THE BIBLE AND ROME by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 21, 1889

THE BIBLE AND ROME.

By Editor

ONLY a few weeks since at a meeting of a literary Roman Catholic Club in New York City, a paper was read in regard to the treatment of the Bible by the Church of Rome, in which it was asserted that Protestants had no foundation whatever for their opinions in regard to the hostility of Rome to the circulation of the Scriptures. It also gave at length many details in regard to issues of the Bible before the Reformation, its translation, and its recommendation by the highest ecclesiastical authorities. This paper was published by one of the daily papers, and for that reason the New York Observer notices it as follows:—

Now there is absolutely nothing in all this paper as printed that confutes in any degree the popular opinion of Protestants in regard to this matter, and which is one of the great reasons why they protest. Protestants are reading people, as a rule, and they know something about the history of civilization, especially during the last four hundred years. They know that the Roman Church regarded the free use of the Bible by the people as a terrible danger to the supremacy of the Roman Catholic faith and hierarchy. They know from the experience of their ancestors in every European land, that when this danger was manifest the Church of Rome exhausted its power of every kind to suppress and destroy the Bible, as an implement in the hands of its enemies. For the documentary evidence and the details of this conflict we refer to the volume, "Fifteenth Century Bibles," by Rev. Dr. Wendell Prime. . . . It is ridiculous for the apologizers for Romanism to attempt to deny the notorious actions of the greatest councils of the church, denouncing the use of the Bible by the people. Their only possible line of defense is to attempt to justify their action by defending the proposition maintained by their church for ages, namely, that the Bible is for the people only as it is interpreted and divided to them by church authorities. Dr. Prime's book is a study in Bibliography, and gives the record of the early history of the Bible as a printed volume. No amount of explanation or argument can blot out this record. It is written not only with indelible ink in the decisions of councils, but in blood by their sanguinary enforcement. No one can read the history of the Bible as a printed book without learning a fearful lesson of what the world has to fear when a corrupt Christianity has the place of power.