
In July, 1199, Pope Innocent III issued a breve, occasioned by the report that parts of the Bible were found in French translation in the diocese of Metz. The breve praises in a general way the zeal for Bible-study, but applies to all who are not officially appointed to engage in such study the prohibition in Ex. 19, 12. 13, not to touch the holy mountain of the Law.
During the reign of his successor, Honorius III, in 1220, laymen in Germany were forbidden to read the Bible.
Under Gregory IX the same prohibition was issued, in 1229, to laymen in Great Britain.
In the same year the crusades against the Albigenses were concluded, and the Council of Toulouse issued a severe order, making it a grave offense for a layman to possess a Bible.
In 1234, the Synod of Tarragona demanded the immediate surrender of all translations of the Bible for the purpose of having them burned.
In 1246, the Synod of Baziers issued a prohibition forbidding laymen to possess any theological books whatsoever, and even enjoining the clergy from owning any theological books written in the vernacular.
Eleven years after Luther"s death, in 1557, Pope Paul IV published the Roman Index of Forbidden Books, and, with certain exceptions, prohibited laymen from reading the Bible.
Not until the reign of King Edward VI was the "Act inhibiting the reading of the Old and New Testament in English tongue, and the printing, selling, giving, or delivering of any such other books or writings as are therein mentioned and condemned" (namely, in 34 Hen.
VIII. Cap. 1) abrogated.
The Council of Trent ordered all Catholic publishers to see to it that their editions have the approval of the respective bishop.
Not until February 28, 1759, did Pope Clement XIII give permission to translate the Bible _into all the languages of the Catholic states_.