Continued from I. Proofs That The Modern Church Of Rome Is The Enemy Of Scripture. Part 1.

We are not surprised that M. Merle d’Aubigné’s “History of the Reformation,” and Dr. M‘Crie’s “History of the Reformation in Italy,” should be thus honoured with the bitter denunciations of Gregory XVI., by whom they have been proscribed and condemned; for they contain such a development of the principles and proceedings of the Romish Church; and Dr. M‘Crie’s History, in particular, contains such a delineation of the atrocious means resorted to for the extinction of the Reformation—that is, of pure and undefiled religion—in Italy; as would most completely open the eyes of the Italians generally, and especially of the “citizens of his own city,” to the unscriptural and antiscriptural tenets and practices of the Popes and of papal emissaries and agents. Unable to refute the statements of those historians, who have based their narratives upon indisputable authorities and documents, Gregory XVI. has denounced and prohibited them: just as his predecessors, Alexander VIII. and Innocent XII., prohibited Bishop Burnet’s “History of the Reformation in England,”* in which we have such important details respecting the abominations of Popery at the time the Reformation commenced in this country, and also of the cruelties perpetrated on the defenceless Protestants during the sanguinary reign of Mary.

* “Burnet Gilbert. Histoire de la Reformation de l’Egtise d’Angleterre, traduit de l’Anglois par M. de Rosemond, Decr. 20 Maii, 1690, et 21 Apr. 1692.—Index Libiorum Prohibitorum. p. 53 Rome, 1841.

To the authoritative declarations of successive Popes, above given, against the circulation and free reading of the Scriptures, we feel that it is perfectly unnecessary for us to add a single reflection. They breathe, throughout, a determined and unmitigated spirit of hatred to the Bible; and no wonder, —”for if the blessed truths of that divine book were once to become familiar to the ears and hearts of the poor, to whom that Gospel was preached,” they would soon find out that they had long been following blind guides, who have “made the commandment of God of none effect by their vain traditions.” Where, however, the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue are in the hands of a “people who know the joyful sound” of the Gospel, and who are devoutly grateful for that inestimable boon; there the emissaries of Popery cannot make any progress in proselyting.

Of this important and delightful fact we have a signal illustration in the very ancient (we might say, primitive) Church of the Vaudois, and in the modern Christians of the island of Tahiti. The Vaudois have, all along, had the Scriptures in their hands. It was one of the charges made against them by their sanguinary Popish persecutors in the twelfth century, that they held that the text of the sacred Scriptures is to be received and believed in opposition to human traditions and comments. To the Vaudois were the Protestants of France indebted for the first French version of the Bible (generally called “Olivetan’s Bible,” from the name of its ostensible translator), which bears the date of 1535, and which was printed at their expense. And, notwithstanding the many centuries of persecution and oppression which the Vaudois have endured, their venerable Church—like the bush on the rock of Horeb—still subsists, burning, yet unconsumed. In the island of Tahiti, through the divine blessing upon the labours of the missionaries of the London Missionary Society, the inhabitants, having experienced “the Gospel” to be “the power of God unto salvation,”—thirty years since renounced idolatry, with all its attendant abominations: and, having received from the missionaries the precious gift of the holy Scriptures in their native language, they have continued, and still continue, steadfast in the faith of Christ, unmoved by the seductive efforts of the Jesuit missionaries of Rome, who accompanied the French, when they illegally possessed themselves of the island of Tahiti in the year 1842.

We will now direct the attention of our readers to a few of the practical results of all these Papal denunciations against the unadulterated and canonical books of the holy Scriptures, which Leo XII. audaciously termed “deadly pastures,” and “the gospel of the devil.”

At the present day, indeed, in Protestant countries where the sacerdotal despotism of Rome is held in check, the fourth rule of the Index of Prohibited Books, on which (as our readers will have seen) so many pontiffs dwell with fond delight, is not and cannot be enforced to the very letter; but wherever Popery is absolutely dominant, the free circulation of the Bible is prohibited, and consequently the great mass of the people are destitute of the Word of Life.

In all the dominions of the Emperor of Austria, for instance, Bibles—whether in Hebrew or in the vulgar tongue—are prohibited with such inflexible rigour, that, in 1889, when two members of the deputation from the Church of Scotland arrived at Brody, in Austrian Poland, on a benevolent mission of inquiry into the religious and moral condition of the Jews, every book, in whatever language, was taken from them, “even (they state) our Hebrew and English Bibles; and we were left the alternative of allowing them to be sent to Lemberg, to be examined by the censor there, and waiting for his opinion of their orthodoxy, or of at once allowing ourselves to be deprived of their use, until we should be beyond the dominions of Austria. On our preferring the latter alternative, they agreed to seal up our books in a parcel, and send them on to Cracow, to await our arrival. When we pleaded to be allowed to retain our English Bibles, the only answer we received was, It is not allowed in Austria.”*

* “Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland in 1839,” p. 458, Edinburgh, 1944.

It was from the Austrian province of Tyrol that six hundred Protestant Tyrolese were compelled to expatriate themselves in 1837, having been led to renounce the errors of Popery by the reading of the Bible and other religious books which had been carried into that country.*

* The Zillethalers, who had endured every possible annoyance and vexation from the Popish clergy for several years, found a hospitable asylum in the dominions of the King of Prussia, at Erdmannsdorf, in Upper Silesa.

In France, recourse has, on various occasions, been had to the pulpit and the press, for the purpose of decrying the object and misrepresenting the motives of those who are employed in the benevolent work of circulating the holy Scriptures; but the reports of the British and Foreign Bible Society contain most gratifying intelligence that “the word of God is not bound.” Not merely are individuals, but in many instances whole villages are renouncing the errors of Popery; and the annually increasing diffusion of the Bible in that country only attests the futile hostility of the emissaries of Rome.

In Belgium, every opposition which can well be conceived has for many years been made to the circulation of the holy Scriptures. The persons employed have been not merely reproached, insulted, and threatened, but mobs have been instigated to maltreat and injure them. Their books have been stolen or forcibly taken away, and some of them even torn to pieces or burnt before their eyes. Yet they have persevered in the prosecution of their labours of Christian love; and not unfrequently have they been indebted for their personal safety to the presence and interference of the civil, and sometimes of the military, authorities.*

* Thirty-fourth Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society, p. 30, Thirty-fifth Report, p. 35. Thirty-eighth Pp. 35, 36.

It is not surprising that persons of inferior rank should look on this good work with an evil eye, when a prelate of the Romish Church in that country, the Bishop of Bruges,† hesitates not to describe and denounce the British and Foreign Bible Society as “a society hostile to God and to the holy Church”—a society which would rob “his dear brethren of all that is most dear to them.”

† In his mandement (From French, pastoral letter), or annual address for Lent, 1838.

Citing the Encyclical Letter of Leo XII. above quoted, the bishop proceeds to characterize the circulation of the unmitigated Scriptures as “the impious project of this anti-Christian society, by which the world is inundated with heretical Bibles……in which the perfidy of heretics has carried sacrilegious temerity to such an extent, as shamefully to mutilate the book of Daniel; nay, even to cut out whole books, as those of Tobit, Judith, the book of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and the Maccabees.”

The falsehood of this assertion is only equaled by its ignorance. The editions of the Scriptures, thus audaciously denounced, comprise only “those canonical books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church” (Art. VI.): and the books asserted to be “shamefully mutilated” are the apocryphal books, which were never recognised as canonical by the Jews (to whom were committed the oracles of God), nor by the primitive Christian Churches, nor by the modern Greek Church, nor by any general council; until the Council of Trent, in utter disregard of truth calling itself ecumenical or general, in the sixteenth century, pronounced them to be “holy and canonical,” with an anathema against any one who should not receive all these apocryphal books.

“It is not” (the Bishop of Bruges continues) “that the Church wishes to forbid altogether the reading of the holy Scriptures, in the vulgar tongue, to the simple and faithful. Such is not—such never was—the intention of this good mother; but she holds heretical Bibles in abhorrence, and utterly detests them. And with regard to other translations, the Church only permits the reading of them, where ‘the translations are approved by the holy see, or published with the notes of the holy fathers, or of some Catholic doctors'”*

* Thirty-fourth Report of the Bible Society, pp, xxx., xxxi.

Our surprise at the hostility to the Bible in Belgium will cease, when it is known that Popery flourishes in that country as in a hotbed. Rome itself can scarcely “vie with it in blind and active zeal for all that is connected with the interests of that awful system; and, as may be expected, Rome shows itself in all its unblushing effrontery. Money is lavished on the building and adorning of churches, and shrines, and virgins. The Virgin Mary is exalted and worshipped as divine, and receives more homage than Christ. More offerings are made to her than to him; more confidence is placed in her intercession than in that of the Saviour!”*

* Appeal of the Belgian Evangelical Society for 1843, p.3. On Ascension-day (May 25th), 1843, a splendid crown, composed of ninety ounces of pure gold, and containing 593 precious stones and 377 fine pearls, the workmanship of which alone cost 2801. sterling, was presented to a “miraculous image of the Virgin,” invoked as the Mother of Mercy. This image was presented with all that imposing pomp and splendour with which Rome knows so well how to fascinate the senses, in the presence of the King and Queen of the Belgians, their son, the Duke of Brabant, and a vast multitude of their subjects, “The circle of the diadem bore an inscription—’Maria Matri Misericordiae,’ in azure letters, because” [as the editor of the Journal de Bruxelles, of May 31st, 1843, affirmed] “Mary is Queen of heaven by the almighty power of God. The emblems are taken from different royal and imperial crowns, to show that Mary’s crown includes and far surpasses them all. On the top of the four arches (after the royal crown) is an orb surmounted by the sign of redemption, because the Mother of the Saviour reigns by this sign of salvation!!!” This golden-crowned image of the Virgin held in her arm an image of Christ as a child; on whose head was a small silver crown. But no offering was made to the child.

The following blasphemous address of the Lord’s Prayer to the blessed Virgin is translated from a card sold in the shops at Brussels, illuminated with gold and various colours:—

Our mother who are [art] in heaven, O Mary, blessed be your name for ever; let your love come to all our hearts; let your desires be accomplished on earth as in heaven; give us this day grace and mercy; give us the pardon of all our faults, as we hope it from your unbounded goodness; and let us no more yield to temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.”

In Portugal, the Scriptures are unknown among the peasantry.* In Spain, the Bible is a prohibited book, unless it be accompanied with notes from fathers and Romish divines: and the learned Felix Torres Amat, Bishop of Astorga, could not obtain permission from the congregation of the Index at Rome for publishing his Spanish version of the Scriptures, with notes, but on the condition “that he should show his readers that the reading of the Scriptures is not necessary to salvation.” This condition he subsequently fulfilled, “by duly instructing the readers of his second edition that they might go to heaven without reading the word of God.”†

* Borrow’s “Bible in Spain” (Home and Colonial Library, vol i. p. 6).
† Rule’s “Memoir of a Mission to Gibraltar,” p. 70, London, 1844.

So recently as the year 1838, the circulation of the Gospel of St. Luke, which Mr. Borrow had translated into the dialect of the Gitanos, or Spanish gypsies (a numerous and degraded race), was prohibited by an ordinance of the Spanish Government: as also was the circulation of the same Gospel in the Spanish Basque dialect, which is spoken in the provinces of Guipuscoa and Biscay.

Continued in Part 3.