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ANTI-CATHOLIC HISTORY:
HOW IT IS WRITTEN1
By Hilaire Belloc
One of the chief obstacles opposed to the defence
of the Church in modern times is the supposed
authority, each in his particular department, of those
who attack the Church. This is especially true of
Academic Authority, that is, of Authority which
bases itself upon the supposed learning (and sincerity
in teaching) of the universities.
A man with a high official position in the uni
versities is naturally supposed to be well acquainted
with his science, whatever it is, and to be honest in
his exposition of its results. Only a very few men
can enjoy such positions, and to the mass of readers
their conclusions and affirmations seem almost
necessarily true. When, therefore, a Catholic is met
by the statement that Professor So-and-So has said
this or that in Natural Science or in Philosophy,
and especially in History, which plainly damages or
contradicts our Catholic truth, the Catholic layman
is inevitably disturbed. He can reply, “I am no
expert in these matters, but my Faith tells me that
the Church is right and therefore this man must be
wrong. ” But such a reply is of little service against
opponents who of course do not admit the premises,
1 An examination of Prof. Bury’s A History of Freedom of Thought,
adapted from an article appearing in the Dublin Review for Jan. 1914.
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and, what is more, it presupposes an attitude of mind
which cannot always be guaranteed. The Catholic
himself is disturbed in his own Faith by statements
made with full Academic Authority and apparently
destructive of that Faith.
This is more particularly the case to-day, because
matters requiring expert knowledge and long study
are being discussed in popular form, and affirmations
based upon such study are being put forward in cheap
books and pamphlets which circulate by the million.
Now it so happens that any particular zeal against
the Catholic Church nearly always leads the zealous
opponent thereof into bad errors of fact and state
ment, and this is more especially the case in the allimportant department of History. But the average
Catholic layman reading popular works upon history,
most of which in the English tongue suffer from an
anti-Catholic bias, is not equipped for the discovery
of their errors. He can but imagine that state
ments proceeding from men of known official position
at the universities are upon the whole true. It is
important that he should learn to mistrust such false
Authority, and to appreciate that not only is the
opponent of the Catholic Church commonly guiltv
of error in his historical statements, but that the
Academic Authority upon which he relies is unsound:
that the writing and teaching of history in our
Protestant universities consists largely in unverified
lepetition of current errors ; that even the plain
duty of accuracy m dates, names, and facts is consi era y neg.ected and all this because those very
academic writers are so certain of their official
position that they fear no external criticism. They
° °ne W11u be comPetent to expose them
save their own colleagues.
I shall here take one typical example of this
�How it is Written
3
kind of University work, and I think I shall be able
to show the reader of what stuff it is composed, how
very little reliance may be placed upon it, and what
a proper contempt he may entertain for its supposed
Authority.
The work which I shall take for my example
unites in a high degree the various characters of
such attacks upon our religion. It is called A
History of Freedom of Thought, and its author is
Professor Bury of Cambridge.
This History of Freedom of Thought is a little
book issued at a shilling. It is issued, therefore,
with the deliberate object of affecting a very wide
and popular circle of readers. It is a book definitely
intended for propaganda.
It forms part of a well-known series (The Home
University Library : Williams & Norgate) whose
whole intention consists in distributing the expert
results of Academic , study to the widest possible
public. It is a series which has done invaluable
work already in many departments of art and of
science.
The book is written by one who holds the highest
possible official position our universities can give.
Professor Bury is the head of the School of History
at the University of Cambridge. He is the official
representative of Academic History in that one of
our two great universities.
It is therefore no artificial choice which I am
making. It is an excellent and typical example of
the kind of thing we have to meet and expose
which I am taking for the purpose of this tract.
I shall first of all show how strongly opposed to
the Catholic Faith, in spirit and in diction, academic
work of this kind is. In so doing, I cannot avoid
perhaps shocking the piety of Catholic readers, for
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Anti-Catholic History :
some of the terms used by the author are frankly
shocking to our piety, and are intended to be so.
But I must quote the sentences in order to establish
my case. Next, I shall show how inaccurate and
unscholarly work of this kind can be.
The general thesis of the little book (it is less
than 250 small pages of large print) is as follows :
That reasonable inquiry upon the fate of the soul
and the nature of things was common to Pagan
antiquity : That there arose a maleficent institution,
which we know by the name of the Catholic Church,
and which institution was opposed to inquiry and
to the use of reason in these matters : That this
institution, gradually gaining ground in the so-called
‘ ‘ conversion ” of the Pagan world, extinguished the
use of reason, compelled men to a blind acceptance
of absurdities, and darkened the human mind, in
Christian Europe at least, for something like a
thousand years : That this disaster was alleviated
towards the end of the Middle Ages by some
stirrings of a renewed interest in truth : That
during the last four hundred years, as the Power of
the Church has been gradually weakened until it has
almost disappeared, the human mind has recovered
its native vigour and freedom, and has returned to
the healthy use of reason in its inquiry into all the
great and doubtful problems of philosophy.
There is nothing original about that thesis. It
is the commonplace of all those who oppose the
Catholic interpretation of history.
What I am concerned to show is, first, the strong
spirit of animosity in which that thesis is presented,
ne*t> the gross lack of accuracy and scholaruT Y
vitiates or destroys all the supposed
Authority ” of its exponent.
Here, then, are a few passages in which the anti
�How it is Written
5
Christian standpoint of this Academic Authority is
particularly emphasized apart from historical state
ments. I would beg the reader to note them, for
they are not unconnected with that violence in state
ment which leads such writers into their errors of
fact as well as of doctrine.
Upon page 25 we have the conception of the
creation of the Universe by Almighty God labelled
“ fantastic. ” Upon page 37 the difficulties of
accepting at once a God and the existence of
Evil are presented as insoluble. Upon page 40
we are requested to consider the Persons of the
Blessed Trinity “with some eminent angels and
saints discussing in a celestial smoke-room the
alarming growth of unbelief in England, and then,
by means of a telephonic apparatus, overhearing
a dispute between a Freethinker and a parson.”'
Upon page 50, to receive the “Kingdom of
Heaven” “like a little child” is to “prostrate your
intellect.” Upon page 52 the Christian Millennium
inaugurated by Constantine’s Edict is one in which
‘ ‘ reason was enchained and thought was enslaved. ”
Upon pages 63 and 64 the doctrines of Sin, Hell,
and the Last Judgment form “a solid rampart
against the advance of knowledge.” And upon a
preceding page the Faith defended by the Inquisi
tion is “nonsense.” Three pages later (67), we
again get the refrain that in the most Christian
centuries ‘ ‘ reason was enchained in the prison which
Christianity had built around the human mind.”
While upon page 72 the Faith becomes “a misty
veil woven of credulity and infantile naivete which
hung over men’s souls and protected them from
understanding either themselves or their relation to
the world.” At the opening of Chapter VI. upon
page 127, Christian theology is full of “ incon*
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Anti-Catholic History:
sistencies, contradictions and absurdities,” and upon
page 137 another Authority quoted (a French
Protestant by the way) “shows that the Christian
dogmas are essentially unreasonable. ” Four pages
further another person (this time a Cambridge don)
“examines the chief miracles related in the Gospels
and shows with great ability and shrewd common
sense that they are absurd.” Upon page 156 the
French Church was ‘ ‘ a poisonous sewer ” which the
Deists or Atheists of the eighteenth century were
right to attack. Upon page 160 Hume “ shows ”
that the arguments “adduced for a personal God
are untenable.” Kant, upon page 175, is lectured
for “ letting God in at a back-door,” and is told that
he has failed. Upon page 181 Darwin “drives a
nail into the coffin of Creation and the Fall of Man.”
Upon page 182 it is discovered that if any intelligence
had to do with the designing of the world it must
have been 1 ‘ an intelligence infinitely low. ” And
just before the end of the book, upon page 249, we
are re-assured that ‘ ‘ Reason now holds a much
stronger position than at the time when Christian
theology led her captive. ”
And so forth—we all know the kind of thing.
The eighteenth century was full of it, and much of
it survives in our own day, especially with those of
an older generation who are still among us. It is
an inevitable accompaniment, of course, to such
sentences that we have the Christian scheme described
as “mythology”; that we hear of the “delusive
conviction of our Lord and His Apostles as to the
approaching end of the world; that the Blessed
Sacrament is “ a savage rite of eating a dead god ”
(page 189). Conclusions of this kind and adjectives
suitable to them abound in the little work, and I
really need waste no more space in setting forth the
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7
first point which I have promised to lay before my
readers.
It will be admitted without any further labouring
of the point that the Academic Authority I am deal
ing with is in opposition. He is a clear example
of such Authority in action against the Catholic
Church.
Well, let us next examine how far that Authority
is genuine ; in other words, how far this Academic
Authority is an Authority at all.
Authority in this connection obviously depends
upon a presumption of scholarship. That is, the
Academic personage is presumed from his very
position to have had special opportunities for in
formation, to have accumulated a great number of
facts and conclusions inaccessible to the ordinary
man from lack of leisure and training, and to be
putting forward these facts and conclusions with
accuracy. He has no other source of Authority.
He does not pretend to revelation or to special
inspiration. If it can be shown that he is not
writing good history but bad history, then his pre
sumed Authority disappears, and his opposition to
the Church is of no more weight than that of any
other ill-informed or inaccurate man.
Good history means accurate history, and accuracy
in historical writings is of three kinds.
First, and least important perhaps, is the accuracy
that can be tested by established books of reference,
and more certainly by a comparison of the historian’s
work with the documents upon which it is admittedly
founded ; accuracy in dates given, in the exact
wording of quotations, and in all matters of that
kind.
Errors in these may be mere slips of the pen or
mere carelessness in proof reading, or, what is graver,
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Anti-Catholic History:
a lapse of memory. Even so, they vitiate history
and mislead the reader.
But they may also be something more. These
errors may, if they occur in sufficient number, or
are of their nature presumably due to ignorance and
not to neglect, or are made upon matters sufficiently
grave or presumed to be of common knowledge to all
expert historians, be proof of a fundamental lack of
scholarship. They may show a book to be not only
slipshod, but written without any sufficient prepara
tion or knowledge.
In other words, we can cite such errors as a proof
of thoroughly bad history according to—
(tz) the number of such errors.
If I write a short account of Queen Victoria’s;
reign with one hundred dates in it, and fifty of those
dates are wrong, that is not mere carelessness. It
is ignorance, and it is proof of my incapacity to write
on the subject at all.
(Q The inherent probability of error.
For instance, if I find a man saying that Queen
Victoria came to the throne in 1873, it
obviously
a printer’s error for 1837’; but if I find him saying
that war broke out between France and Germany
in April 1869, that is inexcusable. No man can write
July so that it looks like April, or 1869 so that it
looks like 1870, and it is exceedingly unlikely that
he would write either the month or the year wrong
by a mere slip of the pen. There is no subcon
scious action to account for such a mistake, and one
can only put it down to ignorance.
Q) The grossness of the error.
One may excuse a man for not looking up some
tiny point, or for having looked it up in some in
accurate book of reference ; but there are certain
great fixed dates in history which everybody ought
�How it is Written
9
to know, certain main facts and names with which
everybody should be acquainted, and when an
historian goes hopelessly wrong on those, one has a
right to give a loud cry. As, for instance, if a man
mentioning the Boer War shows, even by a single
allusion, that he thought the Boers were Englishspeaking, or black. Or again, if one writing on
the Bible should show by a chance phrase that he
thought it to be all by one hand.
Second, and of greater importance in the matter
■of accuracy and therefore of good history, is accuracy
in proportion, that is in the relation of one state
ment to another.
Thus, if an historian describing the Boer War
•omits or makes little of the presence of a large
element in the Cape sympathetic with the Boers, or
tells us nothing of the widespread voluntary enlist
ment in England at the beginning of the struggle,
or does not emphasize the loose formation and
peculiar method of fighting of the enemy, he is,
whether from bias or from ignorance, writing bad
history.
Every one of the facts stated may be
perfectly accurate, and yet the truth may be hidden,
or even reversed, in the process of telling. This
kind of bad history is often to be discovered in
the way in which an historian will pervert the
meaning of a document by not mentioning or by
not sufficiently emphasizing some one of its provi
sions. For instance, one might say of the great
Reform Bill of 1832 that it destroyed the popular
franchise in many towns, and was for long opposed
by that great and typically national man, the Duke
of Wellington. But to say only those two things
about it would be to mislead the reader altogether,
for the Duke of Wellington’s opposition was personal,
and later was withdrawn ; and while popular fran-
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Anti-Catholic History:
chise was destroyed in some towns, the franchise as a
whole was intended to be, and was, both more widely
extended and based upon a more popular principle
than it had been, being specially designed to include
the new great towns of industry which had hitherto
been excluded. Or again, a man might quote in
great detail Mr. Gladstone’s speeches and letters
against Home Rule, casually adding at the end of
his description, “later he greatly modified these
views.” Such an arrangement and proportion would
be a thorough perversion of history.
Errors of this kind, errors in proportion and
emphasis, proceed sometimes from bias ; sometimes
from not having read the original documents in
their entirety ; and sometimes from both. But it
will generally be conceded that, when they occur
frequently and affect the whole course of a narra
tion, they destroy the historical authority of the
narrator.
Third, and most important of all, is that kind of
accuracy which may be called ‘ ‘ accuracy in the
spirit of the narration,” that is accuracy as to the
general atmosphere of an event.
This kind of accuracy is, of course, the real test
of good history beyond all others. But it is much
the most difficult both to define and to criticise, and
where it is lacking one must exercise great care in
choosing one’s examples to show that it is lacking,
for it is not a process available to the ordinary
reader. The judgement can only be passed by one
who has covered the same field of historical reading
as has the writer whom he is examining.
Thus we cannot call an historian a bad historian
of the Battle of Waterloo simply because he shows
a great prejudice against the political aims of the
allies and a great sympathy for the political aims
�How it is Written
11
of Napoleon. But if his sympathies lead him to
present the resistance of the British squares in
Wellington’s line to the French Cavalry charges ashalf-hearted and ill-disciplined, he is a bad historian.
In order to write such bad history, it is not necessary
that he should use false language at all or set down
facts which are contrary to the truth. He has but
to modify his adjectives somewhat, or even to ascribe,
without himself vouching for it, certain motives and
a certain mental attitude in his characters, to produce
the desired effect, or to quote adverse opinion without
quoting opinion in favour of the party he is attacking.
Now, if we take these three kinds of inaccuracy
in their order and judge by them the historical value
of Professor Bury’s little book, we shall, I think, be
surprised at the result.
To take the first kind of inaccuracy : inaccuracy
in date and fact and quotation. I have said that the
numbers, the inherent probability, and the grossness
of error, are the three matters which in this connection
we are chiefly concerned with, and I think my
readers will agree, when I have run through certain
examples of this kind of thing in Professor Bury’s
book, that they are not excusable upon any plea of
mere fatigue or over-rapid work. There are too
many of them, and many of them are too serious,
for such a plea to hold.
Remember that I am quoting but a portion of
these howlers, and only such as my own limited
historical learning allows me to discover at a first
reading. Remember, further, that I am taking them
from no more than the first two hundred pages of the
book, which bring us up to modern times. Those
pages are short pages. The little essay is not a book
of reference crammed with facts ; it is a piece of pro
paganda in which the facts stated are comparatively
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Anti-Catholic History:
few, and few also the names referred to (for instance,
there is no mention of Abelard). Yet even upon
so small a scale, and under such partial conditions of
examination, thenumber of positive errors is startling.
frWe have upon page 55 Spain given as the place
of Priscillian’s execution ; it should, of course, be
Treves.
Upon page 56 Simon de Montfort the elder is
confused with his own son and called ‘f the English
man. ”
We have Lyons instead of Vienne given as the
place of Servetus’s imprisonment by the Inquisition
before he got away to Geneva.
Legate and Whiteman, the English dissenters who
were burned by the Anglicans in 1612, are set down
as having suffered in 1611.
The Decree of the Holy Office in the matter of
Galileo is put down to the month of February ; it
was given, as a fact, in March.
The statute De Hceretico Comburendo (p. 59) is
put down to 1400 ; it should be 1401.
The statute of 1677 (same page) is put down to
1676—-a year in which Parliament did not even
meet!
Jeremy Taylor s Liberty of Prophesying is dated
one year wrong.
Hume s Dialogues on Natural Religion were not
published in 1776 J there is an error of three years.
Collins, who died in 1729, is said to have “pub
lished” his Discourse in 1733 (page 141).
. Shaftesbury’s Inquiry appeared first, we are told,
m 1699. As a fact, we first find it printed in 1711.
Voltaire, we are told on p. 153, did not begin
ms campaign against Christianity until after the
middle of the eighteenth century. As a fact, the
first work of Voltaire’s to be publicly burnt for
�How zt is Written
13
attacking the Faith was so burnt in 1734- And so
forth. . . .
One might go on indefinitely quoting errors of
this kind, striking rather for their number in such
few pages than for their individual importance, and
it is conceivable that a defence might be put up for
each : in the one case it is a printer’s error; in
another a slip of the pen ; in a third a confusion
between old style and new style—though that is
hardly excusable. But with all the charity imagin
able, and with the best will in the world to excuse
the book as merely grossly careless, one cannot
explain away by mere carelessness such enormities
as a mistake of twenty years in the death of St.Augustine (page 55); a mistake of nine years
(p. 107) in so well-known and fundamental a date
as that of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
Perhaps the most amazing of this cataract of errors
is the blunder about Robespierre upon page 113.
The main dates of the French Revolution are
matters like the dates of the Battle of Hastings or
the Battle of Waterloo. Everyone is supposed to
know them who touches history at all, even in an
elementary fashion. Robespierre’s execution marks
the end of the Terror and the end of all the first
great active phase of the French Revolution. It
took place at the end of July 1794, and the prepara
tion and the celebration of the feast of the Supreme
Being was in the month before. To put it down to
April 1795 (as is done on this page 113) cannot be
a mere slip, for the month is there to prove it. A
man cannot write April for May or June, and in
April 1795 Robespierre had been dead for nearly
nine months.
I have said enough in this connection to show,
without further examination of other errors of the
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sort, that the book and its authority can be destroyed
on this score alone. But there is an even stronger
case when, we turn to the second type of error,
which I have called of graver importance, and in
which we can show that Professor Bury either quotes
documents that he has not read, or, having read
them, deliberately misinterprets them by omission
and by a lack of proportion in his statement
Personally, I incline to think that the very
numerous errors in this category are due to that
common fault in our universities, the quoting of
some modern statement about an original document
which the writer will not be at the pains of look
ing up for himself.
Turn, for instance, to the statement upon page
57, that “The Inquisition was founded by Pope
Gregory IX. about A.D. 1233.” There is a sentence
absolutely typical of the way in which this book
has been written. It was not “ about ” some vague
period or other, it was precisely in the year 1231,
that Gregory IX. incorporated with ecclesiastical
law the Imperial rescripts of eleven and seven years
earlier. It is in that year that you get the phrase
“ Inquisitores ab ecclesia,” etc. It is in the next
year, 1232, that you find a Dominican with the title
of Inquisitor. All that you get for the year 1233
is that it was the date when the system was
established in France.
Turn next to a typical statement on p. 59. It is
as follows —
That the Statute for the Punishment of Heretics
by burning, which was passed under Henry IV.,
was repealed (in) 1533 ; revived under Mary, and
finally repealed under Charles II.
Now see what a brief statement of this sort made
in a popular little book of history for general con-
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15
sumption is intended to convey ! It is intended to
convey that a cruel punishment was made law
during the Catholic Middle Ages ; that it ceased to
be law coincidently with the first efforts of Henry
VIII. against Rome, and with the year that was
the year of definite breach with the Papacy. That
when a Catholic sovereign came back in the person
of Mary Tudor, this cruel punishment was revived
and acted upon ; that finally, much later, England
having become wholly Protestant and the Civil Wars
having produced their effect, it was dropped.
Now the interesting point about this statement is,
that though, as I have said, it contains material
errors, the suggestion of historical falsehood is not
dependent upon those errors. It is perfectly true
that the old Statute was repealed under Henry VIII.
just at the moment when he was breaking from
Rome ; but what Professor Bury happens to leave
out is the fact that coincidently with the repeal of the
old Statute a new Statute (25 H. VIII. cap. 14) was
passed which carefully re-erected the punishment of
burning, and preserved it for thefuture.
It may not be common knowledge with the
popular audience to which Professor Bury addressed
himself, but it is common knowledge to the average
historical student, that heretics were burnt for their
heresy steadily during the Protestant establishment :
Butcher and Parre under Edward VI. ; Wielmacker
and Woort and Hammond and others under Eliza
beth. It is further common knowledge that many
were condemned to be burnt who saved themselves
by recanting, or were saved by deportation, or in
some other fashion. The point is that a Statute
for burning heretics was very vigorously alive, though
it was a renewed Statute and not the original Statute
of Henry IV. Professor Bury’s statement, there-
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fore, is as though one were to say of the English
Poor Law : “ Relief was provided for indigent people
by Statute out of the rates under Queen Elizabeth.
But the Statute was repealed in the first part of the
19th century. ” The actual statements would be true,
but they would convey the exact opposite of the truth.
Upon page 65 we have an almost perfect example
of this fashion in treating documents. Here are the
words: “Chemistry (alchemy) was considered a
diabolical art, and in 1317 was condemned by the
Pope. ”
There is exactly the kind of thing repeated over
and over again by men who do not take the trouble
to look up the original documents. It is utterly
inaccurate and fundamentally bad history, and one
can be perfectly certain that Professor Bury has
never so much as glanced at the original text. He
might have discovered it in the second volume of
the body of Canon law, the Lyons edition of 1779.
It is a decretal issued to protect the public from
fraud, and in particular from the fraud practised by
those who pretended to make gold and silver out of
baser metals. The decretal mentions the habit of
such tricksters as stamped with the hall mark of gold
and silver base metal resembling gold and silver,
which base metal they passed off upon the ignorant,
professing to have manufactured them in their
furnaces. The Pope condemns those who have
cheated in this fashion, not to many years penal
servitude (as a modern Court condemned the other
day a Frenchman who had similarly pretended that
he could make large diamonds), but to the paying
into his treasury of a fine in genuine gold and silver
equivalent to the amount of fraudulent metal they
had passed off on poor and ignorant people. There
is not a word about alchemy as an art being con-
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demned, let alone chemistry or any other form of
research.
Now in this case 1 am perfectly certain that
Professor Bury was acting in good faith, that is,
repeating what he had read in other books without
examination and without verifying his references.
The worse historian he !
Here is yet another example of exactly the same
kind of thing. We are told upon page 91 that
“Alexander the Sixth inaugurated censorship of
the Press by his Bull of the year 1501.”
Alexander VI. did nothing of the kind, as Pro
fessor Bury would have known if he had looked up his
original sources as an historian should. Alexander’s
Bull is a copy, word for word, of Innocent VIII.’s
Bull of four years before, which in its turn was based
upon action taken in the University of Cologne
eight years earlier. Further, Alexander’s Bull only
applied to certain German bishoprics. The first
universal censorship came fourteen years later, in •
1515. That one little statement, then, covering
but a line of type, contains a whole nest of in
accuracies, and of inaccuracies due to the fact that
our historian does not know his materials.
You have the same sort of mistake upon page 94.
The catechism of the Socinians is there ascribed to
the influence of Fausto himself. It is just the kind
of thing that looks as though it should be true ;
only, unfortunately, Fausto did not come into the
movement until after the catechism had appeared.
Two pages later on you have another typical
statement : that Charter of Charles II. given to
Rhode Island in 1663 is mentioned as confirming
the existing constitution of the place and securing to
all citizens professing Christianity a full enjoyment
of political rights. What really happened was that
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Charles II. in sending his charter to Rhode Island
repeated his own decision in favour of universal
toleration. But the colonists were concerned with
nothing save the insignificant quarrels of the in
numerable Protestant sects ; the King ultimately left
it to the Assembly of Rhode Island to decide what
it would do, and when that body issued its rules
(printed in 1719) they excluded Catholics.
It is clear that in all these examples, which I
have taken at random up and down the book, the
writer is doing what we so continually find upon the
part of academic authorities, particularly when they
are indulging in an attack upon the Catholic Church—
he is repeating what some other man of the same
kind has said before him, and that other man is
repeating something that was said before him. He
has not been at the pains of consulting original
authorities ; and the result is valueless and in
accurate history, always wrong and sometimes the
exact opposite of the truth.
When we come to the third and gravest kind of
bad history, that in which the general atmosphere is
falsified, we have, as I have said, a much harder
task than in the case of errors in dates and facts, or
of errors due to omission or ignorance of documents.
Nevertheless, the point is of such importance that
it must be dealt with, and I think it will be found
possible to show by fairly definite examples how
thoroughly the thing he is attempting to describe
has been misunderstood by the writer : how lacking
he is in the preparation necessary to a grasp of his
subject.
Let me take for my first example in this general
matter of “ atmosphere ” Professor Bury’s description
of the mediaeval attitude towards the marvellous,
the miraculous, and evidence in general.
�How it is Written
He appears to be persuaded that men in those
times and places where the Catholic Faith was
supreme had lost all sense of the value of evidence
and of the nature of reason. He seems to have
some vague confused picture in his mind of a
besotted society in which men would believe pretty
well anything they were told, and in which no
inquiry could be made into the processes of the
mind or the nature of witness and of truth.
Well, to begin with, if Professor Bury had done
what I suppose no don at our universities ever does,
that is, had read a few lines of St. Thomas in the
original, he would have found the whole argument
against miracles, the whole of the modern feeling
which he himself shares, set out with perfect
lucidity and with extraordinary terseness in the
sixth article of the 105th question of the Summa.
It is St. Thomas’s habit always to put as fully as
possible his opponent’s case before he deals with it,
and that in itself is a mediaeval habit in argument
which moderns have forgotten and would do well
to copy.
But quite apart from his ignorance of this great
text-book of the Middle Ages, the fixed idea that
mediaeval men in general were careless of philosophy
is an astonishing piece of ignorance in which our
author is evidently sunk.
For instance, almost at the outset of his little
effort (on p. 16) we are told that a man in the
Middle Ages hearing of the existence of a city
called Constantinople, and hearing also that comets
were portents signifying divine wrath, would not
have been able to distinguish the nature of the
evidence in the two cases ! Now to say that is not
so much to misunderstand the Middle Ages as to
state something wildly and ridiculously false with
�20
Anti-Catholic History:
regard to them. If ever there was a time which
pushed to excess the habit of definition and of clear
deductive thinking, the establishment of intellectual
categories and the difference between different orders
of ideas, that time was without the faintest doubt
the time between the great awakening of the twelfth
century and the moral shipwreck of the sixteenth.
You are perfectly free to say that this habit of
deductive reasoning was pushed to extremes in the.
Middle Ages: that men wasted their time upon
metaphysical vanities when they should have been
observing phenomena. That is what a good his
torian to whom the Middle Ages were antipathetic
would advance. He would thus show at once that
he knew what the Middle Ages were, and that he
disapproved of them. But to say that the men of
the Middle Ages could not distinguish between
different kinds of intellectual authority, that they
did not concern themselves with exact categories of
thought, is exactly as though you were to say that
Liverpool and Manchester to-day did not concern
themselves with machinery or the production of
material wealth. It is a false statement and bad
history. That misstatement of the whole phase of
our European past is perpetually cropping up in the
book. I have only given one example of it ; 1
might have given twenty.
It is in the same way bad general history to talk
of “the profound conviction” that those who did
not believe in the doctrines of the Church (page 52)
were damned eternally,” and to continue (page 53)
that ‘‘according to the humane doctrine of the
Christians, infants who died unbaptized passed the
rest of time in creeping on the floor of Hell. ”
It is bad history to write that, exactly as it would
be bad history to say “The English Army in 1913
�How it is Written
21
ought to have been stronger ; but then Englishmen
were fools enough to believe that one jolly English
man was worth ten foreigners.” In both cases you
are saying something for which you could easily
quote popular or exaggerated contemporary matter,
and in both cases you are saying something which
shows you ignorant of your historical “ atmosphere.”
The eminent men who preside at the War Office or
over our Foreign Affairs, those who decide, rightly
or wrongly, upon the balance of international forces
known to them and with the whole European situa
tion before them, what the military strength of
Great Britain shall be, these are our authority, and
their decision is the criterion of such things.. They
do not think or say “ one jolly Englishman is worth
ten furriners. ” Their calculation of military ex
penditure is not established upon that basis. Mean
while, it may be true that an exaggeration of the
national strength or an excessive credulity in the
national good fortune may warp the judgement even
of those eminent men. Anyone desiring to prove
the truth of such bad history could quote hundreds
of songs and speeches from the Tub in support of his
contention. He could also probably quote many an
erroneous statement proceeding from men in really
high position. None the less his statement would
be bad history.
It is precisely the same with regard to the Christian
doctrine of eternal damnation, and particularly with
regard to that most difficult of all discussions, the
relation between Faith and Will. But the sentence,
as Professor Bury puts it, is the opposite of the
truth. The ultimate authority of the Church has
never condemned all the unbaptized to eternal
damnation. To say so is simply thoroughly bad
history, and there is an end of it.
�22
A nit-Catholic History:
I will give a third example. The enormous efforts
culminating in a great war directed against the
Albigensians had, it may be presumed, some great
historical cause. On page 56 we are told what this
cause was: “The Church got far too little money
out of this anti-clerical population. ” There is history
for you !
That the loss of revenue excited a strong material
interest is true enough, but to put it forward as the
main cause of the Albigensian War is childish. It
is as though some future historian, disliking the
Manchester School of Economics, were to describe
its intellectual triumph in the middle of the nineteenth
century in England by saying that John Stuart Mill
and Cobden, as well as Bright and Peel, were cun
ningly calculating the profits they could extort from
the labouring poor. One does hear fantastic ex
aggerations or rather wild distortion of this kind on
the lips of sincere but incapable fanatics ; but to
have them set down in what purports to be sober
history, and from the pen of an historian, would be
to render that history worthless and its author
ridiculous.
I will give before concluding yet another instance
of this major error of “atmosphere” which runs
through the whole book. For the purpose of this
last illustration let me choose the few lines upon
St. Thomas upon page 69.
Every historian knows, or should know, what
the place of St. Thomas is in history. You have
in him one of the very few men who have acted as
the tutors of the human race. The more you differ
from or dislike the man or his doctrines, the more is
it your business as an historian to appreciate his
sea e , or history, like all other forms of present
ment, is a matter of proportion. St. Thomas gave
�How it is Written
23
at once a summary, an expression, and a creative
effort to all that is meant by the Christian intelli
gence, and it is plain historical sense to speak of
him as one speaks of Aristotle, of St. Augustine,
or of Bacon ; just as it is plain common sense to
call Russia or the German Empire a great power,
whether one likes or dislikes their people or govern
ments. It is mere bad history to say, as is here
said upon page 69, that St. Thomas “constructed
an ingenious” system of philosophy, and that “ the
Treatise of Thomas is more calculated to unsettle a
believing mind than to quiet the scruples of a
doubter. ”
It is not bad history because St. Thomas was
not ingenious ; it is net bad history because the
gigantic rational force of St. Thomas is incapable
of suggesting doubts ; on the contrary, St. Thomas
must, or may, like all powerful thinkers, have pro
duced reactions against his own conclusions, and
must and may, like all creative minds, have told
lesser men as much of what they should not have as
of what they should. No, to say that St. Thomas
constructed an ingenious system ” is bad history
because it is ludicrously inadequate.
It is like
describing Julius Caesar as a bald-headed man who
travelled and died prematurely ; or Shakespeare as an
English actor who flourished in the reign of James I.
So much, then, for examples of the false historical
atmosphere running throughout this little essay.
It reaches its culmination, perhaps, in the astound
ing remark that (page 90) the retention of Galileo’s
works upon the Index until 1835 was, during the
intervening centuries, “fatal to the study of natural
science in Italy”; from which one might suppose that
Professor Bury had never heard of Torricelli, let us
say, of Volta, or of Galvani !
�24
A nti- Catholic H1story
What are we to say in conclusion upon a book of
this kind? 1 think no more than to repeat the
opinion I set out at the beginning of these few
pages : the supposed Academic Authority of those
who attack the Catholic Church, as Professor Bury
has attacked it, is usually valueless, because it is
usually inaccurate and bad history. This book
shows in a particularly clear light the kind . of in
accurate and bad history which our universities are
responsible for, and it is not an unfair example of
that sort of pompous self-sufficiency in the modern
academic onslaught upon the Church, which it is the
business of every Catholic to mistrust, and I think
of every sound historical critic to ridicule. If I may
presume to counsel those who cannot make any
special study of history, I would earnestly beg them
to challenge the authority of any historical state
ment they hear which seems to conflict with their
common sense or their Faith, and at their leisure to
examine the original authorities upon which it is
based, and which are now for the most part available
to all.
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.
n.—June 1914.
�
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Anti-Catholic history: how it is written
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Belloc, Hilaire [1870-1953]
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Catholic Church-Doctrinal and Controversial Works
J.B. Bury
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Text
ROME
AND
THE
BIBLE.'
BY THE REV. T. DONNELLY, S.J.
Introduction.
A pamphlet entitled The Claims of Rome, by Samuel
Smith, M.P., is being largely circulated in this our city
of Liverpool, as well as in his own constituency in
North Wales. On reading this pamphlet, we began to
realize more vividly than hitherto how difficult it is to
kill the great Protestant Tradition. Though we have
much to say, it is so hard to get a hearing in order to
refute the Protestant Tradition. Here we have a man
who has uplifted his voice in behalf of the oppressed
and the downtrodden, a man who has a conscience
which he is not afraid or ashamed to obey, a man who
deserves credit for his manly denouncement of the
religious indifferentism of the day, a man who has
most generously opened his purse in behalf of the
suffering, a man whose well-known philanthropy carried
him triumphantly into Parliament in 1882, suddenly
coming forth and flinging down in the arena of political
strife, and amidst a people already bitterly prejudiced
against the Catholic Church, a number of statements and
accusations that cannot be stigmatized by a milder name
than calumnies.
We do not accuse Mr. Samuel Smith of wilfully,
deliberately and with eyes wide open uttering what he
1 The substance of Sermons preached at St. Francis Xavier’s,
Liverpool, January, 1897.
I
�2
Rome and the Bible.
knew to be false. His pamphlet clearly shows that he,
not the Catholics, has a profound ignorance of the
historical facts mentioned in the pamphlet. We were
not surprised at this when we turned to the Appendix
and saw the names of authorities such as Mr. Charles
Hastings Collette, the Monthly Letter of the Protestant
Alliance, and Janus. That he, and those who think with
him, may know more clearly the value of the support upon
which he is resting, may we venture to ask him and them
to read a penny pamphlet by the Rev. Sydney F. Smith
on Mr. Collette as a Historian, published by the Catholic
Truth Society. In this pamphlet of sixteen pages Mr.
Collette is shown to be guilty of thirty-one deviations
from truth. A similar pamphlet by Mr. F. W. Lewis, on
Mr. Collette as a Controversialist, exposes the methods
of the Protestant Alliance. As to Miss Ellen Golding,
Mr. Smith apparently does not know that she has
disappeared from Protestant platforms ; if he wishes to
read a full account of her, he will find it in Father
Smith’s pamphlet on Ellen Golding, the Rescued Nun
(C.T.S., id.). These three pamphlets throw much light
upon the methods of certain Protestant agitators, as well
as on the tortuous ways of the Protestant Alliance.
The Church and the Bible.
On the present occasion I propose to deal only with
that part of Mr. Samuel Smith’s pamphlet which deals
with the attitude of the Catholic Church towards the
Bible.
Two assertions stand out prominently in this portion
of the onslaught made by Mr. Samuel Smith upon the
Roman Church and its Supreme Head, the Pope.
First, “ Wherever Rome has had undisputed sway, she
has kept the Bible from the laity.” In proof of this
statement we are told how difficult it was for friends of
Mr. Smith to smuggle Bibles into Rome; how, on the
seizure of Rome by the Italians, the first wheel carriage
contained a consignment of Bibles (presumably the first
ever seen in Rome); how Lasserre’s French translation
of the Gospels, after Papal approbation, was placed upon
�Rome and the Bible.
3
the Index and its sale prohibited; and how finally
Pius IX. admonished the bishops to labour that the
faithful may fly'with horror from this poisonous reading.
Second, “ Nothing is more certain than that in every
country where Rome is supreme the circulation of the
Scriptures is forbidden.” In proof of this we are
reminded of what took place not many years ago in
Italy, Spain, and Austriaj we are referred in the Appen
dix to the Fourth Rule of the Index; and we are told
the opinions of Cardinals Bellarmine, Wiseman, &c.
In answer to the first statement, “ that wherever Rome
has had undisputed sway she has kept the Bible from
the laity,” it must be remembered that Rome’s eccle
siastical power over Western Christendom at least was
recognized up to the sixteenth century. Men might
argue and quarrel as to who was the lawful Pope during
the Great Schism; but the great central fact stands out
all the more prominently because of the Schism, that
the Pope was the chief ecclesiastical ruler of Christen
dom. It was not until a.d. 1229 that the first authori
tative restriction on Bible reading was passed by a
Council held at Toulouse to receive the submission of
Count Raymond, to suppress the growing heresy and
prevent its further spread. Inasmuch as these heretics,
who revolted against all authority, mutilated the Bible in
order to propagate their errors, the Council of Toulouse
forbade the possession by laymen of the Sacred Books,
especially in the vernacular.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century the Lollard
cry in England was, “ An open Bible for all! ” meaning
by an open Bible the incorrect and mischievous trans
lation attributed to Wyclif, in which text and notes alike
were made the instruments of an attack on all lawful
authority. Thus we find that it was the perversion
of Holy Scripture which rendered the prohibition of
unauthorized translations of Holy Scripture absolutely
necessary. Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury,
in the Council of Oxford, 1406, after noticing the diffi
culties and dangers of translating the Word of God,
ordained that no one should on his own authority
�4
Rome and the Bible.
translate into English any portion of Holy Scripture
by way of book, or pamphlet, or treatise; nor should
any such book, pamphlet, or treatise, lately composed in
the time of John Wyclif, or since, or which shall here
after be composed, be read in whole or in part, publicly
or in private, under pain of the greater excommunication,
until such translation be approved by the Diocesan or
by a Provincial Council. In spite of enactments the
evil spread, and^when England broke off from union
with Rome tly^ Bible was seized upon as the standard
of revolt.
The right of private judgment having been proclaimed,
text after text was torn from its context and used to
prove the truth of any particular doctrine that made an
impression on the reader. Calvinists and Lutherans,
Presbyterians and Anabaptists, as well as the Anglicans,
found in the pages of Holy Scripture a rich mine from
which to dig any fanciful doctrine. In fact, to-day as in
the past, no two Protestants agree as to the meaning of
the Bible.
Dreading evils such as these, the Catholic Church
judged it necessary at certain times, when men’s minds
were disturbed by erroneous teaching, to safeguard the
Word of God, ever held by her in the utmost reverence,
with various restrictions.
The Bible before Luther.
There used to be a story common amongst Protestants
that Luther discovered the Latin Bible about 1507 ; that
he was the first to translate it into German; that other
“ reformers ” followed his example and made the first
translations of the Bible into the languages of their
countries, and that then for the first time the people
came to know the Bible, for up to that date the Catholic
Church had kept the Bible away from them—or, in
other words, “wherever Rome has had undisputed sway
she has kept the Bible from the laity.” All this is
untrue. The Church Times, July 26, 1878, says: “This
catalogue of Bibles [in the Caxton Exhibition at South
Kensington, 1877] will be very useful for one thing, at
�Rome and the Bible.
5
any rate, as disproving the popular lie about Luther
finding the Bible for the first time at Erfurt about 1507.
Not only are there very many editions of the Latin
Vulgate (z.e., the Bible in Latin, the very thing Luther
is said to have discovered), but there are actually nine
German editions of the Bible in the Caxton Exhibition
earlier than 1483, the year of Luther’s birth, and at least
three more before the end of the century.”
Let us now see what Bibles the Catholic Church had
printed before any Protestant Bibles appeared.
We
ought to remember that in those days most who could
read read Latin, and even preferred a Latin Bible to one
in their own language. Before Luther’s pretended dis
covery the Catholic Church had printed over a hundred
editions of the Latin Bible, each containing, according
to Janssen, one thousand copies, although the art of
printing with movable types dated only from 1441. In
German there were twenty-seven editions before Luther’s
Bible appeared. In Italian there were over forty editions
of the Bible before the first Protestant edition appeared.
There were two in Spain by 1515, one with the express
permission of the Spanish Inquisition. In French there
were eighteen editions by 1547, the first Protestant
version appearing in 1535.
Although no Catholic
version of the English Bible appeared in print until
some time after the publication of such versions in
other countries, it is clear from the testimony of Sir
Thomas More, quoted in the next paragraph, that no
prohibition of vernacular versions had been issued by
the ecclesiastical authorities in this country, and that
many manuscript copies of the same had been freely
circulated subsequent to, as well as long before, the time
of WyclifL>/
The Bible in the Middle Ages.
?7As many Protestant writers and lecturers are repeatedly
asserting that the earlier Bible of Wyclif was prohibited
by the Church authorities in England simply on account
of their general hostility to the Word of God in the
vernacular, it may be well to quote the remarks of a
�6
Rome and the Bible.
Protestant writer, the Rev. E. Cutts, D.D., in a work
already quoted: “ There is a good deal of popular
misapprehension,” says he, “about the way in which
the Bible was regarded in the Middle Ages. Some
people think that it was very little read, even by the
clergy; whereas the fact is that the sermons of the
mediaeval preachers are more full of Scriptural quotations
and allusions than any sermons in these days; and the
writers on other subjects are so full of Scriptural allusion
that it is evident their minds were saturated with
Scriptural diction. . . . Another common error is that
the clergy were unwilling that the laity should read the
Bible for themselves, and carefully kept it in an unknown
tongue that the people might not be able to read it.
The truth is that most people who could read at all
could read Latin, and would certainly prefer to read the
authorized Vulgate to any vernacular version. But it is
also true that translations into the vernacular were
made. ... We have the authority of Sir Thomas More
for saying that ‘ the whole Bible was, long before Wyclif’s
days, by virtuous and well-learned men translated into
the English tongue, and by good and godly people with
devotion and soberness well and reverently read.’ . . .
Again, on another occasion he says : ‘ The clergy keep
no Bibles from the laity but such translations as be
either not yet approved for good or such as be already
reproved for naught (bad), as Wyclif’s was. For as for
old ones that were before Wyclif’s days, they remain
lawful, and be in some folk’s hands.’ ” 1 Surely such
testimony as this, coming from the pen of one who for
his transcendent ability was raised to the post of Lord
Chancellor of England, ought to convince Mr. Samuel
Smith of the mistake he has made in asserting that
“Wherever Rome has had undisputed sway she has
kept the Bible from the laity.”
I purposely quote non-Catholic writers in refutation of
this astounding statement, as they are less liable to be
suspected of partiality for Roman Catholic doctrine and
practices. Dean Hook 2 says: “ It was not from hostility
1 Turning Points of English Church History, pp. 200-201.
• Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. iii. p. 83.
�Rome and the Bible.
7
to a translated Bible, considered abstractedly, that the
conduct of Wyclif in translating it was condemned.
Long before his time there had been translators of
Holy Writ. There is no reason to suppose that any
objection would have been offered to the circulation of
the Bible if the object of the translator had only been
the edification and sanctification of the reader. It was
not till the designs of the Lollards were discovered that
Wyclif’s version was proscribed.” Then, on p. 94, he
proceeds: “When we speak of them (the Lollards) as
martyrs, we ought to regard them as political martyrs
rather than religious. They made religion their plea in
order to swell the number of the discontented; but their
actions tended to a revolution in the State as well as in
the Church. . . . Both parties regarded their principles
as subversive of all order, in things temporal as well as
in things spiritual.”
Writing in the Academy of
August 7, 1886, Mr. Karl Pearson says: “ The
Catholic Church has quite enough to answer for . . ,
but in the fifteenth century it certainly did not hold bach
the Bible from the folk; and it gave them in the
vernacular a long series of devotional works which for
language and religious sentiment have never been
surpassed. Indeed, we are inclined to think it made a
mistake in allowing the masses such ready access to the
Bible. It ought to have recognized the Bible once for
all as a work absolutely unintelligible without a long
course of historical study; and so far as it was supposed
to be inspired, very dangerous in the hands of the
ignorant.” The Quarterly Review, October, 1879, says :
“The notion that people in the Middle Ages did not
read their Bibles is probably exploded, except among the
more ignorant of controversialists. ... The notion is
not simply a mistake ... it is one of the most ludicrous
and grotesque blunders.”
The Monks and the Sacred Scriptures.
We know, too, that it was the chief occupation of the
monks to study the Bible and multiply copies of it.
Thousands of copies must have been made in England
�8
Rome and the Bible.
alone before the invention of printing, and these naturally
fell into the hands of those who could read, like the
clergy, the nuns, and, as we know from Sir Thomas
More,, the learned laity. But as the greater number of
the laity could not read, how were they taught the Bible?
They were taught by the clergy and the monks, who
used as means of instruction paintings and stained-glass
windows illustrating the events and lessons of the Bible;
poetry, in the hymns which embodied Bible history and
teaching; music, to which they set words from the Bible;
the stage, by sacred representations of scenes from the
Old. and the New Testament, and the ceremonial of the
services of the Church, in which, as the year went round,
were presented, sometimes in almost dramatic form, the
principal events of the life of Christ, and the history of
God’s dealings with man. In those days, as said the
Catholic Synod of Bishops at Arras in 1203, “painting
was the book of the ignorant, who could read no other.”
And for this reason in Catholic countries the walls of
churches, of monasteries, of cemeteries, of cloisters are
covered with paintings representing scenes from the Old
and New Testament. In England up to the “ Reforma
tion the Catholic Church used all these ways to teach
the people the. Bible “In this country,” writes Mr.
Henry Morley, in his First Sketch of English Literature,
“the taste for miracle plays was blended with the old
desire to diffuse as far as possible a knowledge of religious
truth; and therefore the sets of miracle plays acted by
our town-guilds placed in the streets, as completely as
might be, a living picture-Bible before the eyes of all the
people. . In Germany there was a celebrated set of forty
or fifty pictures of Bible subjects so popular and so much
that xt was known as “The Bible of the Poor”
(friblia Pauperuni).
Thus, before the “ Reformation,” not only were there
plenty of Bibles for those who could read, but the
Oman Catholic Church made use of every means at her
disposal to teach the .Bible to those who could not read.
Gid space allow, it would be easy to show that the
general drift of the teaching of the Fathers of the Church
�Rome and the Bible.
9
on this subject was an earnest exhortation to more
frequent meditation on Holy Scripture, whilst at the
same time they warn the faithful against the misuse of
the Word of God by heretics, who read the Scripture
without penetrating its meaning, because they do not
read it aright. For twelve hundred years all the
influence of the Church was exerted in favour of a
wider spread of the Holy Scripture and a more familiar
acquaintance with its Scripture Text by clergy and laity
alike. Even after the invention of printing, when a
general diffusion of Bibles in the vernacular first became
possible, no check or hindrance was put upon it by
authority, so long as the translations used were really a
version, not a perversion, of Holy Scripture, and were
not interlarded with heretical or offensive annotations.
Unfortunately, in the “Reformation” days, the Word
of God was turned into an instrument for the use of
heresy. As in foreign countries, so too in England, the
translations were falsified in meaning, and the sweet
milk of Christian doctrine turned to poison.
In
Tyndale’s translation, flavoured with the errors of
Lollardism, Our Lord is made to say in St. Matt,
xvi. 18: “On this rock I will build My congregation.”
The word “idols ” is translated “images.” In St. John
v. 21, the Apostle warns the early Christians : “Babes
keep yourselves from images.” The Apostolic “traditions”
on which St. Paul lays stress (2 Thess. ii. 15, iii. 6) are
turned into “ ordinances,” and so on. It was the
necessity of preserving the purity of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ and defending it from perversion and misuse by
heretics, and safeguarding the Faith of her children,
that induced the Church to issue a series of Decrees,
Encyclicals, and Briefs, all of which are aimed, not
against the reading of the Word of God, but either
against those whose object it was to find therein what
suited their heretical purpose, and who ingeniously
twisted the meaning of the Holy Scripture, or against
any interpretation of it in a sense contrary to the teach
ing of the Church and the unanimous consent of the
Fathers, doctors, and theologians.
�IO
Rome and the Bible.
The Circulation of the Bible.
So far we have dealt with the astounding assertion that
wherever Rome has had undisputed sway, she has kept
the Bible from the laity, and shown, chiefly from non
Catholic authorities, that the assertion is not only void
of foundation, but contrary to fact. There is a second
assertion made by Mr. Smith, and generally accepted by
Protestants, which we shall prove to be as devoid of
foundation and contrary to fact as the first. It runs as
follows : “ Nothing is more certain than that in every
country where Rome is supreme the circulation of the
Scriptures is forbidden.”
This is indeed a very sweeping statement—a statement
of the truth of which Mr. Smith is so convinced that he
does not hesitate to say that there is “nothing” (not
even, therefore, the existence of God or the Divinity of
Jesus Christ) more certain than that the Roman Church
forbids the circulation of the Scriptures. This statement
is so positive and definite and precise that many a man
will at once accept it, not believing that a man of Mr.
Samuel Smith’s position, and eminence, and straight
forwardness, and rectitude would care to have his name
finked with slander and calumny. It is another proof,
if proof were wanted, of how the man must fare who
ventures to intrude into a domain of which he has no
knowledge.
In the fields of science each man sticks to his own
special line, acknowledging his ignorance of other
branches into the mysteries of which he has not been
initiated ; but in the realm of theology the most ignorant
and the novice deem themselves the equals of the
learned and the veteran. Mr. Samuel Smith has been
led astray by his so-called authorities, who but too often
have wilfully poisoned the springs and sources of his
torical inquiry.
As we have seen, for twelve hundred years the Roman
Church, through her pastors and her doctors, praised and
recommended the reading of Holy Scripture, striving by
every means in her power, in those days when the art
�Rome and the Bible.
il
of printing had not been discovered, to multiply copies of
the Holy Scriptures; using the books of Holy Writ in the
compilation of her prayer-books and books of devotion;
by the arts of painting and music bringing the Scripture
history down to the level of the unlearned, who knew
not how to read ; by scenic representations on the stage
making the characters of the Old and New Testament live
indelibly impressed on the souls of the spectators, bring
ing back, as does the Ober-Ammergau play, in a most
vivid and realistic manner the grand drama of the world’s
history and showing how it all culminates in the awful
tragedy on Mount Calvary. True it is that when the
Albigenses made a new translation of the Bible and
explained it in their own sense to show that the visible
world was created by an evil god, who was also the
author of the Old Testament; that the Body of Christ
was not real; and that sins committed after baptism
could not be forgiven, the Church stepped in and
forbade, not the circulation of the Scriptures, but the
circulation of this new translation which they explained
so as to suit their heretical views.
From the very beginning of the Church there have
been countless translations of the Holy Scriptures. In
these latter days the process is ever going on. Trans
lations differ very much from each other, even in
the same language, and what is more important, they
differ very much in passages of the highest moment. Il
this be so they cannot all be the sense as it was given at
first by God in the original Hebrew or Greek.
Now what do we Christians mean when we talk of the
Bible ? We can only mean one thing—that it is the
Inspired Word of God. Consequently, if we find many
of these translations contradicting one another on most
important points we are driven to the conclusion that
they cannot all be the Bible, that many of them are the
work of men—nay, the work of the devil, who has
induced men to put their own meaning in the place of
the inspired sense of God’s Word.
Let us trace the history of the Authorized English
Version. This will show us how necessary it has been
�12
Rome and the Bible.
for the Church to act with caution, lest the Written Word
of God should become so mutilated as not to be recog
nizable. First comes Tyndale’s New Testament, under
Henry VIII.; then Cranmer’s Great Bible (1539); then
the Bishops’ Bible (1568), under Elizabeth; then the
Authorized Version (1611), under James I.; and finally
the Revised Version, under Victoria (1881). We ask
why were these successive editions brought out, and we
are told in answer, because the previous ones were found
not to give the Word of God in its true sense. The
Rev. J. H. Blunt, in his History of the Reformation of
the Church of England, says: “ In some editions of
Tyndale’s New Testament there is what must be regarded
as a wilful omission of the gravest possible character,
for it appears in several editions, and has no shadow of
justification in the Greek or Latin of the passage, 1 Pet.
ii. 13, 14. Such an error was quite enough justification
for the suppression of Tyndale’s translation.”
Cranmer himself complained to Convocation that his
Great Bible contained both in the Old and New Testa
ments many points which required correction, and he
put it to the vote of the Upper House whether it could
be retained without scandal to the learning of the clergy.
The majority of the Bishops decided that it could not
be so retained. This was followed by the Bishops’ Bible,
it in turn by the Authorized Version of James I., and
now we have the Revised Version of 1881.
Let us take one instance only to show how untrust
worthy even the Authorized Version is. In 1 Cor. xi.
27, the translation in the Authorized Version runs:
‘ Whoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the
Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood
of the Lord.” Note the word “and”: it was an allimportant word in those days in that sentence. For
Protestants maintained that it was necessary to receive
Holy Communion under both kinds, and backed up
their doctrine by this text. Though in the days of the
Manichean heresy Holy Church had insisted upon Com
munion under both kinds, yet her discipline for many
reasons had changed upon this point, and for centuries
�Rome and the Bible.
*3
Communion under one kind for the laity had been the
usual practice of the Western Church. If we turn to the
Revised Version, we find the passage rendered now as
follows: “ Whoever shall eat the bread or drink the
cup of the Lord unworthily,” &c. This is the reading in
the Catholic Church, and confirms her practice of ad
ministering the Sacrament under one kind. The Revised
Version is judged also by many learned men to contain
serious errors.
If we turn to Continental versions, it is quite sufficient
for our purpose to see the estimate formed by the
“ Reformers ” themselves of these translations. Luther’s
translation, in which Emser detected over a thousand
glaring errors, Zuinglius declared to be a corruption of
the Word of God; a compliment which Luther repaid
with interest on the appearance of the translation by
Zuinglius. CEcolampadius and the theologians of Basle
found fault with Beza’s translation because, as they say,
he changed the text of Scripture. Naturally Beza retorts
upon them, and declares their translation to be impious
in parts. Du Moulin says of Calvin’s translation, that it
did violence to the letter of the Gospel, which Calvin
has changed, and to which he made additions of his own.
When the ministers of Geneva made an exact version of
Calvin’s Bible, James I. of England declared at the
Hampton Court Conference that of all versions it was
the most wicked and unfaithful. When the Authorized
Version first appeared in England it was openly decried
by many Protestant ministers as abounding in gross
perversions of the original text.
Furthermore, what has been the practical outcome of
the principle of private judgment in • conjunction with
unrestrained licence in translating the Scriptures as each
man chose? What has been the lesult in Germany, the
first theatre of Protestantism? Is it not a fact that
Rationalism, a system little better than downright Deism,
has frittered away the very substance of Christianity?
The Rationalists of Germany have left nothing of
Christianity—not even its skeleton. Is England, that
imported a religion first made in Germany, in a much
�14
Rome and the Bible.
better plight? Do not many fear, and rightly fear,
that the same spirit will soon carry all before it in
England ?
The Catholic Church, the guardian of Revealed Truth,
the custodian of the Word of God, both Written and
handed down by Tradition, seeing on the one hand the
faulty, erroneous, and mischievous translations of the
Scriptures that were being spread broadcast over every
Christian land, and recognizing that the so-called right
of private judgment, so lauded by the “ Reformers,” was
utterly subversive of all authority in Church and State,
provided a remedy for the evil that threatened the world.
As there has never been a Divine command laid upon
all men to read the Scriptures (else how could the early
Christians and the unlearned in all ages be saved?), the
Church has the power to regulate by her disciplinary
enactments whatever concerns this reading. Ecclesias
tical discipline is of its very nature changeable, and is
adapted to meet the requirements of times, places,
and persons. Restrictive measures which had prevailed
in isolated dioceses became general when the danger
became universal.
These measures were particularly
severe on the translations made or edited by heretics,
and rightly so. For very many of these translations
were written off with great speed, and consequently were
not very faithful to the text •, then the translators, under
the influence of their errors, introduced in many places
interpretations diverging from the traditional sense;
besides, when these editions reproduced the Catholic
version they suppressed the notes by which it was
accompanied; finally, the character of their authors and
the independent manner in which these editions and
translations were made render them objects of suspicion.
Furthermore, in our own days the method of procedure
adopted by the Bible Societies has added a new motive
for proscribing Protestant Bibles. In fact, it is generally
conceded in principle that in all the Bibles published by
these societies the Deuterocanonical Books of the Old
Testament are not printed, and the text given without
note or explanation. These Bibles, then, are mutilated
�Rome and the Bible.
15
and deprived of those helps which would render reading
less dangerous.
It is to no purpose, then, that our separated brethren
accuse the Roman Church of proscribing arbitrarily
editions and versions approved by Catholic prelates or
faculties, simply and solely because they are distributed
by Protestants. It is no silly jealousy that actuates
ecclesiastical authorities. It is the good of souls, gravely
compromised by these productions.
The Action of the Church.
The Bishops gathered together at the Council of Trent
drew up a decree relative to the reading of the Bible in
the vernacular, and besought the Pope before the dis
solution of the Council to publish it in a solemn manner, v
Pope Pius IV. yielded to their wish, and published,
March 24, 1544, the rules of the Index. The third
Rule is : “ Translations of the books of the Old Testa
ment can only be granted to wise and pious men,
according to the judgment of the Bishop, provided
that they use these translations as explanations of the
Vulgate, in order to understand the Holy Scriptures,
and not as the true text. As to translations of the New
Testament, made by authors of the first class (the
heresiarchs, Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, &c.), let them be
granted to no one, because their reading cannot be
advantageous, and is generally very dangerous to the
readers. If annotations have been added to the versions
that are allowed, or to the Vulgate, their reading can be
permitted to those who are allowed to have these versions,
provided that the suspected passages in them have been
cut out by the theological faculty of a Catholic university
or by the General Inquisition.” The fourth Rule is:
“As experience has shown that if the use of the Holy
Bible in the vernacular be allowed to every one without
distinction there results therefrom, in consequence of the
rashness of men, more harm than advantage, let all
submit in this matter to the judgment of the Bishop or
the Inquisitor, so that they can permit, with the advice
of the parish priest or confessor, the reading of the Holy
�16
Rome and the Bible.
Scriptures translated into the vernacular by Catholic
authors to those whom they shall judge fit to draw from
this reading not harm, but an increase of faith and piety.
Let this permission be obtained in writing. Tho=e who
shall dare to read, or keep these Bibles without this leave
cannot receive absolution of their sins until they have
given them up to the ordinary. Regulars can neither
read them nor buy them without the leave of their
superiors.”
This two-fold rule, which became the Church’s law,
suppressed as far as possible the abuses without ignoring
or neglecting the advantages that might spring from the
use of the Bible in the vernacular. This law, faithfully
and loyally kept, foiled the plans and designs of the
heretics. This is the reason why such senseless cries
and absurd accusations have been excited by it. Pro
testants would have it that this new disciplinary enact
ment on the part of the Catholic Church was an impious
attack on God’s Holy Word; that the Holy Scripture
was treated as though it were a dangerous, if not a bad
book; that the laity were altogether forbidden to read it,
and that hence it became the monopoly of the clergy,
who were now able without let or hindrance to poison
the minds and hearts of the unfortunate believers in the
claims of the Church of Rome. Such is the fantastic
interpretation spread abroad by Protestantism with
obstinate persistency, in spite of every denial and every
explanation of Catholic theologians. Now let us see what in reality was allowed by the
Church in relation to the reading of the Holy Scriptures.
All Catholics, laymen as well as the clergy, were allowed
to read, ist, the Old Testament in the Hebrew text, and
the .New Testament in the Greek; 2nd, the Greek
version of the Septuagint; 3rd, the ancient translations
of the whole Bible in Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopian, &c. ;
4th, the Latin Vulgate. The Church knows full well
that these texts and these translations are orthodox, and
she was convinced that men who were capable of under
standing these ancient languages were sufficiently well
educated not to suffer themselves to be led astray by the
�Rome and the Bible.
17
difficulties and obscurities of the Holy Scriptures. We
must remember, too, that most, if not all, educated
men of that time understood Latin, and in consequence
were perfectly free to read the Vulgate.
The Church, however, did not allow the use of the
Bible translated into the vernacular indiscriminately to
all; but she gave the use of it freely and willingly through
the Bishop or the Inquisitor, to all who were accounted
fit to profit by its reading, on the advice of the confessor
or the parish priest. Undoubtedly, then, a restriction
was placed upon the indiscriminate reading of the Bible
translated into the vulgar tongue. Nay more, for a
brief period the restriction was drawn tighter by Sixtus V.
and Clement VIII., who insisted that application for
this leave was to be made to the Holy See. This legis
lation, however, was soon dropped, and things reverted
to the state established by Pius IV. When, however,
the fury of the storm had subsided, Holy Church began
to relax still more the severity of the discipline. Thus
we find Pope Benedict XIV. in 1757, the year that Clive
founded our Empire in India by the victory of Plassey,
two years before the fall of Quebec, three years before
the accession of George III.., a hundred and forty years
ago, confirming this decree of the Congregation of the
Index: “ If these translations of the Bible into the
vernacular have been approved by the Holy See or
edited with notes taken from the holy Fathers or learned
Catholic authors, they are allowable.” This decree was
confirmed in 1829 by Pius VIII., and is now practically
the law throughout the length and breadth of the Catholic
world.
Yet Mr. Samuel Smith, M.P., tells us that “ Nothing
is more certain than that wherever Rome is supreme
the circulation of the Scriptures is forbidden ! ” If he
is not yet convinced let him pay strict attention to the
words of Pius VI. writing to the Archbishop of Florence
in 1778, the year that the great Commoner, William
Pitt, Earl of Chatham, died, whilst the American
colonies were in the midst of their great struggle for
freedom. These are the words : “ You judge exceedingly
�18
Rome and the Bible.
well that the faithful should be excited to the reading of
the Holy Scriptures; for these are the most abundant
sources which ought to be left open to every one to draw
from them purity of morals and of doctrine, and to
eradicate the errors which are so widely spread in these
corrupt times. This you have seasonably effected by
publishing the Sacred Writings in the language of your
country, suitable to every one’s capacity.” Pius VII.,
writing in 1820 to the English Vicars-Apostolic, urges
them “ to encourage their people to read the Holy
Scriptures, for nothing can be more useful, more
consolatory, and more animating, because they serve to
confirm the faith, to support the hope, and to inflame
the charity of the true Christian.”
Is Mr. Samuel Smith still unconvinced ? Let him
turn his gaze to that vast Republic in which he has been
lately travelling, and note that in that land there is a
mighty episcopate which is accustomed to gather together
from time to time in council at Baltimore. About ten
years ago, in a Pastoral Letter addressed by them to
their faithful children, they say: “ It can hardly be
necessary to remind you, beloved brethren, that the most
highly valued treasure of every family library, and the
most frequently and lovingly made use of, should be
the Holy Scriptures,” and after citing the letter of
Pius VI. to the Archbishop of Florence cited above,
they conclude : “ We trust that no family can be found
amongst us without a correct version of the Holy
Scriptures.” If Mr. Samuel Smith, and those who agree
with him, are not yet convinced of the error, they must
be hard to satisfy. We are told to turn for a compact
view of the subject to the copious writings of the
Rev. J. A. Wylie, especially the one entitled The Papacy.
We turn to it, and we read the extract which purports to
be taken from an Encyclical of Pius IX. in 1850. We
give the extract as it appears in Mr. Samuel Smith’s
pamphlet and the extract as it is in the Pope’s Encyclical
in parallel columns, and leave to the pious consideration
of the reader the tortuous ways of some Protestant
controversialists—
�Rome and the Bible.
19
EXTRACT AS IN MR. SMITH’S
PAMPHLET.
EXTRACT AS IN THE
ENCYCLICAL.
“ Nay, more, with the assist
ance of the Biblical Societies,
which have long been con
demned by the Holy Chair,
they do not blush to distribute
Holy Bibles, translated into the
vulgar tongue, without being
conformed to the rules of the
Church. . . . Under a false
pretext of religion, they recom
mend the reading of them to the
faithful. You, in your wisdom,
perfectly understand, venerable
brothers, with what vigilance
and solicitude you ought to
labour that the faithful may fly
with horror from this poisonous
reading.”
“ Nay, more, with the assist
ance of the Biblical Societies,
which have long been condemned
by this Holy See, they do not
scruple to spread about and
recommend to the faithful peoples
under plea of religion, Bible,
translated into the vernacular
contrary to the rules of the
Church, and by this means cor
rupted and with reckless audacity
twisted to a false meaning.
Hence, venerable brethren, you
understand in your wisdom with
what vigilance and anxiety you
must labour that the faithful
sheep of the flock may shun the
pestilential reading of them.”
Is it easy to believe in the good faith of men who
wilfully and deliberately print statements like the above
as the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church ? Where
is the English sense of fair-play in such a translation?
Is it not skilfully devised to lead on the readers who
have neither the leisure nor the wish nor the opportunity
—and they form the multitude—to verify the quotation,
to believe that the Sovereign Pontiff forbids as pestilential
reading God’s Holy Word ? The important words which
give a totally different complexion to the sentence are
omitted, as if they were of no importance and did not
give any more light to the meaning of the sentence.
When we turn to what Pius IX. did say, we find that the
Pope earnestly exhorted the Bishops to labour to get
their flocks to shun the pestilential reading of—what?
The Bible ? No; but of Bibles which had been
translated into the vernacular, and which had “ by this
means been corrupted and, with reckless audacity,
twisted to a false meaning.”
We shall later see how wise and prudent, nay, how
absolutely necessary, were these orders of the Popes
through the action of the Bible Societies in the East.
Catholics often wonder how it is that such strong preju
�20
Rome and tke Bible.
dice exists against the Church. It is fabrications such
as these that keep up the bitter feeling against us.
Except in the South of France, North of Spain, and
England, where restrictions were imposed by Provincial
Councils in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries respec
tively on translations of the Bible into the vernacular
because they were accompanied by false interpretations
or were false in translation, no restriction was imposed
upon such translations by the Church as a whole till
Pius IV. published the decree of the Index, March 24,
1544. Even then, as has been already said, the Bible
could be read by all, laymen as well as the clergy, in the
Hebrew and Greek texts, in the Septuagint version, in
the Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopian, &c., versions, and in the
Latin Vulgate.
Restrictions were placed upon the
reading of the translations of the Bible into the verna
cular, but leave could be obtained from the Bishop or
Inquisitor, through the confessor or parish priest, to do so.
This legislation was, however, changed by Benedict XIV.
140 years ago (in 1757), when he confirmed the decree
of the Congregation of the Index, by which the reading
of Catholic translations into the vernacular was allowed
if they were approved by the Holy See, or edited with notes
taken from the Fathers or good and learned theologians.
Lastly, Bishops and Popes have earnestly exhorted the
faithful to read the Holy Scriptures. How, then, can
Protestants give utterance to statements so completely at
variance with fact ?
Mr. Smith, in a letter to the Liverpool papers (January
nth), quotes from the Rev. Hobart Seymour’s Mornings
with the Jesuits (1850), saying that he had sought in
vain throughout Rome for a Bible in the Italian tongue.
(He contradicts himself, by the way, as he informs
us that Martini’s translation was actually offered to
him for sale.) Did the Rev. Mr. Seymour ask for
the Protestant Bible? If so, of course he was told
that it was not allowable. However, to obtain more
definite information, as soon as I saw Mr. Samuel
Smith’s letter I telegraphed to an English priest stationed
in Rome, and received from him a letter, which I print
�Rome and the Bible.
21
as an appendix, with a pamphlet in Italian on the
subject. He gives therein the same facts as I have
adduced, about Martini’s Bible appearing in many
editions; tells us that countless copies of the New
Testament were spread among the people before 1870,
the Pope and Bishops encouraging their diffusion; and
declares that hundreds of thousands of Curci’s cheap
translations of the Gospels, about 1870, have been
circulated.
Mr. Smith cites a Brief , sent in 1816 by. Pope
Pius VII. to Ignatius, Bishop of Gnesen, in which he
denounces the Bible Societies, and says that the Holy
Scriptures, “when circulated in the vulgar tongue, have,
through the temerity of men, produced more harm than
benefit.” This quotation is accurate as far as it goes,
but the words that follow show what it is that the Pope
forbids. They are: “And this is a misfortune which
we have more reason to fear in our days, as our holy
religion is attacked on all sides with skilful efforts. You
must then adhere to the salutary decree of the Congre
gation of the Index (June 13, 1757)—viz., that transla
tions of the Bible into the vernacular (vulgar tongue) are
not to be allowed, except such as are approved by the
Holy See, or edited with notes taken from the holy
Fathers.” Clearly, then, as I have said so often, approved
translations of the Bible are allowed.
A Protestant Device.
I have pointed out how, by misrepresentation which
would seem to be wilful and deliberate, the words of
condemnation of the Bible Societies by Pius IX. were
made to say what the Pope never said. That you may
see how common a device this is of some Protestant
writers for gulling the Protestant public, let me cite an
instance from the English Churchman of November 1,
1896 : “In the year 1824, in an ‘Encyclical,’ Leo the
Twelfth speaks of a certain society which is spreading
over the world the Bible, which is the gospel of the
devil.” Fancy the Ruler of that Church which, as Luther
said, preserved the Bible for us calling God’s Holy Word
•
�22
Rome and the Bible.
“ the gospel of the devil ” ! The writer knew only too
well that this was the food to supply to a large portion
of the non-Catholic world, which has been fed for three
hundred and fifty years on all kinds of mendacious
statements about the grand old Church of their fore
fathers. These are the statements that are swallowed
down wholesale by the gullible Protestant public, and
which keep alive Protestant prejudice.
Now, what did Leo XII. really say? “You are aware,
venerable brethren, that a certain society, commonly
caller! the Bible Society, strolls with effrontery throughout
the world; which society, contemning the traditions of
the holy Fathers and contrary to the well-known decree
of the Council of Trent, labours with all its might and
by every means to translate—or rather to pervert—the
Holy Bible into the vulgar languages of every nation;
from which proceeding it is greatly to be feared that
what is ascertained to have happened as to some
passages may also occur with regard to others, to wit,
that by a perverse interpretation the Gospel of Christ
be turned into a human gospel, or, what is worse still,
into the gospel of the devil.”
What are we to think of the capabilities of a man who
dares thus to come forth and proffer his translation
as the correct one of the Pope’s Encyclical? Most
schoolboys who have even a limited acquaintance with
the Latin tongue would laugh it to scorn. Yet fabrica
tions such as these are spread wholesale against Catho
licism by men who ought to—may I not add, who must
—know better.
The Bible Societies.
Why is it that the Catholic Church is so hostile to the
efforts of the Bible Societies ? Is it dislike for God’s
Holy Word? Every Catholic knows that such is not,
such cannot be the case. The Catholic Church has too
much love and veneration for all that comes from its
Creator and Redeemer. The Catholic Church loves
God’s Holy Word too much to expose it to the nameless
horror and frightful indignities to which it has been
�Rome and the Bible.
23
subjected by the action of the Societies in distributing
millions of copies throughout the world.
Of the results of this action I will give a few examples.
Archdeacon Grant in his B amp ton Lectures, c. 3, p. 93,
tells us: “ The cause of the eagerness which has some
times been evinced to obtain the sacred volume cannot
be traced to a thirst for the Word of Life, but to secular
purposes, the unhallowed uses to which the Holy Word
of God, left in their hands, has been turned, and which
are absolutely shocking to any Christian feeling.” “ They
have been seen,” says Dr. Wells Williams, “ on the
counters of shops in Macao, cut in two for wrapping up
medicines and fruits, which the shopman would not do
with the worst of his own books.” 1 “ They are em
ployed,” said Bishop Courrazy, “to roll round tobacco
and bacon.” 2 Whole cases of them were sold by auction
and purchased, says another eye-witness, at the price
of old paper, chiefly by the shoemakers, grocers, and
druggists. Mr. Tomlin admits that the Chinese often
stole them at night to apply them to domestic purposes,
and that some of the missionaries appeared to consider
this theft an encouraging proof of their zeal for Divine
things. Marchini tells us from actual observation that
they are sold by the weight to shoemakers to make
Chinese slippers, and then goes on to express his
astonishment, because “the English, who display so
much discernment and accuracy of judgment in other
matters,” should allow themselves to be the dupes of
salaried speculators or visionary enthusiasts.
“ How degrading is the idea,” says a Protestant writer
in the Asiatic Journal (vol. ix. p. 343), “ to put into the
hands of every Chinese bargeman or illiterate porter a
packet of tracts, to sell or give away on his journey as he
pleases.”
So rapid is the consumption of Bibles in the various
branches of the retail trade in Hindostan that of the
millions circulated it is difficult, except in the capitals,
to find so much as the trace of a single copy. This we
1 The Middle Kingdom, vol. ii. c. 19, p. 343.
2 Annals of Propagation of Faith, vol. i. p. 107.
�24
Rome and the Bible.
are told by Captain J. B. Seely in The Wonders of Elora,
c. 19, p. 524, second edition. “Many of them have
probably gone to the pawnbrokers,” said Sir Charles
Oakeley, Governor of Madras. In Ceylon they were
used for much the same purposes as in India and
China.
In New Zealand the Maories, according to Mr. Fox,1
tore up the Bibles to make wadding for their guns, and
even went so far, as Miss Tucker indignantly informs us,
as to convert them into New Zealand cartridges. In
Africa, on the West Coast at Gaboon, after a grand
distribution of Bibles by the missionaries among the
negroes, as soon as the sacred book had fallen into the
hands of the children, M. Bessieux saw the leaves of the
Bible converted into pretty kites (Annals of Propagation
of Faith, vol. viii. p. 75). Colonel Napier’s tale is that
the Kaffirs converted lately, to our cost, the missionary
Bibles into ball cartridges or wadding.2 In Tetuan they
were thrown into the flames. In Abyssinia, we are told
by Mr. Parkyns that “ the use to which the many Bibles
given away in this country are commonly applied is the
wrapping up of snuff and such like undignified purposes.”
Throughout the Levant, Syria, and Armenia, millions of
Bibles have been distributed. Many of them have been
diligently collected and committed to the flames.3 An
agent of the Biblical Society resentfully records that the
ecclesiastical authorities “have always strenuously op
posed the distribution of the Bible in modern Greek.” *
The Greek Patriarch, too, worried by the aggressions
of the missionaries, published an Encyclical Letter
in which he not only warned his people against
the emissaries of the Bible Society, but described
them as “ satanical heresiarchs from the caverns of
hell and the abyss of the Northern Sea, whose object
was to proselytize and to foment division and harass
* The Six Colonies of New Zealand, p. 83.
2 Excursion in South Africa, vol. ii. c. 22, p. 442.
3 Dr. Robertson, Biblical Researches in Palestine, vol. i. § 3,
p. 140.
4 Journal of Deputation to East, vol. ii. p. 594.
�Rome and the Bible.
25
their Church and fill it with heresy.” He went on to
forbid the purchase or use of any translation of the
Scriptures made by the missionaries, whether in the
Turkish, Servian, Arabian, Bulgarian, Slavonian, or other
languages.1 If such an Encyclical had appeared from
the Roman Pontiff, how the pulpits of Protestant
England would have resounded with declamations against
the tyranny of the Papacy !
In Persia the Bibles were torn up in the presence of
the missionary and trampled in the dirt. At Bassora,
where Mr. Samuel, the missionary, was nearly torn to
pieces, the Mahometans, more reverential than the
missionary, anxious, as they said themselves, “ that a
book which they as well as Christians consider sacred
might not be trodden under foot, resolved that the
volumes should all be thrown into the river, and
this order was accordingly executed.” 2 Instances of
usage such as this might be multiplied ad infinitum.
They have cost innumerable sums, says Mr. Marshall^
have awakened only the contempt of the few pagans
who read them, have been polluted by the foulest and
most degrading uses, and finally consumed as waste
paper.
Degradation of the Scriptures.
Is it possible for God’s Holy Word to be subjected to
greater degradation? Yes, unfortunately it is so, and
what is worse, it has actually undergone the degradation.
We know how the “ Reformers ” of the sixteenth century
wrangled with one another about their own translations
of the Bible, how Luther’s version was called by Zuinglius
a corruption of God’s Holy Word, a compliment returned
a hundredfold by Luther on the translation edited by
Zuinglius; how James I. called the translation by Calvin,
edited with great care by the Genevan Ministers, the
most unfaithful of translations. Have the attempts of
the British and Foreign Bible Society to translate the
1 Loc. cit., p. 816.
2 Narrative of a Mission to India, by V. Fontanier, Vice-Consul
of France at Bassora, p. 344.
3 Christian Missions, vol. i. p. 22.
�26
Rome and the Bible.
Scriptures into the languages of the world fared any
better ? Let us examine and see. Please to remember
that all this time I am speaking from a historical point
of view, and not as a theologian. Dr. Morrison edited
the first Protestant version of the Bible in the Chinese
language at a cost of more than ^20,000. “ It was,” as
the Bible Society admits, “imperfect, and not sufficiently
idiomatic.” No wonder, for, as Dr. Morrison says : “ I
edited the New Testament with such alterations as in
my conscience, and with the degree of knowledge of the
Chinese language which I then possessed, I thought
necessary.” Yet Dr. Morrison had no hesitation in
proclaiming that as “ the Word of God ” which he had
himself altered as his conscience dictated. Talk about
an Infallible Pope, indeed !
Morrison’s translation was followed by Marshman’s,
of which Mr. Malcolm says : “lam assured by private
Chinese gentlemen that neither Marshman’s nor Morri
son’s Bible is fully intelligible, much less attractive.”
Marchini goes further, and assures us that their Chinese
versions are “an unintelligible jargon which no one
could read without laughing,” and that the learned
Chinese complained that their sublime idiom should be
so wantonly caricatured. This was so clear and manifest
a truth that a solemn meeting of missionaries of various
Protestant denominations was summoned to meet at
Hong-Kong in 1848, to take measures for concocting
one more version “ better adapted for general circulation
than any hitherto published.” The Rev. G. Milne1
informs us that “ one or two versions were attempted,
but exceedingly defective and very unsatisfactory.”
Many an honest man, no doubt, will scarcely be able to
credit these statements. Therefore it is all the more
important to get impartial testimony in proof of the
statements. Mr. Meadows Taylor, Chinese Interpreter
to H.M. Civil Service, describes in 1856 the real
character and effect of these Protestant translations
which have cost so much money as follows: “ Let the
English Protestant reflect on the Book of the Mormons
1 Life in China, p. 50.
�Rome and the Bible.
27
and on Mormonism, as it is spreading in some places in
Great Britain, and he will obtain a by no means exagge
rated notion of the contemptible light in which our
badly-translated Scriptures and Christianity in China are
regarded by the thorough Confucian, viz., as a tissue of
absurdities and impious pretensions, which it would be
lost time to examine.” 1
If we turn to India, is the. outlook different ? “ The
translations are so grossly absurd,” says a learned Protes
tant writer in the Asiatic Journal, vol. xxviii. p. 303,
that “ instead of promoting the service of Christianity, it
is not irrational to impute some of the backwardness of
the Hindoos to this cause.” A copy of the Telinga
version was given to some natives in the district of
Bellary, but as they could not understand it, they con
sulted their most learned man, who after careful examina
tion told his clients “ that its style was so obscure and
incoherent that it was almost impossible to comprehend
it, but that he believed it was a treatise on magic.” Of
the Tamil version a Protestant clergyman declared that
“ the translation is really pitiful, and deserves only con
tempt.”
Here are some specimens of the Canara
version :—“ In the beginning God created the earth and
the air.” “ Darkness was upon the water, but the soul
of God wandered with delight over the water.” “ Let
us make man like to us and having our form : let him
command the aquatic insects of the sea.” M. Dubois
tells us that in this version there is hardly a verse correctly
rendered, and that “ no Indian possessing the slightest
instruction can preserve a serious countenance in reading
cuch a composition.”
In the “ Baptist Missionary
Account,” 1819 (Appendix to Report), we are told that
in the Hindostani version the sentence “ Judge not, that
ye be not judged ” is rendered “ Do no justice that
justice be not done to you.” What an idea of Christian
morality to be presented to the pagan ! Are we surprised,
then, at the testimony given by Mr. Irving,2 that these
translations have been “either simply useless, or, from
1 The Chinese and their Rebellion, p. 79.
* Theory and Practice of Caste, p. 149.
�28
Rome and the Bible.
explaining the doctrines of our Faith by ridiculous forms
of expression, have been absolutely pernicious ” ?
The Popes and the Bible Societies.
Testimonies of this kind from non-Catholic sources
could be multiplied a thousandfold. If this be so, have
we Catholics any reason for surprise at the words of the
Sovereign Pontiffs, so continually, and persistently, and
energetically warning the flock of Christ against the
Bible Societies ? They each and all assert the right of
private interpretation of that which they claim to be the
sole rule of faith, God’s Holy Word, a doctrine which
the Catholic Church cannot allow. Too often, as we
have seen to-day, not translations, but perversions of the
Scriptures are sent forth, which bring ridicule and con
tempt upon the religion of Christ. Too often, indeed,
as Pope Leo XII. has declared, by a perverse interpre
tation the Gospel of Christ is turned into a human
gospel, or, what is still worse, into the gospel of the devil.
In conclusion, may I be allowed to state again that in all
this matter I am speaking from a historian’s point of
view, and that in speaking of the efforts of the Bible
Societies to convert the East I have confined myself to
the events that took place antecedent to the year 1863.
The Bible in Rome.
In proof of his assertion that wherever Rome has had
undisputed sway she has kept the Bible from the laity,
we are told by Mr. Samuel Smith how friends of his had
the greatest difficulty in smuggling Bibles into Rome.
Presumably they were Protestant versions of the Bible,
and they were prohibited by the Pope, lest the purity of
Catholic faith should be impaired. Had Mh. Samuel
Smith s friends taken with them Martini’s approved
edition of the Bible, or the approved Douay edition of
the Bible in English, no difficulty would have been
experienced.
The false impression is kept up in the next sentence:
“ When the Italian army entered Rome, the first wheel
carriage contained a consignment of Bibles.” What is
�Rome and the Bible.
29
suggested is clearly that the poor, hungry Romans had
been deprived, under the Papal sway, of God’s Holy
Word. How false is this suggestion may be gathered
from Father Chandlery’s letter (see Appendix).
M. Lasserre’s Translation.
We are told (p. 13) that “the present Pope gave his
approval to Lasserre’s French translation of the Gospels,
which had a large sale, but, strange to say, it is now
placed on the Index Expurgatorius, and its sale pro
hibited.”
Let us see what are the real facts of the condemnation
of Henri Lasserre’s translation of the Gospels. But first I
would ask Mr. Samuel Smith not to pin his faith too
strongly on an article on this subject by Dr. Wright, pub
lished in the Contemporary Review. This Dr. Wright, in
a letter to the papers, said : “ I pointed out as clearly as
I could that the same Infallible Pope had officially cursed
the same version of the Gospels twelve months and fifteen
days after he had officially sent it forth glowing with his
benediction.” When asked what grounds he had for
saying that the Pope cursed the book, he writes in reply,
with an ignorance of the Latin tongue that would dis
grace a schoolboy : “ Sacra Congregatio damnavit et
damnat . . .” Is it really ignorance ? Is he not aware
that “ damnavit ” means “ condemned ” ?
Briefly, the facts of the case are these. Henri Lasserre,
the well-known writer and devout client of Mary, issued
what he called a translation of the Four Gospels in the
French tongue, with a preface. It had received the
imprimatur of the Archbishop of Paris, after passing
twice through the hands of the censors, and at once had
an enormous sale. It ran through twenty-five editions
in twelve months, and was warmly welcomed by the
Catholic Press and many of the Bishops. Lasserre
presented his Holiness with a copy. Leo XIII. com
missioned Cardinal Jacobini to express to the author his
approval of the object with which he had been inspired
in the execution and publication of the work, and his
hopes that this object may be fully attained.
�30
Rome and the Bible.
Meanwhile other Catholics, more solicitous about the
preservation of the text of Holy Scripture from all undue
interference than about beauty of style, having carefully
studied the work, came to the conclusion that it was full
of inaccuracies and mistranslations, and departed in
many places from the traditional interpretation. Repre
sentations were made to Rome ; the book was examined
by the Congregation of the Index, whose office it is to
point out to the faithful books which are in any way
hurtful to faith or morals, with the result that the book
was placed upon the Index Expurgatorius. The book
was withdrawn from circulation by Henri Lasserre,
naturally much to his own regret. It must be noted
also, as M. l’Abbe Barbin pointed out in the Univers
of November, 1896, that Lasserre had not made all the
corrections pointed out to him, especially in his preface;
and that a public and official note from the archdiocese
formally warned him that this imprimatur was not an
approbation properly so called, but rather a simple per
mission to print.
Now, in the first place, even had Leo XIII. approved
the translation, there would have been no question of
Papal Infallibility involved in the matter. The Pope is
infallible only when he teaches the Universal Church
ex cathedra. But Leo. XIII. did not approve the
translation in itself (we have no proof that he ever read
it) ; he approved of the object that Lasserre had in view,
the greater diffusion of the Gospel story. How does
this square with Mr. Smith’s proposition?
Secondly, as the Congregation of the Index is a higher
court than that of any Archbishop, it has the right to
revise the judgements of the lower courts.
Thirdly, let us see some of the translations given by
Lasserre, which doubtless influenced the Congregation in
its decision.
In the Lord’s Prayer “ lead us not into temptation ”
is changed in this wise : “ Forgive us our trespasses as
we forgive them that trespass against us. Yes, Lord,
I say this to You, and I think it from the bottom of my
heart; yes, I wish to forgive and to be generous, to
�Rome and the Bible.
3i
forgive those who offend me, and to be generous to my
debtors. All the same, do not put me to the test, for
I know myself and my own frailty.” St. John xiii. 1 :
“ He loved them to the end ” is turned into “ He put
the finishing touch to His love.” St. John xv. 1, 5 :
“ I am the vine and you are the branches.” He tires
of the word “branches” at last, and turns it into
“ leaves.” Do the leaves produce fruit ? St. John iv. 5 :
“ wearied ” is turned into “ overwhelmed by fatigue and
having no further strength.”
“ Having no further
strength” is an interpolation. St. John xii. 6: For
“ [Judas] carried the things that were put therein ” we
have “ [Judas] embezzled the things.” St. Luke i. 30 :
“ Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God ”
is changed into “Fear not, Mary, for thou hast won the
good graces of God.” St. Luke i. 34: “I know not
man ” becomes “ I have no relation with my husband.”
St. Matthew i. 20 : “Is of the Holy Ghost” becomes
“The fruit of the Holy Ghost.” St. Mark xiv. 23: “And
they all drank of it” (the chalice) at the institution of
the Blessed Eucharist; these words are omitted. The
Passion , of Our Lord in St. Mark’s Gospel is told, to
render it more vivid and picturesque, in the present
tense. This, however, is not translating. St. Matthew
xix. 9: M. Lasserre puts aside, in sheer ignorance of
the ordinary use of the word “proneia,” the meaning
which this passage bears by the common consent of ail
Christendom, and puts into Our Lord’s mouth a law
respecting divorce which the whole world ignores.
St. Mark iii. 21: “ He is become mad ” is changed into
“He has fainted.” St. Matthew xviii. 17: “It must
needs be that scandals come ” we are told in a note
probably means “ It is a misfortune that scandals come.”
It is said that Cardinal Pitra, one of the most learned
Cardinals of the time, counted more than eight hundred
mistakes in the translation. Was it not time, then, to
stop the circulation of the book as a translation of the
Gospels ?
The Abbe Barbin says of the book that from cover to
cover it is a paraphrase, an adaptation, an arrangement
�32
Rome and the Bible.
of the Gospel that is arbitrary, pretentious, and at times
unfortunate, but that it is not a translation. Lest the
meaning of Holy Scripture should be obscured, and the
traditional explanation coming down from the Apostolic
times be set aside and false doctrine take the place of
the teaching of Our Lord and His Apostles, the Church
had to step in and prohibit the circulation of such a
book among the faithful.
The Church values the
treasure of God’s Holy Word too highly to allow it to
be the sport and play of any man’s fancy. Had
Lasserre’s version been a faithful transcript of the
Scriptures, no prohibition would have been issued.
The Epistle of Clement.
Mr. Smith tells us (p. 44) that “ no trust can be placed
in the Romish translations of the Scriptures into the
vernacular, for, though almost incredible, yet it is a fact
that the Rhemish Testament includes the forged so-called
First Epistle of Clement to St. James.” It seems need
less to say that no such Epistle is to be found amongst
the Canon of Scripture in the Rheims Testament.
APPENDIX.
t
The Bible in Rome.
The following are extracts from the letter from the Rev.
Peter Chandlery, referred to on pp. 20, 29 :—
“ The Rev. Hobart Seymour states that he visited every book
selling establishment in Rome in 1850, and could not procure a
copy of the Holy Scriptures in Italian. Answer (1): I have here
in my room a copy of the whole Bible in Italian, in three volumes,
printed at Milan in 1848, and bought in Rome in 1850, and it is
certain that this same book was for sale at all the leading book
sellers’ in Rome. Answer (2) : I called this morning at one of the
largest booksellers in Rome, who assured me that the Bible in
Italian was for sale in their shop in 1850, and has been ever since.
_ “ He says Martini’s edition of the Bible in Italian was offered to
him in two places, but it was in twenty-four volumes, and the price
was some A4 sterling. Answer : The edition of Martini in my
room, bought in Rome in 1850, is in three volumes octavo, and has
the full text and notes; the price was not more than six francs a
volume—15s. in all. Copies of the New Testament were to be
had for two francs and one franc.”
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.
U
�
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Rome and the Bible
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Donnelly, T.
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 32 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: The substance of Sermons preached at St. Francis Xavier's, Liverpool, January 1897. Includes bibliographical references. Annotations in red pencil. Date of publication from KVK (OCLC WorldCat). A response to Samuel Smith, M.P.'s pamphlet 'The Claims of Rome'.
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Catholic Truth Society
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[1897?]
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RA1537
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Catholic Church
Bible
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Rome and the Bible), identified by <span><a href="www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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Bible
Catholic Church-Doctrinal and Controversial Works
Samuel Smith