Chapter 1
The Perfect Guide
Could it be thought possible that an all-wise
Creator would bring so many millions of people
into existence, as the inhabitants of this earth, and give
them no information as to why they are here, or what His will is
concerning them? No, that would be
unreasonable. Just as surely as there is a judgment
day coming, on which we all shall be called to account for our
conduct, so surely He must have given us an
infallible rule of life. But what is this
"infallible rule"? The Roman Catholics say it is "The Church, with its
traditions." But the Church has changed so greatly since its
origin that if the apostles could arise from
the dead they would not recognize it as the church
they established. As for "tradition," it is like a story that
grows and changes as it travels. No government
would be satisfied with oral laws. In so
important a matter as our eternal happiness we need a rule that is more
stable and unchangeable, and this we have in God's infallible
word, the Bible.
The Inspiration Of The Bible
The Bible is not the product of man's thought
and planning. "For the prophecy came not in
old time by the will of man, but holy men of God
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Peter 1:21.
(Compare Isaiah 55:8, 9; 2 Corinthians 3:5.)
Peter says:"The Holy Ghost by the mouth of
David spake," and David himself declares: "The Spirit of the Lord spake
by me." Acts 1:16; 2 Samuel 23:2. Of Jeremiah we read: "Then the
Lord put forth His hand, and touched my mouth.
And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put
My words in thy mouth." "Jeremiah 1:9. Thus the whole Bible is
God's word, spoken through human instrumentality, for "God hath
spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets
since the world began" (Acts 3:21), and
His hand guided them while they wrote. "All this," said David, "the
Lord made me understand in writing by His hand upon me." I
Chronicles 28:19. And so, the prophets, after
writing of Christ's coming, were "searching"
their own writings to find out "what, or what manner of time
the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it
testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ,
and the glory that should follow." 1 Peter
1:11.
We have now presented the testimony of the
Bible itself, to the fact that "all Scripture
is given by inspiration of God." 2 Timothy 3:16. No consistent
person can, therefore, receive one portion of it while he rejects
another. Jesus says: "The Scripture cannot be
broken." John 10:35. He, the author of the
Scriptures, displayed such implicit confidence in them, that even the
devil did not dare to question their authority, when Christ faced
him with the words: "It is written." Matthew
4:4, 7, 10. Yes, "devils also believe, and
tremble" (James 2:19), for they know the Bible is true, while critics
today doubt and ridicule (Jude 10). What has
caused such terrible unbelief among men? We
shall now briefly review the causes and the history of modern
"Higher Criticism."
Rome Versus The Bible
After the Church had fallen from its
apostolic purity of life and doctrine, it
found that, where the Bible was read by the common people, they lost
faith in the Church and opposed her worship as
a species of idolatry. This was particularly
true of the Waldenses, who had retained the Bible in their
native language since the days of the apostles, and had copied
and spread its pages over Catholic
Christendom, wherever their missionaries traveled. It
was natural, therefore, that the Roman
church, instead of supplying the common people
with the Scriptures in their native tongue, should oppose
this. Cardinal Merry del Val says that on account of the activity
of the Waldenses, and later of the
Protestants, in spreading the Scriptures in the
native language of the people; "the Pontiffs and the Councils
were obliged on more than one occasion to
control and sometimes even forbid the use of
the Bible in the vernacular."
He also says:
"Those who would put the
Scriptures indiscriminately into the hands of
the people are the believers always in private interpretation–a
fallacy both absurd in itself and pregnant with disastrous
consequences. These counterfeit champions of
the inspired book hold the Bible to be the
sole source of Divine Revelation and cover with abuse and trite sarcasm
the Catholic and Roman Church"–" Index of
Prohibited Books, revised and published by
order of His Holiness Pope Pins XI," "Foreword" by Cardinal
Merry del Val, pp. x, xi. Vatican Polyglot Press, 1930.
These plain words from such an authentic
source need no comment. Ever since the first
"Index of Prohibited Books" was issued by Pope Paul IV, in
1599, the Bible has had a prominent place in these lists of
forbidden books. And, before the invention of
printing, it was comparatively easy for the
Roman church to control what the people should, or should not, read; but
shortly before the Reformation started, the Lord prepared the way
for its rapid progress by the discovery of the
art of printing. The name of Laurence Coster,
of Holland, is often mentioned in connection with the story of the
first production in Europe, in 1423, of movable type. In 1450 to
1455 John Gutenberg printed the Latin Bible at
Mentz (Mainz), Germany. He endeavored for a
time to keep his invention a secret, but Samuel Smiles
relates:
"In the meanwhile, the printing
establishments of Gutenberg and Schoeffer were
for a time-broken up by the sack and plunder of Mentz by the
Archbishop Adolphus in 1462, when, their workmen becoming
dispersed, and being no longer bound to
secrecy, they shortly after carried with them
the invention of the new art into nearly every country in Europe."–" The
Huguenots,'' p. 7. London: John Murray,
1868.
There being so few books to print, and there
being a ready sale for Bibles, the printers
risked all hazards from the opposition of the Church, and
printed Bibles in Latin, Italian, Bohemian, Dutch, French,
Spanish, and German. While these were so
expensive that only the wealthy could afford
to buy them, and their language was not adapted to the minds of the
common people, yet they "seriously alarmed the Church; and in
1486 the Archbishop of Mentz placed the
printers of that city, which had been the
cradle of the printing-press, under strict censorship. Twenty-five years
later, Pope Alexander VI issued a bull
prohibiting the printers of Cologne, Mentz,
Treves, and Magdeburg, from publishing any books without the express
license of their archbishops. Although these measures were
directed against the printing of religious
works generally, they were more particularly
directed against the publication of the Scriptures in the vulgar
tongue"–Id., p. 8.
The Reformation And The Bible
The time had now come for the light to shine,
and God's word could no longer be kept from
the people. Prophecy states that in spite of captivity,
fire, and sword, "they shall be holpen with a little help."
Daniel 11' 33, 34. But the people had been
kept in darkness so long that they could not endure
the glaring light of all the Bible truths at once. They had to
come gradually, and the hour had struck for
the Reformation to begin.
In preparing for the Reformation, the Lord
had worked in marvelous ways to provide
protection for the Reformers. The night before Martin Luther
nailed his ninety-five theses on the door of the castle church at
Wittenberg, the Elector Frederick of Saxony
had a remarkable dream. In relating it to Duke
John the next morning he said:
"'I must tell
you a dream which I had last night For I dreamed it thrice, and
each time with new circumstances .... I fell asleep, . . . I then
awoke .... I prayed . . . God to guide me, my
counsels, and my people according to truth. I
again fell asleep, and then dreamed that Almighty God sent me a
monk .... All the saints accompanied him by order of God, ill
order to bear testimony before me, and to
declare that he did not come to contrive any
plot .... They asked me to have the goodness graciously to permit him to
write something on the door of the church of the Castle of
Wittenberg. This ! granted through my
chancellor. Thereupon the monk went to the church,
and began to write in such large characters that I could read the
writing at Schweinitz. The pen which he used
was so large that its end reached as far as
Rome, where it pierced the ears of a lion that was crouching there, and
caused the triple crown upon the head of the Pope to shake. All
the cardinals and princes, running hastily up,
tried to prevent it from falling .... I awoke,
. . . it was only a dream. [Again he fell asleep.]
"'Then I dreamed that all the princes of the Empire, and we among
them, hastened to Rome, and strove, one after
another, to break the pen; but the more we
tried the stiffer it became, sounding as if it had been made of iron.
We at length desisted. · . . Suddenly I heard a loud noise–a
large number of other pens had sprung out of
the long pen of the monk. I awoke a third time,
it was daylight.' . . .
"So passed the morning of the 31st October,
1517, in the royal castle of Schweinitz ....
The elector has hardly made an end of telling his dream
when the monk comes with the hammer to interpret it"–"History of
Protestantism," J. A. Wylie, LL.D., Vol. I, pp. 263-266.
One can hardly wonder that the Elector of Saxony became Luther's
protector during his long struggle with the Papacy. The greatest
work that was accomplished by these "pens" of
the Reformation was the translation of the
Bible into the language of the common people. True, there had been
some attempts made before this time to produce the' Scriptures in
the vernacular, but without much success, as
the language was almost unintelligible to the
common people, and the price prohibitive.
After Martin Luther had spent much time in
the homes and company of the people that he
might acquire their language, he, with his co-workers,
translated the Bible into a language that, while it was dignified
and beautiful, was so natural and easy to be
understood by the ordinary mind that it made
the Bible at once "the people's book." The New Testament was
translated in 1521, and fifty-eight editions of it were printed
between 1522 and 1533, seventeen editions at
Wittenberg, thirteen at Augsburg, twelve at
Basel, one at Erfurt, one at Grimma, one at Leipzig, and thirteen at
Strassburg. The Old Testament was first printed in four parts,
1523 to 1533, and finally the entire Bible was
published in one volume in 1534.
In 1522, Jacques Lefevre translated the New
Testament into French, and Collin, at Meaux,
printed it in 1524. In 1525, William Tyndale translated
the New Testament into English. All these New Testaments were
translated from the original Greek, and not
from the imperfect Latin Vulgate, used by the
papal church.
Printing presses were kept busy printing the
Scriptures, while colporteurs and booksellers
sold them to the eager public. The effect was tremendous.
"Every honest intellect was at once struck with the strange
discrepancy between the teaching of the Sacred
Volume and that of the church of
Rome"–"Historical Studies," Eugene Lawfence, p. 255. New York: Harper
Brothers., 1876.
In the Book of God there were found no
purgatory, no infallible pope, no masses for
the dead, no sale of indulgences, no relics working miracles, no
prayers for the dead, no worship of the Virgin Mary or of saints!
But there the people found a loving Saviour
with open arms welcoming the poorest and
vilest of sinners to come and receive forgiveness full and free. Love
filled their hearts and broke the shackles of sin and
superstition. Profanity, coarse jests,
drunkenness, vice, and disorder disappeared. The blessed Book
was read by young and old, and became the talk in home and shop,
while the Church with its Latin mass lost its
attraction.
Rome's Fight
Rome was awake to the inevitable result of
allowing the common people to read the Bible,
and the Vicar of Croydon declared in a speech at St. Paul's
Cross, London: "We must destroy the printing press, or it will
destroy us"–" The Printing-Press and the
Gospel," by E. R. Palmer, p. 24. The papal
machinery was therefore set in motion for the destruction of the Bible.
"There now began a remarkable contest between
the Romish Church and the Bible–between the
printers and the popes .... "To the Bible the
popes at once declared a deathless hostility. To read the
Scriptures was in their eyes the grossest of crimes .... The
Inquisition was invested with new terrors, and
was forced upon France and Holland by papal
armies. The Jesuits were everywhere distinguished by their hatred for
the Bible. In the Netherlands they led the persecutions of Alva
and Philip II; they rejoiced with a dreadful
joy when Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent, the
fairest cities of the workingmen, were reduced to pauperism and ruin by
the Spanish arms; for the Bible had perished
with its defenders .... "To burn Bibles was
the favorite employment of zealous Catholics.
Wherever they were found the heretical volumes were destroyed by active
Inquisitors, and thousands of Bibles and Testaments perished in
every part of France"–" Historical Studies,"
Eugene Lawrence, pp. 254-257.
In Spain, not only were the common people
forbidden to read the Bible, but also
university professors were forbidden by the "Supreme Council" of the
Inquisition to possess their valuable Bible manuscripts.
"The council, in consequence, decreed that those theologians in
the university who had studied the original
languages, should be obliged, as
well as other persons, to give up their
Hebrew and Greek Bibles to the commissaries of the holy office, on pain of
excommunication"–"History of the Inquisition of Spain," D. J. A. Llorente,
Secretary of the Inquisition, p. 105. London, 1827.
"In 1490, Torquemada [the Inquisitor-General]
caused many Hebrew Bibles and more than six thousand volumes to be
burnt in an Auto da fe at Salamanca"–"Literary Policy of the Church of
Rome," Joseph Mendham, M. A., p. 97. London, 1830.
How many thousands of invaluable manuscripts
thus perished in the flames of the Inquisition, eternity alone will
reveal. It is exceedingly difficult for a Protestant in our days to fathom the extent
of this fear of and enmity against the Bible, manifested by the Roman church.
With her it was actually a life or death struggle! A person must read the
history of the Inquisition, and examine the Roman Indexes of Forbidden Books
understand her viewpoint.
Inquisitor General Perez del Pr gave
expression to her feelings and her bitter lament when he declared in horror
"'that some individuals had carried the audacity to the execrable extremity of
demanding permission to the Holy Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, without
fearing to counter mortal poison
therein"–"History of the Inquisition of
Spain," D. Juan Antonio Llorente, p. 111.
The funeral piles were lit all over Europe.
Samuel Smiles says of France:
"Bibles and New Testaments were seized
wherever found and burnt; but more Bibles and Testaments seemed to rise, by
magic, from their ashes. The printers who were convicted of printing
Bibles were next seized and burnt. The Bourgeois de Paris [a Roman Catholic
paper] gives a detailed account of human sacrifices offered up to ignorance
and intolerance in t city during the six months ending June, 1534, from which
it appears that twenty men and one woman were burnt alive.. In the
beginning of the following year, the Sorbonne obtained from the king an
ordinance, which was promulgated on 26th of February, 1535, for the
suppression of printing! "Huguenots," Samuel Smiles, pp. 20, 21, and first
footnote.
"Further attempts continued to be made by
Rome to ch the progress of printing. In 1599 [1559] Pope Paul IV issued
the first Index Expurgatorius, containing a list of the books expressly
prohibited by the Church. It included all Bibles printed in modern
languages, of which forty-eight editions were enumerated; while sixty-one
printers were put under a general ban"–Id., p. 23. "Paul IV, in 1559, put it [Sully's name] in
the first papal Index Expurgatorium"–" History of the Inquisition
of the Middle Ages," Henry Charles Lea, Vol. III, p. 587.
"The first Roman 'Index of Prohibited Books'
(Index librorum prohibitorum), published in 1559 under Paul
IV, was very severe and was therefore mitigated under that pontiff by
decree of the Holy Office of 14 June of the same year"–Catholic Encyclopedia,
Vol. VII, p. 722, art. "Index." Persecution raged more or less all over
Europe: "In 1545, the massacre of the Vaudois of Province was perpetrated ";
the 24th of August, 1572, the St. Bartholomew Massacre commenced, and continued
until between 70,000 and 100,000 innocent and unsuspecting persons
were murdered in cold blood for being Protestants. The massacre was
secretly planned by the leaders of the Roman church.
"Sully says 70,000 were slain, though other
writers estimate the victims at l00,000"–"The Huguenots," Samuel Smiles, pp.
71, 72. "Catherine de Medicis wrote in triumph to
Alva, to Philip II, and to the Pope .... Rome was thrown into a delirium of
joy at the news. The cannon were fired at St. Angelo; Gregory XIII and
his cardinals went in procession from sanctuary to sanctuary to give God
thanks for the massacre. The subject was ordered to be painted, and a
medal was struck, with the Pope's image on one side, and the destroying angel
on the. other immolating the Huguenots."–Id., 71, 72.
New Lines Of Attack
Finally, however, the papal church discovered
that her opposition to the Bible only betrayed the sad fact that,
instead of being the divinely instituted church of the Bible, she and the Scriptures
were deadly enemies, and that her open fight was furnishing the world with
the clearest evidences to justify the Reformation. Her relentless
persecution was making martyrs, but not loyal Catholics. She must halt her course
and forge new weapons against Protestantism, if she ever hoped to
win the battle. But what were these weapons to be? These we shall consider
in the next two chapters.
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