THE ATTEMPTS OF THE CHURCH OF ROME AGAINST THE SCRIPTURES, COMPARED WITH HER RESERVE TOWARDS THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, STRONGLY ATTEST THE DIVINE AGENCY BY A NOVEL CLASS OF FACTS.

547. Sixth Fact — We may assert that we shall gain a still more powerful proof than the preceding, from these endeavours of Rome, if we view them in connexion with her constant blamelessness in reference to the canon and the Greek text of the New Testament.

But here we wish our task and design to be clearly understood. We are writing this work simply in defence of the Sacred Volume, the common treasure of all the Churches under heaven, since all have absolutely the same collection. It is, then, their cause altogether that we have taken in hand, and it has not been our intention to enter into direct controversy. It was not without reluctance, and only yielding to the necessities of our argument, that in the foregoing chapter we brought forward the faults of Protestants, in order to prove the guardianship of Providence over the canon; and in the same spirit, and yielding to the same necessities, we are led to dwell, in the following pages, upon the still greater dangers among the followers of the Pope, which the sacred canon has, through Divine aid escaped. This must be borne in mind while listening to what we may say of the errors of the Church of Rome in reference to the Scriptures. We are led to do so by the course of our argument, and we might have said much more upon that subject.

548. The negations of Protestant theologians have just caused us to admire the providence of God, in the noble unanimity of all the Churches throughout the world in maintaining the canon for 1500 years; but when we turn to the theologians of Rome, the same sentiments of admiration will be excited, and in a much higher degree.

Observe their incessant antipathies, and attempts of every kind against the Scriptures through a long succession of ages, — in what rank they have placed them, — what human traditions they have placed above them, — in how many ways they have contradicted them, — what insufficiency and injurious effects they have attributed to them. Observe what interpretations they have imposed upon them, — what impure persons they have constituted to be their judges, — what outrageous laws have been made to represent them as dangerous books. Observe what apprehension has been shewn at their circulation. — what care has been taken to prevent their being read, — -what sanguinary laws have been enacted against pious persons convicted of the crime of vending them, — what orders to give them up, — what prohibitions of absolution to those who refused! Lastly, observe what solemn denunciations of all the later Popes, even in this nineteenth century, against those who circulate, and those who receive them.¹ Most assuredly, if you attentively consider the whole series of these facts, you will be forced devoutly to acknowledge, that God must have interposed His powerful hand in this matter, to have sheltered the collection of His twenty-seven books from every attack; and to have brought it about, that the Church which calls itself the sole guardian, depositary, and interpreter of a volume so dreaded and so discredited within its pale, should never have altered the canon, and never ceased, like ourselves, to preserve it in unalterable integrity. You will notice with admiration, that in all her criminal attempts against the oracles of the living God, she has never proposed either to take away, or to add any ancient book; she has never proposed, for example, that we should receive the apocryphal Gospel of Peter, or any other book in honour of the Virgin Mary, as the apocryphal Gospel of Matthew, or that of James, or that of the Nativity; she has never proposed that any of the books should be struck out which are most at variance with her tenets; as, for example, the Epistle to the Hebrews, (so directly opposed to her doctrine of the mass, and to the sacerdotal character of her priests;) or the second Epistle to the Thessalonians, which so clearly predicts her idolatry and her fate; or the Apocalypse of John, so contrary to that future which she presents to the Church; or even other books; though she has often declared in her councils, that “generally circulated, the Holy Scriptures would do more harm than good.”²

549. We shall, above all, be struck with this thought, if we ask ourselves, how much easier for Rome must the undertaking have seemed, to take away any book from the canon, or to add one to it, than all that she has taken the liberty of doing against the Holy Scriptures.

Let us pass under review her acts for six or eight centuries; and in contrast with such a picture, her blamelessness in reference to the canon will fill you with admiration.

SECTION FIRST,

HER DOGMAS AND RITES OPPOSED TO THE SCRIPTURES,

550. In the first place, she began by establishing a system of rites and dogmas in such flagrant opposition to the Scriptures, that they could not have gained acceptance except in communities entirely neglectful of the Holy Word, enslaved to the priests, and among whom the imitation of pagan practices, and the shows of ancient Rome, had already supplanted a spiritual service, Forced celibacy; the monastic life; the worship of paintings or of images; and their incessant miracles; the sacerdotal office attributed to priests and bishops; the adoption of the altars and costumes of pagan Rome — its votive offerings, its pontiffs, its chaplets, its processions, its portable altars, its candles in broad day; the use of a liturgy in an unknown tongue; the idea of a sacrifice accomplished by the priest, and often repeated; the idea of another expiation than the death of Jesus; the magical power ascribed to the priests; the invention of the mass, and of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine at the supper; the adoration of the metamorphosed bread; the withholding of the cup from the laity; the rule of not celebrating the supper except for money; this same supper performed in honour of the dead; the masses in which a traffic is carried on between the convents and the priests; the confessional, its mysteries, its interrogatories, its abominable impurities, and its still more abominable absolutions. The extermination of heretics by fire and sword, (puniantur in ignem;) the cancelling of promises, safeguards, and oaths, when deemed contrary to the interests of the Church, (non quasi juramenta, sed quasi perjurta.) The worship of angels and that of the dead; the prayers addressed to them in the Missal; their power in heaven, and their omnipresence on earth, to hear at all times, and in all places, the invocations made to them. The distinction of different kinds of religious adoration, dulia, latria, and hyperdulia; then, dulia, relative, and latria, (relative by means of images,) after the manner of the ancient idolatries. The queenly dignity of a female in heaven; her power above angels; her resurrection before the last day, her exemption from original sin; the eternal Wisdom (of the Book of Proverbs) identified in the Breviary with that humble and blessed woman, whom we behold, after the Lord’s resurrection, praying with the brethren and sisters of the Church, (Acts i. 14,) and of whom none of the apostles afterwards say a word in any of the one-and-twenty letters which they wrote to the churches of God during the first sixty years of Christianity. The pagan invention of a purgatory, of an expiatory fire, in which horrible sufferings (atrocissimœ)³ are inflicted on believers for whom Christ died, and in the torments of which they must suffer for their sins during millions of years before they can enter the haven of rest; but with the possibility of coming out of it by means of masses said for money, after their death. The domination of priests over the Lord’s heritage, a domination so forcibly reprobated by St Peter and St John, (1 Peter v. 3; 3 John 9;) the pretension that Peter believed himself to be the prince of the apostles and Christ’s vicegerent; that this dignity and vicarship has a successor from age to age; that a successor has a right to rule over all the Churches throughout the world, — a successor who is to be in perpetuity a bishop of Italy, because Peter, whom we never read of in the Scriptures as having been at Rome, presided there twenty-five years — a successor, lastly, who, although he has often been one of the worst of men, (by the confession even of the doctors and councils of Rome,)⁴ will ever be a bishop of bishops, and the vicar of Jesus Christ throughout the world

SECTION SECOND.

THE INFALLIBILITY OF ROME OPPOSED TO THAT OF THE SCRIPTURES,

551. In the second place, this Church, to maintain the inviolability of this whole assemblage of contradictions to the Scriptures, has proceeded to take a step against them still more outrageous — to arraign their infallibility, and to oppose to it her own. However clear the declarations of the written Word may be on any doctrine whatever, you must take care not to set them in opposition to the teachings of Rome, since she is the sole interpreter, and condemns severely all rational exercise of your private judgment to understand their meaning. She allows you to receive them only in the signification that she has fixed. Even all the priests, before they are admitted to consecration, take an oath to interpret them only in conformity with the unanimous consent of the fathers, (a consent which does not exist, and can no where be found.) “Let no one” the Council of Trent says in its third session, “presume to force the Scriptures to his own private meaning, contrary to that which has been held, and which is still held, by the holy Mother Church, whose right it is to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of the sacred books.” It is added, that delinquents will be denounced to the Ordinary, and punished according to the law; and, in consequence of this ordinance, the fourteenth article of the Credo of Pius IV. ends with these words — “I receive also the Holy Scriptures in the sense in which the holy Mother Church has held, and still holds them, who alone has the right to judge of their true sense, and of their interpretation. I will never receive or interpret them excepting in conformity with the unanimous consent of the fathers,”

SECTION THIRD.

THE AVERSION OF ROME TO THE WRITTEN WORD,

552. In the third place, from this assumption of infallibility, there results for the Church of Rome, not only the fatal impossibility of ever reforming herself, and the necessity of being always in error, but, more than all, an instinctive aversion to the oracles of God. Hence arises the secret feeling of an organised and perpetual state of war between the interpretations of Scripture and that Scripture which will never cease to protest against the meaning she gives it. From this, too, arises the constantly disparaging language of the doctors of Rome respecting the written Word and its use. When do you hear them, unless among the Jansenists, (always more or less persecuted,) the Pascals, the Duguets, the Quesnels, the Sacys, use the language of Scripture respecting the Scripture. ‘“O how love I thy law, my God! I meditate therein day and night. It is profitable for instruction, for correction, for conviction, for making the man of God ready for every good work, and wise unto salvation, through faith in Christ Jesus. It enlightens the eyes; it gives wisdom to the simple. Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life; search them with care daily, to see if what is preached to you agrees with them.”⁵ Alas! instead of this language respecting the Bible — language which has been that of pious men in all ages — you see them decrying its use, lowering it in the popular estimation, speaking of it as obscure, insufficient, and even dangerous. Of what use to circulate it among the people? Have they not the priests? It is insufficient to instruct, to convince, to correct, to make wise unto salvation; it is not the business of the people to examine whether what is preached to them is conformable to it. Is not that known beforehand? “It is obscure,” Bellarmin affirms;⁶ “it does not contain everything necessary to salvation,” he adds; “it belongs to the Mother Church to decide upon the meaning.” “It is dangerous,” say the Roman councils, “if you circulate it indiscriminately; to read it without permission is a mortal sin.” “It is exposing one’s self, on account of human infirmity, to receive more harm than good,” says the Council of Trent.⁷ “It is made evident by experience,” Pius VII. repeats, at a later period, in his bull to the Archbishop of Gnesen,⁸ “that the Holy Scriptures, circulated in the vulgar tongue, have produced, through the rashness of men, more evil than good.” And Pius IX., from the time of his accession, has hastened to repeat these deplorable and fatal maxims.

SECTION FOURTH.

THE ANXIETY OF ROME TO KEEP THE BIBLE AT A DISTANCE FROM THE PEOPLE, AND THE PEOPLE FROM IT.

553. In the fourth place, another attempt of Rome against the Scriptures, is the pains it has always taken to keep them at a distance from the people, and the people from them; contriving that even the priests do not know them, except by the extracts inserted in the Breviary, the Pontifical, and the Missal, and thus making them to disappear almost entirely from every country where there are no Protestants — from Spain, Portugal, Italy, the colonies of America and Asia, Peru, Mexico, Paraguay, Brazil, Cuba, the Philippines, and, above all, from Rome, the mother city.⁹ Alas! as far as relates to the Holy Scriptures, all these countries, by the efforts of this Church, have been reduced to a desert, and the Bible has become a strange book — I might say, a suspected, a dangerous book. “I have gone through the whole city of Rome,” said, a few years ago, a distinguished Englishman, Mr Seymour, “and I have visted all the book-shops of that. city, even those of second-hand booksellers Not a copy of the Scriptures! Everywhere the same answer — E proibito; non é permesso! Only in two places the edition of Martini was offered me; but in twenty-four volumes, at the price of 105 francs.”¹⁰

554. But, in the fifth place, this hostility against the Scriptures has led the Church of Rome much further. “Experience,” she said, at the Council of Trent,¹¹ — she said it 317 years later, at the Council of Toulouse, — she has repeated it very often in our own day, — Experience has convinced her that the use of the Sacred Books, circulated freely in the vulgar tongue among the Christian congregations under her jurisdiction, has always been her ruin.” Observe, therefore, when, in spite of her efforts to keep them from the Scriptures, she has seen them apply to their study in a spirit of earnest piety; — as, for example, the Vaudois in the twelfth century — the Albigenses .in the thirteenth — the Lollards in the fourteenth — the Bohemians in the fifteenth — the Reformed Churches of Germany, France, England, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Poland, Hungary, Italy and Spain in the sixteenth — the Jansenists of France in the seventeenth — the Tuscans and Irish in the nineteenth; — observe how at once she takes the alarm; she foresees defections; she trembles for her supremacy; she utters by turns cries of menace and of alarm; she at last commits the impious act, before unheard of, that of interdicting, in the name of Jesus Christ, to the disciples of Jesus Christ, the book of Jesus Christ!

555. Never, no, never, since the commencement of Christianity, — never among all the most audacious sects which have harassed the Church of God — never among the eighty-eight heresies enumerated by St Augustin¹² has any one of them, even the most impious of the Sabellians, Pelagians, or Arians abstained from appealing to the testimony of the Scriptures, and encouraging the reading of them — never has any one dared to lift his voice against their authority or their universal use. What do I say? Never, even before the canon was entirely formed, did the Gnosties, the Ebionites, the Valentinians, the Marionites or the Manichaeans, who rejected a part of the Scriptures, ever dream of interdicting men from reading the books which they themselves held as given by God. On the other hand, the great Greek Church, which styles herself the orthodox Church of the East, proclaims aloud the duty of reading the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, and declares that the Bible, being the Word of God, is the sole supreme judge of controversies in matters of faith.¹³ But here, after so many ages you see the Church of the Pope the only one in the world to interdict Christian people from reading the Word of God.

She officially perpetrated this act now more than six centuries ago. In 1229, at the Council of Toulouse, held against the Vaudois and Albigenses, under Gregory IX., she dared to pass against the Scripture the frightful decree of which the following is the fourth canon: — “We also prohibit laymen from having the books of the Old and the New Testament, unless perhaps any one for devotional purposes wishes to possess a Psalter, or Breviary for Divine service, or the Hours of the Blessed Virgin. But we forbid them expressly from having the books above mentioned translated into the vulgar tongue.” (Sed ne praemissos libros habeunt in linguâ vulgart translatos arctissimè prohibemus.)

556. And that decree which established the Inquisition is renewed one century after another. The experience of Rome, as she herself reiterates, having from age to age convinced her of the incompatibility of her existence with the universal use of the oracles of God, she has often renewed such edicts under different forms. Here, for example, is what she declared in the middle of the sixteenth century in the name of the Council of Trent, on the fourth of the “rules” drawn up by the Fathers chosen for the question of prohibited books:¹⁴ — “Since it is manifest by EXPERIENCE (cum experimento manifestum sit) that if the Holy Bible (si Sacra Biblia) in the vulgar tongue is circulated everywhere without distinction, more harm than good will result from it on account of the rashness of men, (plus inde, ob hominum temeritatem, detrimenti quam utilitatis orirt,) whoever shall have the presumption to read such Bibles, or to possess them without permission, shall be disqualified for receiving absolution of his sins, at least till he has previously given up his Bible to the bishop of the diocese.”

557. Thus, while in the ancient Church of the three first centuries, the unhappy men, who for fear of punishment delivered up their Bibles to the officers of Pagan Rome, were called Traditores, and were refused absolution of their sins, at the present day it is an act of piety in the estimation of Papal Rome to deliver them up; while for those who have the presumption to read them or to possess them without permission, the absolution of their sins is to . be refused, and excommunication kept in reserve.

558. The Church of Rome has pursued this fatal policy with increasing hardihood, and, in the eighteenth century, the too famous bull, Unigenitus,¹⁵ against Quesnel, received after a long contest by all parties of the Roman Church, condemned for ever, “as each of them, false, deceitful, scandalous, pernicious, rash, suspected of heresy, savouring of heresy, heretical, impious, blasphemous, the following propositions:” —

The 79th. “It is useful, at all times, in all places, and for all sorts of persons, to study the Scripture, and to know its spirit, devotion, and mysteries.”

The 80th. “The obscurity of God’s Holy Word is not a reason for laymen to dispense with reading it.”

The 84th. “To take the New Testament out of the hands of Christians, or to keep it closed from them, by depriving them of the means of understanding it, is to close for them the mouth of Jesus Christ.”

The 85th. “To interdict Christians the reading of the Holy Scriptures, and especially of the Gospels, is to interdict the use of light to the children of light, and to make them suffer a species of excommunication.”

Again, in the nineteenth century, we have heard the disastrous professions of all the last popes, to consecrate their accession to the throne by a declaration of hatred against the Bible Societies, and the dissemination of the Scriptures; the Bull of Pius VII., addressed, June 29, 1816, to the primate of Poland; the encyclicals of Leo XII, May 3, 1824; of Gregory XVI, Aug. 15, 1832; and, lastly, of Pius IX., to the archbishops and bishops of Italy, in 1849. “To arrest this pestilence,” says Leo XII., (the pestilence of the universal dissemination of the vulgar tongue,) “to arrest this pestilence, of which the effect is, that, by perverse interpretations, the Gospel of Christ is converted into a human gospel, or, rather, into a gospel of the devil, our predecessors have published many constitutions, tending to shew how very injurious this perfidious invention is, both to faith and morals.” (Quantopere fider et moribus vaferrimum hocce inventum nowium sit.)

SECTION FIFTH.

THE LONG AND CRUEL SEVERITIES OF THE CHURCH OF ROME INFLICTED ON THOSE WHO WISH TO READ THE SCRIPTURES IN THE VULGAR TONGUE.

559. But this is not all. In her warfare against the Scriptures, Rome has gone much further, Here is a sixth feature of her hostility. Persuaded that the possession of the Bible, in the vulgar tongue, by the people would be her ruin, she has-been in the practice everywhere, for 600 years, of punishing, first, with excommunication, and, when she has the power, with death, all those who choose to possess it, or take the liberty of reading it.

560. You can see, in the great collection of her bulls,¹⁶ those of Honorius III., in 1216; of Innocent IV., in 1243; of Alexander IV., in 1254; of Urban IV,, in 1262; of Clement IV., in 1265; of Nicholas III., in 1278; of John XXII, in 1317; of Boniface IX., in 1391; of Martin V., in 1418; of Innocent VIII, in 1486; of Julius II., in 1511; of Leo X, in 1520; of Clement VII, in 1526; of Paul III., in 1536; of Julius II, in 1550; of Paul IV, in 1550 and 1559. See in “The Acts of the Councils,” by Labbe and Cossart,¹⁷ the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1515; the edict of St Louis, in 1228; the Council of Toulouse, under Pope Gregory IX, in 1229; of Beziers, in 1246; of Oxford, in 1408; of Constance, in 1415, 1416; and 1418; of Sienna, in 1527.

561. The decree of Toulouse, 1229, as we have already quoted it, forbidding to every layman the reading of the Old and the New Testament, odious as it is for the audacity of its impiety, is still more so for its ferocity; and this is a seventh feature. It established the horrible tribunal of the Inquisition against all the readers of the Bible in the vulgar tongue. It was an edict of fire, bloodshed, and devastation. In its 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th chapters, it ordained the entire destruction of the houses, the humblest places of concealment, and even the subterranean retreats of men convicted of possessing the Scriptures; that they should be pursued to the forests and caves of the earth; and that even those who harboured them should be severely punished. (“Etiam sint domint terrarium soliciti circa inquisitionem haereticorwm im villis domibus et nemoribus faciendam; et circa hayusmodi appensa adjuncta sew subterranea latibula destinenda.”)

562, And do not think that this ferocity against the Scriptures was the paroxysm of a day. Rome has kept it up for ages, and indulged in it as far as the laws of European nations have permitted it. Thousands of martyrs have perished by her hands for their attachment to the Holy Word. Her priests, in putting them to death, have believed “they did God service,” as Jesus Christ said, (John xvi. 2.) This persuasion, founded, as they said, on a long EXPERIENCE, that the circulation of the Scriptures is more powerful against their system of religion than the attacks of infidelity, or of philosophy, or of earthly powers have ever been, — this persuasion has led them to destroy so great an evil at any price, to combat it, for conscience’ sake, by fire and sword. And you still hear, in the present day, even in France, the journals most prized by the Church of Rome, and the most approved representatives of her doctrines, loudly defending those infernal butcheries,

SECTION SIXTH.

THE DECREES OF THE CHURCH OF ROME REDUCE THE SCRIPTURES TO A LEVEL WITH TRADITIONS.

563. But Rome has advanced still further against the Holy Word. Not satisfied with interdicting the use of it to the people, she has sought to degrade it. To be able to contradict it, the words of men must he raised to the same level; and this is what the Council of Trent has done. It has put in the same rank as the Word of God, the immense, and, to this day, undefined, body of human documents to which the name of TRADITION has been given; this has been so done as to annul the divinity of Holy Writ, by recognising, as equally Divine, other innumerable and apocryphal teachings, which annul its eternal authority by attempting to share it. There are two ways of denying God — either by lowering Him to the rank of the creature, or by elevating the creature to His side, and to His throne. This is what the Council of Trent has done.!

Look at the first decree of its fourth session — “Seeing (it says) that saving truth and the discipline of manners are contained in WRITTEN BOOKS, and in UNWRITTEN TRADITIONS, which, received by the apostles from the lips of Jesus Christ, or by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit through the succession of time, are come down to us — the Council, following the experience of the apostolic fathers, RECEIVES WITH THE SAME SENTIMENT OF PIETY, AND REVERENCE, (pari pietatis et reverentiae affectu,) and honour¹⁸ ALL THE BOOKS OF THE OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENT, (seeing that God was their Author,) and with them the TRADITIONS concerning both FAITH and manners.

564, All Christian Churches protest against this attempt, and particularly the great Russo-Greek Church, which terms itself the Orthodox and Catholic Church of the East. “This,” it says, “is the eighth of the nineteen errors that separate the Roman Church from the great Orthodox Church of the East,”¹⁹

SECTION SEVENTH.

THE DECREES OF THE CHURCH OF ROME PLACE THE SCRIPTURES BELOW THE ROMAN PONTIFF.

565. But Rome not only makes the Scriptures descend to her own level, but sets herself above them, by constituting herself their infallible interpreter and supreme judge, claiming for her decisions, even for the most palpably erroneous, the infallibility which belongs to God alone. This is our eighth point. By a bull she has publicly classed among the heresies of Luther his having said that it was not in the power either of the Church or the Pope to establish articles of faith.²⁰ Tradition is always consulted to determine the meaning of the Bible, but the Bible is never consulted to give its judgment on tradition. What should we lose, then, in the judgment of Rome, if the Bible were everywhere abandoned — since the Church has already determined by an infallible voice all that constitutes the truth — and since her most renowned doctors declare that the Scripture is not necessary, that it is insufficient, obscure, imperfect, even dangerous for faith and manners, the inexhaustible source of disputes and heresies — so that to read it without the permission of the priest, is, according to the councils,²¹ a mortal sin, and the booksellers who vend it ought to be severely punished?

SECTION EIGHTH.

THE POWER OF ALL THESE FACTS UNITED TO CONFIRM THE DOCTRINE OF THE CANON.

566. Such, then, have always been the increasing attacks of the Church of Rome upon the Scriptures, for six. or eight hundred years. And now, I ask, does not this warfare of eight centuries render the blamelessness of Rome as to the text and canon of the New Testament admirable, astonishing, and marvellous? And this warfare Rome carries on more eagerly than ever, especially since the re-establishment of the Jesuits by Pius VII.; although the temporal power of nations no longer seconds it by their laws, and the circulation of the Bible all over the world has made so magnificent a progress!

The Scriptures circulated by our societies have been publicly inscribed in the list of prohibited books; they have been denied entrance into various countries with far more strictness than the works of Diderot or Voltaire; and the Bible in the vulgar tongue is always, for the Papacy, the most dangerous book it has to deal with. Listen to the cries of alarm from the four last popes on this subject, and you will see that this ancient and formidable power, which still makes the powers of this world tremble, trembles itself before the Scriptures laid open in the vulgar tongue. It quails at the thought of appearing in public before their tribunal. For 1200 years the Scriptures have not been allowed to be seen by a priest, excepting under the veil of a dead language; and, in the same way, they have not been allowed to be read by the people excepting in fragments, and that in Latin, in the Vulgate version of Jerome.

567. I ask, then, any one who has watched this long hostility against the Word — a hostility, as Rome confesses, founded on experience, for ages, of its dangerousness — a hostility prolonged for eight centuries, — is it not marvellous that, in the midst of all these attempts against the Scriptures, that of altering the canon, by additions or retrenchments favourable to the doctrines of Rome, has never been tried?²² Who would not have thought beforehand, that, among all these enterprises against the Scriptures, and their circulation, this of altering the canon would be of the number? that the Church of Rome would be glad, for example, to be relieved a second time of that Epistle to the Hebrews which is so decidedly opposed to the doctrine of the mass; and of that Apocalypse which represents Rome as a Babylon, and so clearly predicts her ruin? or that she should accept some of those apocryphal gospels which give glory to the Virgin Mary? or that she should be tempted to grant a place in the canon to the epistle of that apostle Clement, as Clement of Alexandria called him,²³ — that immediate successor of St Peter, as Jerome called him?²⁴ Truly, the hand of God must be acknowledged here in this reverence shewn for the canon in the midst of so much contempt and outrage against the Scriptures, at a time, too, when the fabrication of forged books was so frequent, and the alteration of genuine books was not less so, as we shall soon shew. Such an attempt, atrocious as it would have been, might have seemed, beforehand, much more probable than what has really happened; and these proceedings towards the books of the New Testament, especially in an obscure age, when the Scriptures were so little known, and so few persons knew how to read, must seem much more profitable, and, consequently, far less improbable than all that has really happened. Far less improbable, for instance, than forbidding Christians to read or possess the Word of their God; far less improbable than ordering it to be given up to the priests, under pain of excommunication; far less improbable, especially, than an order to put Christians to death, convicted only of the crime of reading or possessing it; far less than the crime of patting the whole body of traditions on a level with it; far less than that of audaciously belying it, and publicly placing above it the infallibility of an Italian bishop, or that of some priests assembled in council. And yet this act, comparatively so easy, so profitable to the priests, and so much to be preferred to all that has been actually done, the Church of Rome has never committed, nor even, as far as we know, ever attempted to commit. And why? Because there is a God who watches over His oracles; because He guards their canon; because He prevents even the most rebellious Churches from laying their hands upon it; and because He had already prevented, during 3300 years, in relation to the Old Testament, the Jewish people, though almost always unfaithful, from committing such an outrage.

568. Thus the very errors of the Roman pontiffs, like those of Protestant theologians in reference to the Holy Word, have only served, in the final result, for its exaltation, and the confirmation of its canon. After all these storms of eight hundred years, storms which have sometimes deluged the earth, we see Thy Holy Word, like Noah’s ark, floating above the waters, and advancing peacefully through the storms to renovate the world. God has lent for a time to the science of the schools all its genius and all its licence of action, as to the Church of Rome all its means of violence and all its triumphs, only to furnish believers with two great and novel proofs of the divinity of the Scriptures, of the Providence that protects them, and of the durability of their canon. The schools have revolted against the canon, but in vain; priests have agitated, but in vain; the laws of all the Latin kingdoms have denounced death and those who circulate the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue; pontiffs have launched their bulls; blood, at their outcries, has flowed like water; more recently, since the French Revolution which quenched their thunderbolts, they have not ceased to anathematise the Bible societies as a vaferrimum inventum, and as a pest by which, they say, the very foundations of religion are undermined²⁵ But the Bible, in its integrity, has traversed the globe; the New Testament, with its canon intact and complete, has made the tour of the world to spread the gospel of grace in one hundred and sixty different languages; and the great society divinely charged with this incomparable mission has just accomplished it, and celebrated six years ago its fiftieth anniversary. Pacific and powerful in its exterior weakness, not having received the support of any human government, it has silently covered the world; it has continued to raise its waves as the ocean its tides; and when it was proposed at its jubilee to vote a million copies of the New Testament for China, which had just been opened to the sacred colporteurs, it hastened to accept the magnificent challenge, and took measures to circulate them during the year. Certainly as there is a God who has given the Scriptures, there is a God who watches over the volume that contains them and preserves it from age to age.

1) Encyclical Letters of Leo XII. in 1824; of Gregory XVI. in 1882; of Pius IX. on his accession.

2) The fourth of the ten rules drawn up by the fathers chosen at the Council of Trent, and approved by Pius IV.

3) Bellarmin.

4) To cite only one example among so many others, notice the judgment on Pope John XXIII., at the œcumenical Council of Constance in 1415. Tried on seventy counts, (all attested and proved,) he was convicted of many murders and poisonings, (among others, that of Alexander V., his predecessor,) of many adulteries and incests, (among others, with his sister-in-law, and some nuns.) “A cloaca of vice,” said the Council, “and a mirror of infamy;” Lorente, Hist. des Papes, Paris, 1822. Lenfant, Histoire du Cone, de Constance.)

5) Ps, xix. 8; cxix. 105, 130; 2 Tim. iii. 15-17; John v. 39; Acts xvii, 11,

6) De Verbo Dei, lib. iii., et lib. iv.

7) See the bull of Pius IV., at the end of the Council of Trent, act. 14. Sacros et Gicum. Concil. Trident., Canones et Decreta. Paris, 1823.

8) June 29, 1816.

9) It is striking to read, in the official papers of the British parliament for the year of Catholic emancipation, (1829,) the examination of Drs Murray and Doyle, (afterwards prelates in Ireland,) on the entire absence of the Bible, in the vulgar tongue, in the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, where they had long resided.

10) See Seymour, Mornings with the Jesuits at Rome. London, 1849, p. 153. Luther tells us that it was at Erfurt, in the library of the university, to which he came to be made Master of Arts, that he met, for the first time, with a Bible. Excepting the fragments of the Gospels or epistles contained in the Missal, scarcely any one read the Word of God; and Luther himself tells us that he had never seen the whole of it. ‘Carlostadt,” he adds, “began to read it only when he had been doctor for ten years,” (Table-talk, vi., 7, quoted by Michelet.) But what he tells us there, three centuries and a half ago, has been told us within these few years, by one of the most learned priests of Rome, recently converted to the gospel, in the same way as Luther, by reading the Bible — the honourable M. de Sanctis. Though minister of one of the first parishes in Rome, (the Maddalena,) — though a doctor in theology, and universally respected — though a theologian of the Inquisition, and examiner of the clergy — though well versed in the theology of Thomas Aquinas, he had known the Bible hitherto only by extracts, such as were to be met in the services of the churches, and in theological works. “A contrivance of the devil to make the priests believe that they read the Bible,” (he wrote to me,) “is to make them recite every day a part of the Breviary, composed of Psalms, and of sentences from the fathers, or the Holy Scriptures. Every day, after the psalm, they read three lessons taken from the Bible. These begin with the first chapter of Genesis, and end with the twenty- second chapter of the Apocalypse; so that the greater part of the clergy actually believe that they read the Bible through every year. I myself believed it.”

11) The fourth of the ten rules, drawn up by the fathers chosen at the Council, on the subject of the prohibited books; rules approved and published by Pius IV.

12) De Haeres., tom. viii., pag. 8, Bened. edit., Paris, 1685.

13) See Philaretus, (metropolitan of Moscow) in his Tableau Comparatif des Eglises d’ Orient et d’Occident; Pinkerton’s Russia, London 1833, 39th, and following pages.

14) De libris prohibitis regulae decem per patres a Tridentino Synodo delectos . . . (Sacros et Gicum. Cone. Trid., Paul. IIL, Jul. IIL, et Pio IV., Pont. Max. Celebrati, Canones et Decreta, Paris, 1823.) Pius IV., in the bull that accom- panies these rules, declares that “it is a mortal sin to violate them.”

15) Or the “Constitution of Clement XI. against Quesnel,” Sept. 8, 1713.

16) Magnum Bullarium Romanum, Luxemburgi, 1727, (Biblioth. de l'Athénée.)

17) Paris, 1671, fol. 16.

18) Can, et Dec. Concil. Trident., p. 16; Lipsiae, 1816.

19) See the work of the late metropolitan Archbishop of Moscow, quoted above, (Propp. 475-478.) Eight of these nineteen errors relate to the Scriptures. The first which the Archbishop points out is, that in the Latin Church, the Bible is held not be a sufficient source of the truths necessary to salvation. The second, that the apocryphal books are made part of the canon. The third, that the Scriptures are asserted to be unintelligible without an interpreter. The fourth, that instead of the original text, the Latin version, called the Vulgate, authorised by the Council of Trent, is received as the authentic text. The fifth, that the laity are forbidden to read the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue. The sixth, that the Pope is constituted supreme judge of controversies. The seventh, that the same infallibility is given to the decisions of councils as to Jesus Christ. Lastly, the eighth is, that unwritten traditions are received with the same reverence as the written Word of God.

20) The Bull Exsurge of Leo X. in 1520; Council. Harduini, tom, ix., p, 1893.

21) Peccatorum absolutionem percipere non possit. (De libris prohibitis,) Regulæ Decem per Patres a Tridentina Synodo delectos continuate et a Pio IV. comprobatæ.

22) “Since the Church has. approved the four Gospels,” said the monks to Wickliffe, “she had also the power to reject them, and to admit others. The Church sanctions or condemns what she pleases. . . . . Learn to believe in the Church more than in the gospel.” — Merle D’ Aubigné, Reformat., tom. v., p. 108.

23) Ὀ ἀπόστολος Κλήμης., iv., 17, § 107; ed. Klotz, ii, 334. See Hefel, Patrum Apost. Opera, Proleg., p. xxviii. Tubing., 1847.

24) The popes certainly could not have added the epistle of Clement to the New Testament in 1345, or 1445, or 1545, because it had been lost in the West, and was not recovered till 1628. But this makes it more remarkable, that they should have allowed the ancient and memorable relic of a bishop of Rome to be lost, when the Eastern bishops held it in such honour that they were pleased to join it to the end of the New Testament. See Propp. 254-256.

25) The words of Pius VII. in his bull of 1816 against the Bible Society, given at Rome June 29, and addressed, as we have said, to the Bishop of Gnesen.