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ROME'S POLICY | 
 
 TOWARDS 
 
 OR, 
 
 PAPAL EFFORTS I 
 
 TO 
 
 SUPPRESS THE SCRIPTURES 
 
 IN THE LAST FIVE CENTURIES, EXPOSED. 
 
 BY AN AMERICAN CITIZEN, 
 
 Author of the Voice from Borne, &c. 
 
 &p 
 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 JAMES M. CAMPBELL, 98 CHESTNUT STREET. 
 
 NEW YORK:— SAXTON & MILES. 
 
 1844. 
 
 
A* 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1344, 
 
 By James M. Campbell, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of 
 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 / 
 
 f 
 
 I 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The argument of the following Treatise is close 
 and simple. When we show from authentic docu- 
 ments and undeniable facts, that the unfaltering pur- 
 pose of the Papal power, during the last five centu- 
 ries, has been, by civil enactments, restrictions and 
 penalties, to prohibit and suppress the Scriptures in 
 the living languages, and by canons of infallible coun- 
 cils and papal bulls to declare the public reading of 
 the Scriptures to be positively injurious to popular 
 morals — when we prove that no effort which Papal 
 ingenuity, perfidy and cruelty could devise or exert, 
 has been left untried, to wrest the Bible from the 
 hands of the common people, and that by obligations 
 the most sacred and interests the most vital to her 
 own existence, the Church of Rome is absolutely of 
 necessity compelled to denounce and oppose the popu- 
 lar use of God's word, we can safely leave to the 
 candid inference of the reader, what the recent de- 
 monstration upon the right of the American people to 
 ttfe use of the Scriptures in the Public Schools imports, 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 and whether it is expedient or safe to listen to the 
 suggestions of those who advise concession to the de- 
 mands of the Pope on the ground either of indiffer- 
 ence, expediency, or justice. 
 
 From the days of Wicliff, A. D. 13S0, to the year 
 1844, the Church of Rome has pursued but one line 
 of policy towards the Bible ; the same which she must 
 follow, with unfaltering step, until God's judgments 
 consign her to the doom for which she is ripening. 
 She has forbidden the nations to read God's word — 
 she has destroyed thousands and tens of thousands of 
 copies of the Holy Scriptures in the flames, and she 
 has hurried to the dungeon, the gibbet, and the stake, 
 all whom she ever dared to punish for listening to 
 God's commands, rather than to her impious traditions. 
 The Bible is the great obstacle to Papal supremacy. 
 The question must soon be decided here — whether 
 the efforts to destroy this strong tower of defence shall 
 prosper, or cover its authors and abettors with shame 
 and everlasting contempt. 
 
ROME'S POLICY TOWARDS THE BIBLE, 
 
 The history of the translation of the Bible into the 
 living languages of Europe, but more especially into 
 the English tongue, and the efforts which have uni- 
 formly been made by the papal power to suppress or 
 restrict its circulation, constitute a powerful argument 
 in the controversy which is now waging between 
 Protestantism and Popery, and so clearly define the 
 position of the church of Rome on this question, that 
 every attempt to mystify it, or to mislead public 
 opinion in relation to the real wishes and designs of 
 the Papacy, involves its advocates in mazes of contra- 
 diction from which it is morally impossible to extri- 
 cate them. Facts will show, that from the period 
 when Wicliff 's translation of the Scriptures was com- 
 pleted, A. D. 1380, and the laity of England began to 
 read the Scriptures for themselves, the Bible was made 
 a forbidden book by ecclesiastical decrees, and the 
 most strenuous efforts were made to wrest it out of 
 the hands of the common people. It is generally 
 conceded, that Wicliff 's version of the Bible was the 
 first complete translation of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments ever made in English. Portions of the sacred 
 volume had been rendered into the vernacular, prior 
 to his day, but the entire Bible had not been accessi- 
 ble to the common people until this eminent Reformer 
 
 2 
 
O EARLY TRANSLATIONS. 
 
 unlocked the treasury of holy writ, and furnished his 
 countrymen with the key. Several partial transla- 
 tions and paraphrases, of which the following is a 
 summary, had been prepared previous to the time of 
 Wicliff. 
 
 Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges and Esther, para- 
 phrased by iELFRic in the latter part of the tenth 
 century. 
 
 Some of the History op the Kings, and perhaps 
 Job by the same. 
 
 The Ten Commandments, in Exodus xx., and parts 
 of the three following chapters, by King Alfred, in 
 the latter part of the ninth century. 
 
 The Book of Psalms; two versions in the begin- 
 ning of the eighth century by Aldhelm and Guthlac. 
 
 The same book is found in manuscripts of the 
 eleventh century. 
 
 Part of the Proverbs, translated probably in the 
 ninth century. 
 
 (The Apocryphal books of Judith and the Mac- 
 cabees, by iELFRic in the latter part of the ninth cen- 
 tury.) 
 
 The Gospel of John by the venerable Bede in the 
 eighth century. 
 
 The four Gospels by Aldred, probably in the 
 end of the ninth century. 
 
 The Gospel of Matthew by Farmen, probably 
 in the tenth century. 
 
 The Gospel of Mark, Luke and John, by Owen, 
 about the same period. 
 
 The four Gospels somewhat later. (The publish- 
 ed translation.) 
 
WALDENSIAN BIBLE. 7 
 
 And again, the four Gospels in the Anglo-Nor- 
 man Dialect.* 
 
 The extent to which these portions of the sacred 
 writings were diffused cannot of course be ascertained 
 with precision, but as it is more than probable that but 
 few of the common people could read their own tongue, 
 there can be very little doubt that the circulation was 
 limited. The earliest vestige of an attempt to para- 
 phrase any part of the Scriptures in the Anglo Saxon 
 tongue is a poem of Caedmon in the seventh century, 
 published in Amsterdam, A. D. 1665, by Junius. It 
 embraces a narrative of the fall of the angels, the 
 creation, the deluge, the history of the children of 
 Israel in their departure from Egypt, together with 
 portions of the history of Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel. 
 
 There is reason to believe that the entire Bible 
 translated into the vernacular of the Waldenses was 
 in use among that most interesting branch of the Chris- 
 tian Church, prior to the appearance of Wicliff's ver- 
 sion. Perrin, the faithful historian of these martyred 
 brethren has preserved at the close of his history, the 
 Waldensian Articles and Confession of faith, together 
 with their Catechism for the instruction of youth, their 
 Book of Discipline and certain treatises, bearing date 
 A. D. 1120, in which the books of the sacred writings 
 are enumerated in such a way as to leave the impres- 
 sion that they had access to the oracles of God in their 
 own language. Like true Protestants, they exclude 
 the Apocrypha from the canon. Besides, there is im- 
 portant collateral evidence to the same effect. It is 
 certain, that the Council of Toulouse enacted the fol- 
 lowing decree with special reference to the Albigen- 
 
 * Preface to Bagster's Hexapla, p. 4. 
 
8 wicliff's translation. 
 
 sian and VValdensian heretics, A. D. 1229: " We for- 
 bid and prohibit the books of the Old Testament to 
 the laity, unless they will have the Psalter or some 
 Breviary for divine service, or the Prayer-book of the 
 blessed Virgin Mary for their devotion; most express- 
 ly forbidding them to have the said books translated 
 
 IN THE VULGAR TONGUE. " 
 
 It is highly probable that Wicliff, who derived his 
 views of gospel truth from the Waldenses, so far as 
 instrumentality was concerned, was further indebted 
 to them for the suggestion of an open Bible for the 
 people. The labours of the Inquisition were specially 
 directed to the extirpation of heresy among the Vau- 
 dois, and that tribunal was originally instituted with 
 reference to them. The Council of Toulouse was 
 convened in order to strengthen the hands of the Inqui- 
 sitors of heretical pravity, and they would certainly 
 not have issued a decree prohibiting the circulation of 
 the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, had they not 
 known, that the Christians of the thirteenth century 
 were indebted for their Protestant principles to the 
 carefulness and zeal with which they studied and in- 
 culcated the truths of the Bible. 
 
 However this may be, the fact is sufficiently proved 
 that Wicliff 's translation was the first complete ver- 
 sion of the Scriptures published in the English tongue; 
 it was through his labours that the people of England 
 were enabled to read and understand the word of 
 God. When we speak of WiclifF's version as having 
 been published, we use the term in the acceptation in 
 which it was employed in the fourteenth century and 
 in the ages prior to the invention of the art of printing, 
 A. D. 1450. Publication in WiclifPs time was com- 
 
FIRST ENGLISH VERSION. 9 
 
 monly effected either by the employment of copyists, 
 who multiplied transcripts of the original according 
 to the demand, or by depositing the work in a con- 
 vent or college library, where it was accessible to the 
 learned for reference or transcript. It has been assert- 
 ed but never proved by Romanists, that entire English 
 translations of the Scriptures existed prior to Wicliff's 
 time; but even supposing this to be true, the attempt 
 had never been made to publish a vernacular version 
 in England until Wicliff's publication, which appear- 
 ed A. D. 1380. It was not long before the jealousy 
 and indignation of the priesthood were aroused by 
 the diffusion of "heresy" incident to the spread of 
 Wicliff's version. In 1408 Henry Knighton, a bitter 
 reviler of the Reformer, and a cotemporary, com- 
 plains, that "the gospel which Christ delivered to the 
 clergy and doctors of the church that they might, 
 themselves, secretly administer to the laity and to 
 weaker persons with the hunger of their mind ac- 
 cording to the exigency of the times and the need of 
 persons, did this Master John Wicliff translate out of 
 Latin into English . . . whence through him it became 
 vulgar and more open to the laity, and women who 
 could read, than it used to be to the most learned of 
 the clergy, even to those of them who had the best 
 understanding." He then proceeds to lament that by 
 this general diffusion of Scripture truth, contempt was 
 cast upon the Bible, which was no longer regarded as 
 the special talisman of the priesthood: "And in this 
 way, the gospel pearl is cast abroad, and trodden un- 
 der foot of swine, and that which used to be precious 
 to both clergy and laity, is rendered as it were, the 
 
 2* 
 
10 wicliff's patriotism. 
 
 common jest of both. The jewel of the clergy is 
 turned into the sport of the laity, and what was 
 hitherto the principal talent of the clergy and doc- 
 tors of the Church, is made forever common to the 
 laity." 
 
 From Knighton's time to the present day, this has 
 been the grand objection which Rome has repeated in 
 canons, bulls, and anathemas, and by which she has 
 endeavoured to persuade sinners, that the book of 
 God in which they are taught the way of life is not 
 to be entrusted to 'the common people, because its 
 doctrines are too abstruse for their comprehension, 
 although by the testimony of Scripture itself, confirm- 
 ed by universal experience, the doctrines essential to 
 salvation are level with the capacity of a child, and 
 so simple that the wayfaring man though a fool can- 
 not err therein. 
 
 It is interesting to mark how intimate has been the 
 association in all ages and countries, between love for 
 the Bible and zeal for the principles of civil and reli- 
 gious freedom. The character of Wicliff affords a 
 fine illustration of this point. When pope Urban V. 
 A. D. 1365, preferred a claim of temporal authority 
 over England, and demanded an annual tribute of one 
 thousand marks from king Edward III., Wicliff, who 
 was at that time the royal chaplain, protested against 
 the demand as unrighteous, and threw his entire in- 
 fluence in favour of the decision of the Parliament, 
 who with becoming spirit threatened the Pope with 
 war in case he should persist in pressing the claim. 
 We are not surprised that the anger of the sovereign 
 pontiff was aroused against the bold Reformer, and 
 
PAPAL ANATHEMAS. 11 
 
 that the rapid growth of true religion alarmed the 
 fears of the court of Rome. Wicliff hitherto had not 
 disputed the pontifical supremacy in spiritual affairs, 
 and it was not until about the year 1380 that he was 
 led to repudiate the dominion of the papacy in every 
 respect, as utterly without authority in the Christian 
 Church. At length on the 22d of May, 1377, four 
 bulls were issued against the Reformer by Pope Gre- 
 gory XI. Their effect, however, owing to certain po- 
 litical causes was by no means such as might have 
 been anticipated. In truth the bulls themselves ex- 
 press the fear that the royal family was not entirely 
 free from the taint of Wicliff's doctrine, and the event 
 showed that the apprehension was not without foun- 
 dation. Besides, the charges brought by the Pope 
 were extremely vague, and seemed to consist of in- 
 ferences, drawn from the accusations of enemies of the 
 Reformer sustained by no evidence, on which he could 
 be convicted of any real offence, and when at length 
 the prelates proceeded to cite Wicliff, they received a 
 significant hint from court to beware how they con- 
 demned either Wicliff or his doctrines. The Reformer 
 published what he called a "Sort of Answer to the 
 Bull," in which he uses this stern Protestant lan- 
 guage, alluding to the papal efforts to suppress the 
 circulation of the Scriptures. 
 
 " Let him (the Pope,) not be ashamed to perform 
 the ministry of the church, since he is, or at least 
 ought to be, the servant of the servants of God. But 
 
 A PROHIBITION OF READING THE SACRED SCRIPTURES, 
 
 and a vanity of secular dominion, would seem to par- 
 take too much of a disposition towards the blasphe- 
 
12 BIBLE CONDEMNED. 
 
 mous advancement of antichrist, especially while 
 the truths of a scriptural faith are reputed tares, 
 and said to be opposed to Christian truth by certain 
 leaders, who arrogate that we must abide by their 
 decision respecting every article of faith, notwithstand- 
 ing they themselves are plainly ignorant of the faith of 
 the Scriptures. But by such means, there follows a 
 crowding to the court (of Rome) to purchase a con- 
 demnation OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES AS HERETI- 
 CAL, and thence come dispensations contrary to the 
 articles of the Christian Faith. " In fact, Wicliff was 
 driven by his very position to the necessity of trans- 
 lating the Scriptures. He had denied the Pope's au- 
 thority; first in things temporal, and finally in spiritual 
 affairs; he had done this on his individual respon- 
 sibility, sustained by the plain teachings of the word of 
 God, and it was necessary for others to be put in posses- 
 sion of the same authority if they were to satisfy their 
 own consciences of the rectitude of this opposition to the 
 mandates of the Pope; hence a version of the Scrip- 
 tures for the common people was indispensable. Pro- 
 vidence favoured him by permitting him to prosecute 
 his labours for the space of three years, from 137S to 
 the spring of 1381, unmolested by either secular or 
 ecclesiastical authority, until his work was not only 
 completed, but copies of it had been multiplied to an 
 almost incredible extent. Rome's hatred of the Bible 
 was soon exhibited in the rigorous prohibition of the 
 ecclesiastical authorities against the circulation of the 
 word of God. As early as the year 1400, it had be- 
 come a dangerous matter for any part of WiclifPs 
 translation to be either transcribed, or found in the 
 
THE LOLLARDS. 13 
 
 possession of any one, and we shall proceed at once 
 to illustrate Rome's policy towards the Scriptures by 
 a few of the facts with which the annals of this period 
 abound. 
 
 Attempts had been made to procure an act of Par- 
 liament, A. D. 1390, to effect the suppression of the 
 English translation of the Scriptures, but owing to the 
 strenuous opposition of John of Gaunt, the plot fail- 
 ed; but in 1400, Archbishop Arundel shortly after 
 his accession to the See of Canterbury, became the 
 uncompromising enemy of all who were suspected of 
 " Lollardie," and this year was signalized by the 
 martyrdom of William Sawtree, the first of the Lol- 
 lards, who were put to death in England on account 
 of their faith. They derived their name from Walter 
 Lollard, a German monk, who from having been an 
 Inquisitot and a persecutor of the Waldenses became 
 a zealous preacher of the faith which he had once 
 laboured to destroy. The zeal of the Lollards must 
 indeed have been ardent, when their numbers in a 
 few years time were estimated in England alone, at 
 one fourth of the population. Reinher, a Roman 
 Inquisitor in the latter part of the fourteenth century 
 has given the following description of them : 
 
 "The disciples of Wicliff are men of a serious 
 modest deportment, avoiding all ostentation in dress, 
 mixing Utile with the busy world, and complaining 
 of the debauchery of mankind. They maintain them- 
 selves wholly by their own labour, and utterly despise 
 wealth; being fully content with bare necessaries. 
 They follow no traffic, because it is attended with so 
 much lying, swearing, and cheating. They are chaste 
 
14 PERSECUTION. 
 
 and temperate, are never seen in taverns, or amused 
 by the trifling gaieties of life. You find them always 
 employed, either learning or teaching. They are 
 concise and devout in their prayers ; blaming an 
 unanimated prolixity. They never swear ; speak 
 little ; and in their public preaching they lay the chief 
 stress on charity. They never mind canonical hours, 
 because they say that a paternoster or two, repeated 
 with devotion, is better than tedious hours spent with- 
 out devotion. They explain the Scriptures in a dif- 
 ferent way from the holy doctors and Church of 
 Rome. They speak little, and humbly, and are well 
 behaved in appearance." Strange that men, whose 
 enemies were constrained to give so unequivocal a 
 testimony should nevertheless have been subjected to 
 all the tortures of fire and sword on account of their 
 dissent from the Church of Rome! During the reign 
 of Richard II., many Lollards were imprisoned and 
 compelled to do penance under the most degrading 
 circumstances, but it was not until after the deposi- 
 tion of this monarch in 139.9, and the accession of 
 Henry of Lancaster, the Son of John of Gaunt, that 
 the spectacle was exhibited in England of men and 
 women burned alive at the stake for daring to read 
 and keep God's word in their vernacular tongue. 
 This persecution raged during a period of one hun- 
 dred and fifty years until the influence of the Refor- 
 mation delivered England from the shackles of Papal 
 dominion. Henry IV. in the second year of his reign 
 consented to a law by which it was made a capital 
 offence for any person to "preach, maintain, teach, 
 inform, openly or in secret, or make or write any 
 
BIBLE READERS BURNED. 15 
 
 book, contrary to the Catholic faith, and the determi- 
 nation of the holy church;" but the worst feature of 
 all in the new enactment was that which made the 
 ordinary* or Bishop and his priests, the judges in all 
 cases of heresy, placing at their disposal the sheriffs 
 and mayor, into whose hands the convicted were de- 
 livered. By the terms of this law all persons having 
 books or writings deemed heretical, were required to 
 deliver them to the ordinary within forty days, and 
 those who refused to do so were to be tried for the 
 offence, not before a jury — nor before the secular 
 courts, but by the ecclesiastical tribunals, and if con- 
 victed of meeting in forbidden " conventicles," or 
 keeping any schools in which the " wicked doctrine 
 and opinions" of this sect were taught, or u favouring 
 such preacher, maker of assemblies, or bookmaker, or 
 writer, or teacher," the law provided, that the mayor 
 and his officers " shall take unto them the said per- 
 sons so offending, and any of them, and cause them 
 openly to be burned in the sight of all the people, to 
 the intent that this kind of punishment may be a ter- 
 ror unto others ; and the like wicked doctrines and 
 heretical opinions, or authors and framers thereof, be 
 no more maintained within this realm and dominions 
 to the great hurt of the Christian religion, and the 
 decrees of the holy Church." The session of Parlia- 
 ment in which this act of cruelty was passed, had 
 not closed, when Arundel, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury proceeded to enforce it. "William Sawtree 
 
 * By the ordinary is meant the person who holds ecclesiasti- 
 cal jurisdiction in any place — generally the Bishop of the dio- 
 cese. 
 
16 sawtree's sentence. 
 
 was the first English martyr who was burned alive 
 for maintaining the doctrines of Scripture in opposi- 
 tion to the errors of Popery. The principal articles 
 alleged against him were, that he had said, "He 
 would not worship the cross on which Christ suffered, 
 but only Christ that suffered on the cross, that every 
 priest arid deacon is more bound to preach the word 
 of God, than to say particular services at the canoni- 
 cal hours; and that after the pronouncing of the 
 sacramental words of the body of Christ, the bread 
 remaineth of the same nature that it was before, nei- 
 ther doth it cease lo be bread. " 
 
 Refusing to renounce these errors, the following 
 sentence was passed; we insert it entire that our 
 readers may form an idea of the awful manner in 
 which the character of God was blasphemed by per- 
 petrating such cruelties against innocent men, in his 
 name. 
 
 "In the name of God, amen. We, Thomas, by 
 the grace of God, Archbishop of Canterbury, primate 
 of England, and legate of the See Apostolical, by the 
 authority of God Almighty, and blessed St. Peter 
 and Paul, and of holy church, and by our own au- 
 thority, sitting for tribunal or chief judge, having 
 God alone before our eyes, by the council and con- 
 sent of the whole clergy, our fellow brethren and 
 suffragans, assistants to us in this present council pro- 
 vincial, by this our sentence definitive do pronounce, 
 decree, and declare by these presents, the William 
 Sawtree, otherwise called Chawtrey, parish priest 
 pretended personally appearing before us, in and 
 upon the crime of heresy, judicially and lawfully 
 convicted as an heretic to be punished. " 
 
SAWTREE BURNED. 17 
 
 In accordance with this sentence, Sawtree was 
 burned alive, after having in due form, been de- 
 graded from the priesthood on the 26th of February, 
 1401, and delivered to the secular power, "request- 
 ing the said court that they will receive favourably 
 the said William Sawtree, thus committed unto 
 them." The secular power well understood the 
 meaning of this grimace, and the very same day a 
 writ was issued directed to the mayor and sheriffs of 
 London, the purport of which was that they should 
 "cause the said William, in some public or open 
 place within the liberties of the city, (the cause being 
 published to the people,) to be put on the fire, and 
 there in the same fire really to be burned, to the 
 great horror of his offence, and the manifest example 
 of other Christians." Without loss of time the writ 
 was executed. 
 
 During the ecclesiastical administration of Arundel, 
 the propagation of heresy and the circulation of the 
 Scriptures were synonymous terms, and in order to 
 suppress the evil which already threatened the over- 
 throw of the papal power, a convocation of the pro- 
 vince of Canterbury was called at Oxford, at which 
 thirteen constitutions were framed. The first two 
 of the constitutions defined who might preach — the 
 third and fourth determined what might be preached; 
 the fifth related to what masters might teach their 
 scholars; the sixth was directed against the writings 
 of John Wicliff by name; whilst the seventh was 
 nothing short of a prohibition 'of the Scriptures 
 in English. 
 
 " It is a dangerous thing as St. Jerome assures us, 
 
 3 
 
18 BIBLE FORBIDDEN. 
 
 to translate the Holy Scriptures, it being very diffi- 
 cult in a version to keep close to the sense of the 
 inspired writers, for by the confession of the same 
 father, he had mistaken the meaning of several texts. 
 We therefore decree and ordain, that from hencefor- 
 ward no unauthorized person shall translate any part 
 of the Holy Scripture into English or any other lan- 
 guage, under any form of book or treatise : neither 
 shall any such book, treatise, or version, made either 
 in WiclifPs time or since, be read, either in whole 
 or in part, publicly or privately, under the penalty of 
 the greater excommunicaion, till the said translation 
 shall be approved either by the bishop of the diocese, 
 or a provincial council as occasion shall require. 
 
 "The six other constitutions relate to the modes of 
 expression in speaking of God; to disputations on 
 points of Roman belief; to the letters dimissory of 
 priests; to the exclusion of * Lollardie' from Oxford, 
 to the deprivation of offenders, and to the process to 
 be employed in dealing with heretics." 
 
 The seventh of these constitutions is an important 
 document in the history of Rome's policy towards 
 the Bible. It proves not only the extent to which 
 Wicliff's "poor priests," as the travelling preachers 
 of " Lollardie" were called, had diffused the leaven 
 of his doctrines, but it shows that the utter incom- 
 patibility of Popery with the free circulation of the 
 Scriptures, was felt and acknowledged for centuries 
 previous to the Great Reformation in Switzerland 
 and Germany. Rome's hatred of the Bible is pain- 
 fully exemplified in the obloquy which she has endea- 
 voured to heap upon the memory of the great and 
 
wicliff's bones. 19 
 
 good Wicliff. Owing to the superintendence of a 
 kind Providence, he was permitted to die in his bed, 
 (Dec. 31, 1384,) but the malice of the Church of 
 Rome was vented upon his bones. The Council of 
 Constance, A. D. 1415, full thirty years after Wic- 
 liff's death, consigned the memory of the Reformer, in 
 due order, to infamy and execration, and issued a 
 decree that "his body and bones, if they might be 
 discerned and known from the bodies of other faithful 
 people, should be taken from the ground and thrown 
 far away from the burial of any church, according to 
 the canon laws and decrees." Commenting upon this 
 humane mode of vengeance, (and certainly, we should 
 not so much complain of papal barbarity, had infal- 
 lible Councils, Popes and Bishops, uniformly wreaked 
 their wrath upon men's bodies after death had visited 
 them in the natural course of events,) Fox, the well 
 known author of the Acts and Monuments, says: 
 u And here, what Heraclitus would not laugh or what 
 Democritus would not weep, to see so sage and reve- 
 rend Catoes, to occupie their heads to take up a poor 
 man's bodie, so long dead and buried? And yet,per- 
 adventure, they were not able to find his right bones, 
 but tooke up some other bodie, and so of a Catholic 
 made a heretic." Be this as it may, poor Wicliff's 
 grave was actually ransacked, though not till thirteen 
 years after the decree had passed or forty-three years 
 after the Reformer had been placed beyond their 
 reach, and his remains, after having been disinterred 
 and burned, were thrown into the river Swift. 
 " And so," exclaims the martyrologist above named, 
 " was he resolved into three elements, earth, fire, and 
 
20 THE SCRIPTURES READ. 
 
 water; they thinking thereby utterly to extinct and 
 abolish both the name and doctrine of Wicliff for 
 ever. Not much unlike the example of the old Pha- 
 risees and Sepulchre-Knights, which, when they 
 brought the Lord unto the grave, thought to make 
 him sure never to rise again. But these, and all others 
 must know, that, as there is no counsel against the 
 Lord, so there is no keeping down of veritie, but it 
 will spring and come out of dust and ashes ; as ap- 
 peared right well in this man. For though they dig- 
 ged up his body, burned his bones, and drowned his 
 ashes, yet the word of God and truth of his doctrine 
 with the truth and success thereof, they could not 
 burn; which, yet, to this day, for the most part of his 
 articles do remain/'* "The brook," says Fuller, 
 "did convey his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, 
 Severn into the narrow seas; they into the main ocean. 
 And thus the ashes of Wicliff are the emblem of his 
 doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over." 
 Notwithstanding the severe penalties by which the 
 reading of the Scriptures was prohibited, the word of 
 God grew during this century, and multiplied exceed- 
 ingly; and yet the mere possession of a copy of the 
 Bible in the vulgar tongue was sufficient during this 
 century to convict a man of heresy and to consign him 
 to the stake. In the year 1429, Richard Fletcher, of 
 B.ucles was accused of being " a most perfect doctor 
 in that sect, (the Lollards) and can very well and 
 perfectly expound the Holy Scriptures, and hath a 
 book of the New Law in English, which was Sir 
 
 * Fox in Wordsw. Eccl. Biogrs. Vol. I. pp. 96, 97. 
 
PRAYERS TO THE VIRGIN. 21 
 
 Hugh Pie's first." Another indictment sets forth, 
 "That Nicholas Belevard, son of John Belevard, 
 dwelling in the parish of Southelam, is one of the 
 same sect, and hath a New Testament, which he 
 bought at London, for four marks and forty pence, 
 (i. e. £2 15s. 8d.) and taught the said Wm. Wright, 
 and Margery, his wife, and wrought with them con- 
 tinually by the space of one year, and studied dili- 
 gently upon the same New Testament." In order 
 to show the estimation in which the book of God was 
 held among the Lollards, it will be proper to remind 
 the reader that the above-mentioned sum at that time 
 was deemed a sufficient yearly stipend for a curate. 
 In many instances, persons were charged with heresy 
 on the ground that they could read English, so clear- 
 ly was this proficiency identified with the perusal of 
 the Scriptures in the minds of those, who essayed 
 utterly to extinguish the light of Gospel truth. An- 
 other remarkable coincidence is found in the circum- 
 stance that the worship of the Virgin Mary was en- 
 forced with renewed vigour, simultaneously with the 
 attempt to hide the candle of the Lord under the 
 bushel of papal ignorance. Arundel about this time 
 directed a mandate to the Bishop of London, " to 
 warn men to say certain prayers to the Virgin Mary 
 at the ringing of the curfew bell." After extolling 
 Mary as the Mother of God, he says: " We truly, as 
 the servants of her own inheritance and such as are 
 written of to be her peculiar dower, ought more 
 watchfully than others to show our devotion in prais- 
 ing her, who being hitherto merciful to us, (yea, be- 
 ing even cowards,) would that our power being spread 
 
 3* 
 
22 THE CHURCH WITH THREE HEADS. 
 
 through all the coasts of the world, should, with a 
 victorious arm, fear (terrify) all foreign nations. That 
 our power being on all sides so defended, with the 
 buckler of her protection, did subdue unto our vic- 
 torious standards, and made subject unto us, nations 
 both near at hand and far off." The mandate further 
 enjoins, "that you command the subjects of your city 
 and diocese and all other suffragans to worship our 
 Lady Mary, the Mother of God, and our patroness 
 and protectress evermore in all adversity, with such 
 like kind of prayer^and accustomed manner of sing- 
 ing as the devotion of Christ's faithful people is wont 
 to worship her with at the ringing of the curfew." In 
 order to induce obedience to this decree, it was gra- 
 ciously provided in express terms: "We grant by 
 these presents to all and every man that shall say the 
 Lord's prayer and the salutation of the angel (the 
 Hail Mary) five times at the morning peal, with a de- 
 vout mind, forty days' pardon." Hand in hand, hatred 
 of the book of God has always been joined with the 
 most revolting fanaticism, and at this very day in 
 which violent efforts have been made and are still put 
 forth to impede the progress of truth, a singular in- 
 crease of devotion to the Virgin Mary is exhibited by 
 the church, which has untiringly pursued the open 
 Bible with horrid imprecations and futile endeavours 
 to seal the words of the prophecy of God's book. 
 
 At the very time when Arundel and his compeers 
 were busily engaged in framing canons and decrees 
 by which it was made an act of horrid blasphemy to 
 dispute the mandates of the Pope, the spectacle was 
 exhibited to the Christian world of three rival com- 
 
CHICELr's MANDATE. 23 
 
 petitors for the chair of St. Peter, each claiming divine 
 appointment and apostolical authority, and hurling 
 anathemas at his opponents, until at length they were 
 all declared heretics by the decree of one general 
 council, and soon afterwards deposed by the sentence 
 of another! 
 
 The year 1417 was signalized by the martyrdom of 
 Lord Cobham, who was hung in chains upon a gal- 
 lows and burned by a slow fire which was kindled 
 underneath; with his last breath, this faithful witness 
 of Christ's truth, exhorted the people to stand fast in 
 their love to the Scriptures and to beware of the false 
 teachers whose lives and conversation were so con- 
 trary to Christ and his religion. 
 
 Archbishop Chicely, who succeeded to the See of 
 Canterbury upon the death of Arundel in 1414, was 
 even more violent in his persecution of the Lollards 
 than his predecessor. The year after his installation 
 in office, he procured the passage of a law requiring 
 ecclesiastical and civil officers to take an oath at their 
 induction into office that they would do every thing in 
 their power to extirpate the Lollards out of the king- 
 dom, and in 1416 a mandate was issued by him which 
 still appears on the records of that period, directing 
 that three persons in every parish should be examined 
 twice every year upon oath, and required to inform 
 against any persons whom they knew, or understood 
 to frequent private conventicles, or who differed in 
 their life or manners from the common conversation 
 of Catholic men, or to have any suspected books in the 
 English language, that process might be made against 
 them. Multitudes were prosecuted under this law, 
 
24 PRINTING INVENTED. 
 
 some of whom were induced by the prsopect of death 
 to renounce their opinions, whilst others were tor- 
 tured into accepting deliverance. 
 
 At the precise period when the fires of persecution 
 raged with the utmost fierceness against the "gos- 
 pellers/' when Antichrist had heated his furnace 
 seven times, God was preparing in his providence 
 means for the utter overthrow of the usurper. In 
 1450, the art of printing was invented, and thus 
 copies of the Scriptures were multiplied both in 
 England and on the continent of Europe, in spite of 
 all that the Pope and his bishops could do to hinder 
 it. Well might Fox exclaim in alluding to the zeal 
 of Christians in that age — when a man might not 
 keep in his possession a copy of God's word except 
 at the peril of his life: "To see their travels, their 
 earnest seeking, their burning zeal, their readings, 
 their watchings, their secret assemblies, their love 
 and concord, their godly living, their faithful marry- 
 ing with the faithful, may make us now in these our 
 days of free profession, to blush for shame!" In 
 order to elude observation, little companies would 
 meet at dead of night, and spend the hours in which 
 their persecutors slept, in reading and hearing the 
 Scriptures. Some of them gave as much as five 
 marks, equal to sixteen dollars of our money for a 
 single book, others gave a load of hay for a few 
 chapters of the Epistles of James or Paul in English; 
 and this be it remembered at a time, when the value 
 of money was far greater than at present, and when 
 the profession of the Christian faith subjected the 
 "gospeller" to the loss of life itself. 
 
BIBLE READERS BURNED. 25 
 
 The first attempt to print any part of the Scriptures 
 in English was the publication of an Exposition of 
 the Seven Penitential Psalms, by John Fisher, Bishop 
 of Rochester, A. D. 1505. As Fisher was a Roman 
 prelate, and his exposition was intended to promote 
 the Catholic faith, of course it was suffered to pass 
 unsuspected of heretical taint. 
 
 In the, year 1519, seven persons were burned at 
 Coventry, having been convicted of the crime of 
 holding in their possession, copies of the Scrip- 
 tures or portions of the same. They were arrested 
 in the first place by the bishop's officer on the charge 
 of "having taught their children and families the 
 Lord's prayer and the Ten Commandments in Eng- 
 lish,'' and their conviction was obtained by means of 
 the testimony of their terrified children. One of 
 them, a poor widow, was dismissed by the bishop, 
 probably for want of evidence, and was led away 
 by one Simon Mourton, the Bishop's Summoner. 
 " Now as he was leading her by the arm and heard 
 the rattling of a scroll within her sleeve: 'Yea,' saith 
 he, 6 what have ye here ?' And so took it from her, 
 and espied that it was the Lord's prayer, the Articles 
 of Faith, and the Ten Commandments in English. 
 On making this discovery, Mourton said: < Ah, sirrah, 
 come, as good now as another time !' and then led 
 her back immediately to the bishop, who at once 
 condemned her to be burned with the six men who 
 had been previously sentenced. They all suffered 
 together, April 4, 1519, in a place called the Little 
 Park." (Bagster's Hexapla, p. 39.) Alarmed by the 
 excitement which their death occasioned in Coventry, 
 
26 AN AGED MARTYR. 
 
 for it was not easy to persuade the community that 
 the sin of teaching the Lord's prayer and the Ten 
 Commandments in an intelligible form to their chil- 
 dren could justify such severity, the bishop and his 
 officers industriously circulated the report that it was 
 not for this offence, but because they had eaten 
 flesh on Friday and other fast days! The 
 grave accusation contained in this apology was not, 
 however, alleged at the trial, and was not brought 
 forward until after their execution. 
 
 The annals of this era are crowded with similar 
 instances of cruelty. It will scarcely be credited in 
 this age, that even Papal bishops could so far forfeit 
 their character as men, as to commit to the flames 
 aged women of fourscore years, for the crime of 
 reading or hearing the Scriptures read in the English 
 tongue, but it is nevertheless a fact that the first 
 female martyr who suffered in England, named 
 Joan Boughton, was upwards of eighty years 
 of age. She was burned in Smithfield, April 28, 
 1494, having been convicted of heresy, and proved to 
 be a Wicliffite. The martyrdom of William Tyls- 
 worth, who suffered at Amersham, in Buckingham- 
 shire, A. D. 1506, was marked by another aggrava- 
 tion of fiendish cruelty, which is altogether peculiar. 
 His only daughter, a married woman, named Joan 
 Clerk, was compelled with her own hand to set 
 
 FIRE TO THE PILE WHICH CONSUMED HER FATHER ! 
 
 We doubt whether in the secret chambers of the in- 
 quisition, where cruelty has been made a science, the 
 diabolical ingenuity of its high priests has ever dis- 
 covered a refinement of malice, or a torture more ex- 
 
THE SOUL-PRIEST. 27 
 
 quisite than this ! As if forever to fix this brand of 
 infamy upon the Church under whose sanction, this 
 barbarity was perpetrated, Fox, who gives the ac- 
 count, declares, that he had it from the testimony of 
 eye witnesses whom he names, and who related to 
 him the horrid particulars. The husband of the poor 
 woman did penance with more than sixty others at 
 the time of her father's murder, and several of them 
 were branded on the cheek ; one of them, William 
 Page, was alive when Fox wrote this account. The 
 spot where this outrage was perpetrated is still 
 pointed out. 
 
 Another specimen of papal violence may be given 
 on the same authority. The particulars refer to John 
 Brown of Ashford. It appears that this man was on 
 board a Gravesend barge, and happening to sit rather 
 close to a fellow passenger was rebuked by an in- 
 quiry, "Dost thou know who I am? Thou sittest 
 too near me, thou sittest on my clothes." " No Sir," 
 said Brown, "I know not who you are." "I tell 
 thee I am a priest." " What, Sir, are you a parson, 
 a vicar, or a lady's chaplain ?" " No," said the priest, 
 " I am a soul-priest : I sing for souls;" meaning that 
 he was one who sang mass for the deliverance of the 
 souls of the deceased from purgatory. " I pray you, 
 Sir," said Brown, " where do you find the soul when 
 you go to mass ?" " I cannot tell thee," said the 
 priest. "I pray you, where do you leave it, Sir, 
 when the mass is done ?" "I cannot tell thee," again 
 replied the priest. " Then you can neither tell where 
 you find it when you go to mass, nor where you leave 
 it when the mass is done ; how then can you save the 
 
28 HORRID CRUELTY. 
 
 soul ?" inquired Brown. "Go thy way," said the priest, 
 "thou art a heretic, and I will be even with thee." 
 The priest was as good as his word. He lost no time 
 in lodging information before Archbishop Warham. 
 Three days afterwards, Brown was arrested and put 
 on his own horse, with his feet tied under the animal's 
 belly. In this way he was taken from his family, who 
 knew not whither he was going, and carried to Can- 
 terbury where he was kept in prison forty days. 
 During this period, by direction of the Archbishop and 
 Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, he was most cruelly 
 tortured. In order to make him deny the faith his 
 bare feet tvere placed on hot burning coals. On the 
 Friday, before Whitsunday, A. D. 1517, the poor man 
 was sent back to Ashford to be burned, and having 
 been set in the stocks of the town, it so happened that 
 a maid belonging to his family passed by and saw him 
 there. She brought the tidings to her mistress, who 
 up to that period had been ignorant of her husband's 
 fate. His wife came immediately and found him set 
 in the stocks and appointed to be burned the next 
 morning. She sat by his side all night and learned 
 from him the particulars of his sufferings — amongst 
 the rest, that his feet were burned to the bones by the 
 two bishops, so that he could not set them to the 
 ground, for no other reason than because he would 
 not forsake his Lord or deny his truth. The next day 
 he was burned, and we presume the " soul-priest" 
 was comforted in the reflection that he had redeemed 
 his pledge "to be even" with the "heretic." Among 
 the most furious persecutors of those days, Longland, 
 bishop of Lincoln, was conspicuous. The records of 
 
PAPAL INGENUITY. 29 
 
 his diocese afford evidence of the industry with which 
 he "pursued and impugned heretics, schismatics 
 and rebels against the Pope." His mode of eliciting 
 testimony, by which the Lollards might criminate 
 themselves and one another was ingenious. This 
 Bishop had nine questions to which he required ex- 
 plicit answers, most of which referred to their acquain- 
 tance with persons of note among the Lollards; after 
 comparing the answers, additional questions were pro- 
 posed of such a nature as to mislead and entangle the 
 witnesses, by which means they were generally made 
 to accuse each other of heresy, and the sequel may 
 readily be imagined. 
 
 The register of the Bishop of Lincoln for the year 
 1521, contains a list of some hundred names with the 
 proceedings against them, from which it appears that 
 the principal accusation alleged by the ecclesiastical 
 court against the prisoners, was " the reading or 
 repeating portions of Scripture in the English lan- 
 guage." Amongst the instances of this kind, the fol- 
 lowing are selected : 
 
 "Marian Morden was forced to inform against 
 James Morden, her own brother, for teaching her the 
 Paternoster, Ave, and Creed in English, arid that she 
 should not go on pilgrimages, nor worship saints nor 
 images." 
 
 " Six others were accused because they could not 
 say the Creed in Latin." 
 
 " Jenkin Butler accused his own brother of reading 
 to him a certain book of Scripture, and persuading 
 him to hearken to the same." 
 
 " John Barrett, goldsmith, of London, with his wife 
 
 4 
 
30 STRANGE ACCUSATIONS. 
 
 and maid, were brought into trouble, because he had, 
 in their presence, recited the Epistle of St. James 
 without book." 
 
 "William Littlepage accused his brother for having 
 learned the Ten Commandments in English." 
 
 "Agnes Ward was summoned, because when one 
 Gardiner said, < God help us, and our lady, and all 
 the saints of heaven,' she replied, 'What need is 
 there to go to the feet, when we may go to the 
 Head?'" 
 
 " John Tracher was arraigned for teaching Alice 
 Brown, the eight beatitudes in English, (Matt. v. 3- 
 12.) together with the saying of Christ, < Blessed be 
 they that hear the word of God and keep it. 5 " 
 
 " Thomas Philip and Lawrence Tailor, were cited 
 for reading the Epistle to the Romans, and the first 
 chapter of St. Luke in English." 
 
 The records on this " Register" are occasionally 
 varied with some such entries as these: 
 
 " Robert Drury, Vicar of Windrish, was among 
 other things accused by his servant, for advising him 
 to eat bread and cheese for supper on a fast day." 
 
 "Richard Vulford, of Riselyp, was accused, that 
 when John Clarke had made a wheel for fish, he asked 
 him, ' Whether now that he had made the wheel, the 
 wheel could turn again and make him ?' Clarke re- 
 plying, 'No.' 'Even so,' said Vulford, 'God hath 
 made the priests, but how can they turn again and 
 make God?'" 
 
 Generally, the charges preferred against the Lol- 
 lards related to their persisting in reading the Scrip- 
 tures in the vulgar tongue. This was by far the 
 
tyndale's translation. 31 
 
 most common and conclusive proof of heresy, but 
 connected with it, there were three other prominent 
 offences of which the Wicliffites were convicted : 
 they opposed pilgrimages — denounced the adoration 
 of the Virgin and the Saints — and rejected the doctrine 
 of the real presence — add to this their obstinate refu- 
 sal to relinquish the reading of the Bible in English, 
 and the picture of the heretics of the sixteenth century 
 is complete. On such grounds, it appears that four 
 were committed to the flames, the children of one of 
 the number, John Scrivener by name, were compelled 
 to set fire to their own father, as in the case of Tyls- 
 worth already mentioned. The reader will remem- 
 ber that these facts are originally derived from the 
 records of the persecutors themselves, who so far 
 from being ashamed of them, verily believed that in 
 enforcing the Papal decrees against the Bible, they 
 were doing God service. They will suffice to exem- 
 plify the policy of Rome towards the vernacular 
 Scriptures in England, during the one hundred and 
 fifty years immediately succeeding the publication of 
 WiclifPs version, and we therefore leave the reader 
 to his own reflections. 
 
 TYNDALE'S TRANSLATION. 
 
 WiclifPs Translation was a version^of the Latin 
 Vulgate, and consequently was a translation of a 
 translation. William Tyndale was the first to render 
 the Scriptures into English from the original and to 
 send them forth in print. Wicliff was the first 
 to publish the whole Bible translated from the Latin ; 
 
32 JOHN FRITH. 
 
 Tyndale first translated the Scriptures from the origi- 
 nal, and published in print the New Testament and a 
 portion of the Old ; to Myles Coverdale belongs the 
 honour of completing and publishing in print the 
 whole Bible translated into English from the origi- 
 nal tongues. Of Tyndale's early history little is known. 
 He was ordained a priest of the Roman Church, 
 March 11, 1502. He subsequently became a monk, 
 and joined the convent of the Observant Friars at 
 Greenwich. His studies were prosecuted at a time, 
 when a new impulse had been given to the study of 
 Greek literature by Linacre, though it is not probable 
 that Cambridge was the first school of his choice, for 
 when Erasmus published the New Testament in 
 Greek (A. D. 1516,) one college at that seat of learn- 
 ing, absolutely forbade the use of it, and yet it is cer- 
 tain that Tyndale spent some years in Cambridge; 
 it was there that his intimacy commenced with John 
 Frith, subsequently his fellow-labourer, and pre- 
 decessor in martyrdom. About the time that the 
 monk of Wittemberg was publishing his theses in 
 Germany, and spreading consternation throughout 
 the ranks of the papacy, Tyndale, Bilney and Staf- 
 ford, were preaching the same doctrines in Cam- 
 bridge, not, however, in consequence of any instruc- 
 tion which they had derived from the great German 
 Reformer. Tyndale was no doubt acquainted with 
 the Lollards, or u known men," as they were called, 
 although up to the close of the year 1522, he had not 
 been identified with them. It was not long, however, 
 before Tyndale was accused of heresy by the monks, 
 whose teaching he had confuted by the Scriptures, 
 
A NOBLE ANSWER. 33 
 
 and was summoned before the chancellor. The chan- 
 cellor threatened, but did nothing worse. Shortly- 
 after, Tyndale was in company with a certain learned 
 theologian of the Roman Church, and the latter being 
 hard pressed in argument, exclaimed : " We were 
 better to be without God's laws (a. e. the Holy Scrip- 
 tures,) than the Pope's!" (a. e. the Decretals.) To this 
 Tyndale indignantly replied with greater honesty than 
 prudence, " I defy the Pope and all his laws! If God 
 spare me life, ere many years, I will cause the boy that 
 driveth the plough to know more of the Scriptures 
 than you do." This was a bold pledge, but it was 
 nobly and amply redeemed. This event seems to have 
 exercised a very material influence upon the mind of 
 Tyndale, and to have urged him to a more strenuous 
 prosecution of his great work, the translation of 
 the Scriptures from the original Greek. 
 
 Tyndale was poor, but he found a friend in Sir 
 Humphrey Monmouth and an asylum in his house ; 
 seeing, however, that he could not with safety carry 
 out his plan of translating the Scriptures, and being 
 disappointed in the estimate he had formed of the 
 character of Tonstall, Bishop of London, who was 
 not so great a patron of learning as Tyndale had sup- 
 posed, he passed over to Hamburg, where his friend 
 Monmouth furnished him with the means of support. 
 From Hamburg he went into Saxony, and visited 
 Martin Luther, from whom he derived instruction 
 that was doubtless of material benefit in freeing him 
 from some of the errors of Popery, to which, during 
 his abode in England, he had adhered, such as purga- 
 tory and prayers for the dead. It was about the middle 
 
 4* 
 
34 PERNICIOUS POISON. 
 
 of 1524 that he reached Germany, arid in less than 
 two years his book was not only ready for the press, 
 but was printed. The first was a small octavo edition, 
 which, however, was speedily followed by a quarto 
 with glosses. Cochlaeus, a determined enemy of 
 the Reformation, mentions, that this second edition 
 was commenced at Cologne and finished at Worms, 
 and consisted of three thousand copies. He states 
 further that "two English Heretics," superintended 
 the publication; these were doubtless William Roy, 
 one of the " Observant Friars" at Greenwich, and Ty n- 
 dale. Roy suffered martyrdom in Portugal, A. D. 
 1531. Early in the year 1526, in which Tyndale's 
 version was printed, copies of it reached England, and 
 were diligently circulated by the translator's friends, 
 though the distribution must have been effected with 
 great secrecy, as it was not until Oct. 23d, of that year 
 that Tonstall issued his prohibition of the book. The 
 Bishop denounced it as a " pestiferous and most per- 
 nicious poison," and commanded all persons who 
 might have received copies of Tyndale's version to 
 deliver them to his Vicar General within thirty days 
 after the publication of his injunction, under pain of 
 excommunication. In order to shake popular con- 
 fidence in the fidelity of the translation, Bishop Ton- 
 stall publicly declared that it contained no less than 
 two thousand false translations, but in spite of injunc- 
 tions and denunciations, the demand for copies of the 
 Scriptures increased. John Lambert, the martyr, 
 mentions the impression which was made upon him 
 by Tonstall's preaching against the English New 
 Testament: He says, "Moreover, I was at Paul's 
 
NEW TESTAMENTS BURNED. 35 
 
 Cross, when the New Testament imprinted of late 
 beyond the sea, was first forefended; and truly my 
 heart lamented greatly to hear a great man preaching 
 against it, which showed forth certain things that he 
 noted for hideous errors to be in it, that I, yea, and 
 not I, but likewise did many other think to be none. 
 But (alack for pity !) malice cannot say well. God 
 help us all and amend it." 
 
 The means by which the enemies of the Bible had 
 formerly endeavoured to suppress the circulation of 
 Wicliff's version were again resorted to. In the 
 autumn of 1527 a visitation of the London diocese 
 was held in order to purge it of antipopish books and 
 doctrines, and some of Tyndale's friends who had 
 been conspicuous in the work of circulating the Scrip- 
 tures, were imprisoned from February until August 
 in a dungeon in Oxford, where three of them died in 
 the space of one week in consequence of the cruel 
 privations which they had suffered. In the year 
 1528, a large number of the copies of the New Testa- 
 ment were publicly burned at Paul's Cross, by 
 order of Bishop Tonstall; but it was all of no avail. 
 Copies of Tyndale's Testament were multiplied in 
 Holland, and the Dutch drove a thriving trade by ex- 
 porting them to England, where, in spite of the pro- 
 hibitions and tyranny of the ecclesiastical power, 
 God's word made its way among the people. The 
 penalties of heresy, death by burning for the second 
 offence were re-enacted, but the baptism of the Spirit 
 was mightier in its influence than the baptism of fire, 
 and the flames which reduced the Bible to ashes and 
 served as a chariot of fire to convey the readers and 
 
36 tyndale's constancy. 
 
 lovers of God's book to heaven, only revealed the 
 cruelty and wickedness of the papal power in a clear- 
 er light, by contrasting with their vindictive malice, 
 the meek heroism and unwavering constancy of the 
 witnesses of Jesus. Tyndale meanwhile was nothing 
 daunted. He laboured assiduously in the prepara- 
 tion of books and tracts for popular distribution; in 
 one of these, he makes allusion to the treatment 
 which the New Testament had received. He says: 
 " Some man will ask peradventure why I take the 
 labour to make this work, insomuch as they will burn 
 it, seeing they burned the gospel. I answer in burn- 
 ing the New Testament, they did none other thing 
 than I looked for, no more shall they do if they burn 
 me also, if it be God's will it shall be so." Sir 
 Thomas More boasts of the Bible burning as a meri- 
 torious deed and piously says: " It is enough for good 
 Christian men that know those things for heresies to 
 abhor and burn up his books and the likers of them 
 
 WITH THEM." 
 
 Tonstall repaired in person to Antwerp, and bought 
 up all the copies of the New Testament which were 
 for sale; on the fourth day of May, 1530, these copies 
 were all publicly burned in St. Paul's Church 
 yard, together with a large quantity of heretical 
 books. The Dutch meanwhile presently had another 
 edition ready, which they were willing to sell to all 
 customers, without inquiring whether they were to be 
 burned or distributed. Tyndale in connection with 
 Miles Coverdale prosecuted his translation of the Old 
 Testament, in spite of the King's proclamation by 
 which his books had been again prohibited in 1529. 
 
THE SCRIPTURES DENOUNCED. 37 
 
 So determined were the authorities to suppress the cir- 
 culation of the English Scriptures, that even Fisher's 
 "Seven Psalms/' with their Catholic notes were in- 
 cluded in the Index prohibitory. The pentateuch or 
 five books of Moses, was the first portion of the Old 
 Testament writings which Tyndale published, and 
 scarcely had the fire in St. Paul's church-yard gone 
 out, before the inquisitors of heretical pravity were 
 annoyed by the appearance among the good people 
 of England of new books containing the heresies of 
 Moses. Archbishop Warham held a convention of 
 Bishops, May 24, 1530, at which Tyndale's books 
 were again formally prohibited and condemned, and 
 all good people and Christians especially were once 
 more solemnly admonished to "detest and abhor" 
 "the New Testament in English of the translation 
 which is now printed" and to deliver the copies 
 which might be in their possession to the proper au- 
 thorities; in case of their refusal or neglect to do so, 
 it was intimated that "the prelates of the Church hav- 
 ing the care and charge of your souls ought to com- 
 pel you, and your prince to punish and correct you 
 not doing of the same, unto whom Saint Paul saith 
 the sword is given by God's ordinances for that pur- 
 pose." The opinion was, however, becoming more 
 and more prevalent, that a version of the Scriptures 
 ought to be published with the king's authority and 
 approbation. What must have been the infatuation 
 of the unhappy men, who could deliberately call up- 
 on the people of England to detest and abhor the 
 book of God — in the light of the precepts by which 
 they were themselves required to search the Scrip- 
 
38 STOLEN WATERS. 
 
 tures! How plainly does that single sentence reveal 
 the hatred which Rome bears towards the precious 
 Bible! How clearly does it prove that she regards 
 the liberty of universal access to the oracles of God 
 as the great obstacle in the way of her attempts to 
 subjugate and enthral the human mind! " Give up 
 the Bible/ 5 rt detest and abhor, the New Testa- 
 ment," are the imperious mandates which Rome has 
 never failed to enforce by the power of the sword, 
 whenever the secular arm has stood ready to lend its 
 strength to the Beast. But what avails it, that Anti- 
 christ bids men detest and abhor the book, which 
 every Christian loves, and which is loved more the 
 more it is read? Swords may be bathed in blood — 
 the fires of martyrdom may blaze fiercely, and the 
 ashes of the saints may be sown over the face of the 
 earth — but the truth cannot be bound, or burned, 
 or slain, and the seal of the martyr's blood, the flames 
 of the martyr's pile are so many bright and shining 
 credentials, which dispose men's hearts to receive the 
 word with greater favour. So it was in the four- 
 teenth century in Wicliff's day, and so again it 
 proved in the sixteenth in Tyndale's day. The very 
 prohibition and the stringency of the means employed 
 to suppress the circulation of the Scriptures, tended to 
 increase the popular desire to possess the forbidden 
 book. Curiosity was whetted — "stolen waters are 
 sweet," and the bread that was eaten in secret was 
 relished the more, because it was forbidden food. 
 Besides, some of those who outwardly manifested a 
 constrained obedience, were dissentients in heart and 
 required only slight encouragement to avow them- 
 
THE BIBLE SLANDERED. 39 
 
 selves in favour of the people's right to read the Scrip- 
 tures. Henry VIII. was a vain and voluptuous mon- 
 arch. He entered the lists with Luther and wrote a 
 book; for this the Pope rewarded him with the title 
 of " Defender of the Faith," which has been trans- 
 mitted to his successors ; but he subsequently quar- 
 relled with the Pontiff, and when the priests of Rome 
 " by reason of the multitude of their oppressions made 
 the oppressed to cry," the king was eventually dis- 
 posed by his prejudice against the Pope to regard 
 their complaints with greater favour than formerly. 
 Meanwhile, however, the royal authority afforded its 
 sanction to the decrees of the ecclesiastical tribunal 
 against Tyndale and his translation of the Scriptures. 
 In addition to this, the Roman party prosecuted their 
 slanders against the fidelity of the new version — all, 
 however to little purpose. In allusion to these at- 
 tempts to bring him into discredit, Tyndale remarks 
 in a letter to his friend and coadjutor, John Frith, " I 
 call God to record against the day we shall appear 
 before our Lord Jesus to give reckoning of our doings, 
 that I never altered one syllable of God's word 
 against my conscience, nor would do this day, if all 
 that is in earth, whether it be honour, pleasure, or 
 riches might be given me." 
 
 Insidious attempts were made to lure Tyndale 
 over to England, for it was felt to be more and more 
 desirable to obtain possession of his person, but the 
 Reformer was on his guard and declined the over- 
 tures that were made. With Frith they were more 
 successful. He suffered himself to be persuaded to 
 return to England, trusting to the solemn assurances 
 
40 tyndale's letters. 
 
 that were made him that he should be unmolested; 
 but, poor man ! he had forgotten that ever since the 
 martyrdom of Huss and Jerome, it was a doctrine of 
 the Church, that "no faith need be kept with here- 
 tics." Shortly after his arrival, he was arrested and 
 committed to the tower, and after a long imprison- 
 ment and repeated examinations he was at last con- 
 demned by Bishop Stokesly, and suffered death, July 
 4, 1533. Some of Tyndale's letters to Frith are still 
 extant. The following extract from one of them will 
 be read with interest: 
 
 "Dearly Beloved, be of good courage, and comfort 
 your soul with the hope of this high reward, and bear 
 the image of Christ in your mortal body, that it may 
 at his coming be made like unto his, immortal, and 
 follow the example of all your other dear brethren, 
 which choose to suffer in hope of a better resurrection. 
 Keep your conscience pure and undented, and say 
 against that nothing. •**•.* If you give yourself, 
 cast yourself, yield yourself, commit yourself wholly 
 and only to your loving Father, then shall his power 
 be in you and make you strong, and that so strong 
 that you shall feel no pain, which should be to an- 
 other, present death; and his Spirit shall speak in 
 you and teach you what to answer according to his 
 promise." 
 
 On another occasion, Tyndale speaks of Frith's 
 wife, whom he had left in the Netherlands, and tells 
 his friend: "Your wife is well content with the will 
 of God, and would not for her sake have the glory of 
 God hindered." Noble witnesses for Christ! Would 
 that the same self sacrificing spirit animated all who 
 
tyndale's candour. 41 
 
 dow may read the Bible in their mother tongue, 
 none daring to make them afraid. Tyndale's ruling 
 passion appears in a quaint sentence which occurs in 
 another of his letters, in which he exhorts his fellow 
 martyr, if he has opportunity, " to thrust in that the 
 Scripture may be in the mother tongue. " 
 
 In 1534, Tyndale published another edition of the 
 New Testament, revised and corrected. He speaks 
 of it in his preface in these words: "Here thou hast, 
 most dear reader, the New Testament or Covenant 
 made with us of God in Christ's blood. Which I have 
 looked over again (now at the last) with all diligence, 
 and compared it unto the Greek, and have weeded 
 out of it many faults, which lack of help at the be- 
 ginning and oversight did sow therein." In the 
 same year, a spurious edition of his New Testament 
 was published by the Dutch printers, under the su- 
 pervision of a certain George Joye, in which gross 
 perversions were introduced. Some of these are 
 noticed by Tyndale in a prologue, in the course of 
 which he says : " As concerning all I have translated 
 or otherwise written, I beseech all men to read it, for 
 that purpose I wrote it: even to bring them to the 
 knowledge of the Scripture. And as far as the Scrip- 
 ture approveth it, so far to allow it, and if in any 
 place the word of God disallow it, there to refuse it, 
 as I do before our Saviour Christ and his congrega- 
 tion. And where they find faults, let them show it 
 me, if they be nigh, or write to me if they be far off; 
 or write openly against it and improve it, and I pro- 
 mise them, if I shall perceive that their reasons con- 
 clude, I will confess mine ignorance openly." Strange 
 
 5 
 
42 TYNDALE ARRESTED. 
 
 that with such a pledge the Roman prelates who 
 counted his mistakes and perversions by the thou- 
 sand, should never have met Tyndale on his own 
 terms, and after convicting him of error, constrained 
 him by the force of his own testimony to "confess 
 his ignorance openly!" This, however, was not 
 their object. Tyndale was the object of the deepest 
 hatred of the Papal hierarchy, and they were bent 
 upon his destruction. His translation of the Scrip- 
 tures had given the Papacy a wound which threat- 
 ened the most disastrous consequences, and nothing 
 but the blood of the heretic could satisfy them. Hen- 
 ry VIII. was also his enemy, for Tyndale had open- 
 ly expressed a strong abhorrence of his divorce from 
 Catharine. The machinations of his enemies were 
 at last successful. He was arrested through the 
 agency of a wretch named Henry Philips, on the 
 charge of heresy, whilst residing at Antwerp, by offi- 
 cers of the Emperor, in the same year (1534) in 
 which his revised edition of the New Testament was 
 printed, and Tyndale was committed to prison. 
 Meanwhile great changes had taken place in Eng- 
 land. The authority of the Pope had been denied 
 and set at nought by Henry, and in the overruling 
 providence of God, the way was open for the circu- 
 lation of the Scriptures in England. During the 
 period which Tyndale spent in prison, no less than 
 four editions of his New Testament were printed, so 
 that whilst he was in bonds, the word of God was 
 not bound. In September, 1536, after a tedious im- 
 prisonment and repeated examinations, his "poor 
 apostle's life" was closed by the suffering of martyr- 
 
tyndale's martyrdom. 43 
 
 dom. He was first strangled and then burned; in 
 the manner of his death more mercy was shown 
 him than he would have met with in England. His 
 dying prayer was, "Lord, open the King of Eng- 
 land's eyes. 
 
 Thus died in his sixtieth year, this faithful witness 
 of Jesus — who was the honoured instrument in the 
 hands of God of introducing the precious Bible in a 
 printed form into England, and whose whole life 
 from the period of the commencement of his work 
 until its consummation, is a history of Rome's im- 
 placable hostility to the truth as it is in Jesus. His 
 scattered ashes found no burial place, but no power 
 of anti-christ could stay his spirit in its flight to hea- 
 ven. Even the careless observer must be struck 
 with the impotence of papal fury, when clothed with 
 all the authority of the secular power and seeking by 
 public anathemas, and penances, and burnings, to 
 deter men from reading the book of God. The very 
 prohibition seemed to infuse new life into the purpose 
 of those who were denounced, whilst the constancy 
 of the sufferers encouraged the survivors and in- 
 creased instead of destroying their zeal. 
 
 Thus " the blood of the martyrs proved the seed 
 of the Church," and God's promise was verified that 
 "no weapon formed against Zion shall prosper." 
 
 The desire of Tyndale's heart and the burden of 
 his prayers was that the Scriptures might be made 
 accessible to the people. To the accomplishment of 
 this end he consecrated body, soul, and spirit. On 
 one occasion, he replied to Sir Stephen Vaughan, in 
 an interview which he held with him at the request 
 
44 cromwell's injunctions. 
 
 of Henry : "If it would stand with the king's most 
 gracious pleasure to grant only a bare text of the 
 Scripture to be put forth among his people like as 
 is put forth among the subjects of the emperor in 
 these parts, and of other Christian princes, be it of 
 the translation of what person soever shall please 
 his majesty, I shall immediately make faithful pro- 
 mise never to write more nor abide two days in these 
 parts after the same; but immediately to repair into 
 his realm and there most humbly submit myself at 
 the feet of his royal majesty, offering my body to 
 suffer what pain or torture, yea, what death his 
 grace will, so that this be obtained." 
 
 In the very year that Tyndale suffered, Henry re- 
 solved that the people should have the Scriptures. 
 Fox, in his Acts and Monuments, has preserved a 
 copy of certain injunctions issued by Cromwell, the 
 seventh of which provides : 
 
 "Item. That every parson or proprietary of any 
 parish church within this realm, shall on this side the 
 feast of St. Peter, ad vincula, (i. e. Aug. 1,) next 
 coming, provide a book of the whole Bible in Latin, 
 and also in English, and lay the same in the quire 
 for every man that will to look and read thereon, 
 and shall discourage no man from the reading of any 
 part of the Bible, either in Latin or English, but 
 rather comfort, exhort, and admonish every man to 
 read the same, as the very word of God, and the 
 spiritual food of man's soul, whereby they may the 
 better know their duties to God, to their sovereign 
 lord the king, and their neighbour; ever gently and 
 charitably exhorting them, that using a sober and 
 
THE BIBLE CIRCULATED. 45 
 
 modest behaviour in the reading and inquisition of 
 the true sense of the same, they do in no wise stiffly 
 or eagerly contend or strive one with another about 
 the same, but refer the declaration of those places 
 that be in controversy to the judgment of them that 
 be better learned. " 
 
 This injunction no doubt relates to Miles Cover- 
 dale's Bible. From some cause or other, however, 
 the decree was not carried into effect; yet before the 
 close of the year 1536, this Bible, being the first com- 
 plete version of the Old and New Testaments printed 
 in England, was extensively circulated, rather as a 
 translation permitted by royal authority than en- 
 joined. Thus the martyr's prayer was answered. In 
 the same year in which Coverdale's Bible was pub- 
 lished, several new editions of Tyndale's Testament 
 were printed, and for a season the word of God had 
 free course, and ran, and was glorified. 
 
 THE BIBLE CIRCULATED. 
 
 The change in King Henry's feelings, or, perhaps, 
 we should rather say, his policy, must have been 
 very decided to have rendered it safe for Coverdale, 
 the friend and fellow labourer of Tyndale, to dedicate 
 an edition of the vernacular Scriptures to him. The 
 dedication itself is a curiosity. Coverdale begins by 
 comparing the High priest Caiaphas with the Pope, 
 because they had both uttered prophecies, whilst 
 ignorant of the true meaning of their predictions; 
 Caiaphas in foretelling that one man should die for 
 the people — the Pope in conferring upon Henry the 
 title of "Defender of the Faith." 
 
 5* 
 
46 coverdale's dedication. 
 
 "Even after the same manner, the blind Bishop of 
 Rome, (that blind Balaam I say,) not understanding 
 what he did, gave unto your grace this title, defender 
 of the faith, only because your highness suffered your 
 bishops to burn God's word, the root of faith, and to 
 persecute the lovers and ministers of the same, where 
 in very deed, the blind bishop, (though he knew not 
 what he did,) prophecied, that by the righteous ad- 
 ministration and continual diligence of your grace, 
 the faith should be so defended, that God's word, the 
 mother of faith with the fruits thereof, should have 
 its free course throughout all Christendom, but spe- 
 cially in your realm. " 
 
 The historical fact of the change in Henry's feel- 
 ings towards the Bible and its circulation furnishes 
 another link in the chain of testimony, which proves 
 that just in proportion as men are delivered from the 
 influence of Popery, they are disposed to favour the 
 universal diffusion of the Scriptures. The King of 
 England was far from being a Christian ; he was not 
 even what might technically be called a Protestant, 
 for he still adhered to many of the very worst errors 
 of the papacy, but he had thrown off all allegiance to 
 the Pontiff, and tyrant as the King of England was, 
 his ecclesiastical supremacy was better than the 
 Pope's. 
 
 In 1537, "Matthew's Bible," as it is called, was 
 published. This consisted of Tyndale's translations 
 so far as they were completed, the parts which were 
 wanting being supplied out of Coverdale's version. 
 Of this Bible, John Rogers was the editor. It has 
 never been ascertained whether or not, Cranmer was 
 
Matthew's bible. 47 
 
 interested in the publication of this edition, but he 
 was at all events a warm patron of the book after it 
 was issued. Rogers had been converted at Antwerp, 
 through the instrumentality of Tyndale and Cover- 
 dale, and had spent some years in Germany. This 
 edition is known as Matthew's Bible, from the name 
 of Thomas Matthew, which appears on the title-page, 
 probably as the publisher. It made its appearance 
 in England in August, 1537, and Cranmer imme- 
 diately wrote to Cromwell, requesting him to exhibit 
 it to the king, and procure the royal license for its 
 free circulation, rescinding the ordinances relative to 
 such portions as had been translated by Tyndale. 
 The application was successful ; and thus the very 
 portions of Scripture which only seven years before 
 had been so strictly prohibited — as filled with faults — 
 teaming with heresy and altogether corrupt, was now 
 scattered broadcast through the land with all the 
 sanction which the royal license could afford it. 
 Alluding to this fact a writer well remarks: "Here 
 was the version, about which Tyndale had laboured 
 so long and so laboriously — to execute which he had 
 become an exile from England — the version which, 
 when first sent to England, had been condemned and 
 burned, and in consequence of which some who read 
 it were burned likewise — the version which all men 
 were prohibited to read, possess, or circulate — now, 
 in less than a year after the translator's martyrdom, 
 'set forth by the king's most gracious license.' " 
 
 This was to all intents a Protestant version, and it 
 was no sooner circulated than it excited the displea- 
 sure of the priests, especially as certain notes and 
 
48 THE PRIESTS OFFENDED. 
 
 prologues were retained, reflecting upon the celibacy 
 of the clergy, and the sacrifice of the mass, and deny- 
 ing their Scripture authority. Very probably the 
 umbrage taken at these comments, first suggested the 
 idea of publishing an edition which should not be 
 obnoxious to this objection, for which the license of 
 Henry was obtained, and it was commenced under 
 the censorship chiefly of Coverdale and Cranmer. 
 The mechanical part was executed in France, and 
 some hindrance was experienced from the ill-will of 
 Francis or rather the French priests, but by the per- 
 sonal application of Henry who wrote to the French 
 king requesting him " to permit and license a subject 
 of his to imprint the Bible in English within the Uni- 
 versity of Paris, because paper was there more meet 
 and apt to be had for the doing thereof, than in the 
 realm of England, and also that there were more 
 store of good workmen for the ready despatch of the 
 same," the needful permission was obtained, through 
 the agency of Bonner, who subsequently, as the 
 Bishop of London, was engaged in very different 
 work. This edition of the Scriptures is commonly 
 called the " Great Bible." It had progressed to the 
 end of the printing, and proof sheets had been sent to 
 Cromwell when the Inquisition interposed its autho- 
 rity to arrest the work. On Dec. 17th, 1538, Henry 
 Garvais, " Prior of the Convent of the preaching 
 Friars at Paris, and Vicar-General of the venerable 
 Father, Friar Matthew Ory, of the same order, and 
 D. D., Inquisitor-general of heretical pravity in the 
 whole kingdom of France, by apostolical and regal 
 authority especially deputed" issued an instrument 
 
THE INQUISITION. 49 
 
 setting forth, " That since from the translation of the 
 Sacred Scriptures, as well of the Old Testament as 
 New, into the mother tongue, which cometh to the 
 hands of the simple, it is found in these last days that 
 some have taken occasion of error in the faith, and 
 that it is provided by edicts of the Supreme Court of 
 Parliament, that none should print the Old and New 
 Testament in his mother tongue, or sell it, being 
 printed." He proceeds to prohibit under canonical 
 penalties, the further prosecution of the printing, and 
 the removal or concealment of the sheets already 
 printed, and summons Francis Regnault to answer 
 the charge of heresy, for printing the Bible in the 
 English language. Coverdale fled for his life, leaving 
 twenty-five hundred copies in the hands of the Inquisi- 
 tors, which were publicly consigned to the flames 
 in an open square in Paris, called Malbert place, ex- 
 cepting a quantity which the officer to whom they 
 were entrusted sold " to a Haberdasher to lap caps in ;" 
 These were recovered about a year afterwards. In 
 order to secure the prosecution of the work without 
 the interference of the Inquisition, the French print- 
 ers with their printing presses were imported into 
 England, and in April, 1539, the book was issued in 
 London. In 1540, "Cranmer's Bible" was publish- 
 ed, which was in fact, a second edition of the * Great 
 Bible," with unimportant alterations. Two years 
 previously, Cromwell had published injunctions to 
 the clergy amongst which were the following: 
 
 "Item, that ye shall provide on this side the feast of 
 
 next coming, one book of the whole Bible of 
 
 the largest volume in English, and the same set up 
 
50 taverner's bible. 
 
 in some convenient place in the said church that ye 
 have the cure of, whereat your parishioners may 
 most commodiously resort to the same and read it, 
 the charges of which book shall be rateably borne 
 between you the parson, and the parishioners afore- 
 said, that is to say, the one half by you and the other 
 half by them. 
 
 " Item, that ye shall discourage no man privily or 
 apertly from the reading or hearing of the same Bible, 
 but shall especially provoke, stir, and exhort every 
 person to read the same, as that which is the very 
 lively word of God, that every Christian man is 
 bound to embrace, believe, and follow, if he look 
 to be saved; admonishing them nevertheless to avoid 
 all contention and altercation therein, and to use an 
 honest sobriety in the inquisition of the true sense of 
 the same, and refer the explication of obscure places 
 to men of higher judgment in Scripture." 
 
 In November, 1539, letters patent were issued by 
 the king, prohibiting any one from printing the Eng- 
 lish Bible for the space of five years, without license 
 from Cromwell. The object of this restriction was to 
 avoid inconvenience which might result from the in- 
 troduction of different translations. In the same 
 year " Matthew's Bible" was revised by Richard 
 Taverner, a civilian, who deserves honourable men- 
 tion for his indefatigable zeal in circulating the Scrip- 
 tures and promoting the cause of evangelical truth. 
 This recension is known as Taverner's Bible, and 
 the numerous editions through which it almost imme- 
 diately passed, prove that it was in great demand; 
 its size adapted it to the means of many who could 
 
ACT OF THE SIX ARTICLES. 51 
 
 not afford to purchase so large a volume as "the 
 Great Bible," and it was used exclusively for private 
 reading as it never was a publicly authorized ver- 
 sion, though published with the consent of Cromwell. 
 Whilst the free circulation of the Word of God had 
 given a shock to the Papal power, which caused it to 
 tremble to its very foundation, the elements of oppo- 
 sition were still mighty, and they were soon gathered 
 for another contest. The first change in the national 
 religion affected principally the headship of the 
 Church, Henry VIII. having taken the Pontiff's place, 
 without, by any means, repudiating all the essential 
 articles of the Papal creed. The unshackling of the Bi- 
 ble was a most important event, and aided wonderfully 
 in the promotion of the Reformation in England. The 
 persecuted " Lollards" and " Gospellers" no longer 
 met in dens and caves of the earth, but freely and 
 publicly proclaimed their doctrines and invited an 
 appeal to the Scriptures as the law and testimony, by 
 which they desired their controversy with Rome to 
 be decided. The opposers of truth, on the other hand, 
 were not idle. Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester was 
 indefatigable in his efforts to arrest the further pro- 
 gress of the Reformed doctrine, and the "Act of the 
 six articles" which was passed A. D. 1539, in fact 
 reduced England to the condition of a Roman Catho- 
 lic country, in which the king was the head of the 
 Church instead of the Pope. Cranmer used all his 
 influence to oppose the Act in the House of Lords, 
 but by the interposition of the King's authority, it 
 was passed in favour of the Papal party. The six 
 articles which were discussed were the following: 
 
52 PAPAL INTOLERANCE. 
 
 1. "Whether there be the real presence in the 
 Lord's Supper, with or without transubstantiation. 
 2. Whether the laity ought to receive the Lord's Sup- 
 per in both kinds. 3. Whether, by the law of God, 
 priests might marry. 4. Whether vows of chastity, 
 (t. e. monastic vows,) ought to be observed. 5. 
 Whether private masses ought to be celebrated. 6. 
 Whether auricular confession ought to be continu- 
 ed." The determination of these questions was de- 
 clared in accordance with the Papal creed, and an act 
 was at once passed, imposing the penalty of death 
 for offences against this decision. To oppose the doc- 
 trine of transubstantiation was declared to be heresy 
 without liberty of abjuration, and the other five 
 articles were established under the penalties of felony. 
 Cromwell did all that he could to hinder the enforce- 
 ment of the act without offending the king. Latimer, 
 Bishop of Worcester, resigned his office ; Shaxton, 
 Bishop of Salisbury, did the same ; both were im- 
 prisoned, but Shaxton conformed, and was liberated. 
 The suppression of the monasteries had enraged the 
 monks against Cromwell, and they were plotting his 
 downfall. He had been created Earl of Essex and 
 Lord Chamberlain, April 18, 1540; on the 9th of June 
 he was arrested; a few days after a bill of attainder 
 was read against him, charging him with heresy and 
 high treason; by the 29th it had passed the House 
 of Lords and the House of Commons, and on the 
 2Sth of July, Cromwell was beheaded on. Tower Hill, 
 having had no opportunity of answering the charges 
 brought against him. Two days after the execution 
 of Cromwell, Dr. Robert Barnes, and Thomas Gar- 
 
A STRANGE ANOMALY. 53 
 
 nett, both eminent preachers of the gospel, were 
 burned in Smithfield as heretics, together with Wil- 
 liam Hierome, a less distinguished but equally faith- 
 ful minister of the New Testament. Their death 
 was procured by Gardiner, Bishop of Worcester, and 
 they were in the strictest sense martyrs, the only 
 accusation against them being that they had faith- 
 fully set forth the gospel which had been preached 
 by Christ and his Apostles. The religious aspect of 
 affairs in England was singular. The Scriptures 
 were circulated with royal approbation and authority, 
 and yet certain articles of faith were maintained under 
 penalty of death, which were utterly contrary to the 
 letter and spirit of the Word of God, and to render 
 the anomaly complete, a new proclamation was 
 issued, May 6, 1541, repeating the injunctions which 
 required the Bible to be placed in every parish church, 
 in order that all persons without distinction might 
 have free access to it. The proclamation further en- 
 joined that none should read the Bible with a loud 
 voice during time of mass or other religious wor- 
 ship, and that the laity should refrain from disputa- 
 tions and read only for private edification. The 
 decree, moreover, sets forth that the king was sur- 
 prised to learn, that notwithstanding previous injunc- 
 tions, many parishes were still destitute of the Bible, 
 and in order to secure general access to the Scrip- 
 tures, it imposes a penalty of forty shillings per month 
 upon every parish which should continue destitute of 
 a public copy after the next All Saints' day, (Nov. 1.) 
 The price of Bibles of the largest volume was fixed 
 at twelve shillings, well bound and clasped, or ten 
 
 6 
 
54 THE BIBLE CHAINED. 
 
 shillings unbound. Not the least remarkable circum- 
 stance was, that the two bishops appointed to revise 
 the Bible of 1541 were Cuthbert, Bishop of Durham, 
 and Nicholas Heath, Bishop of Rochester. Cuthbert 
 was the same Bishop Tonstall who had manifested 
 such zeal in destroying Tyndale's Testament, and 
 now, fifteen years later, edited an edition of the 
 " Great Bible," whose ground-work was the very 
 version which he had formerly condemned as here- 
 tical. Heath had accompanied Fox, Bishop of Here- 
 ford, and Dr. Barnes, to Smalcald, in 1535, to con 
 elude a treaty between Henry and some of the Pro 
 testant princes of Germany. As " Heath, the Arch 
 deacon," he is highly commended by Melancthon 
 Both of these men occupied exalted stations during 
 the reign of Queen Mary ; but neither of them seemed 
 to enter with spirit into the work of Protestant per- 
 secution, although decidedly popish in their doctrine. 
 Bishop Bonner, who subsequently signalized himself 
 by his brutal ferocity against those who were accused 
 of heresy, was also zealous at this time, at least to 
 appearance, in efforts to induce the people to read 
 the Scriptures. He placed six copies of the Bible of 
 the new edition in St. Paul's, that all persons might 
 have free access to them. These six copies were 
 chained to as many pillars, and to each of them an 
 admonition was appended, in which the laity were 
 warned not to dispute with one another, nor to read 
 aloud in time of worship, under pain of the Bishop's 
 displeasure and the removal of the Bibles. Truth 
 and error were thus brought into daily conflict. The 
 study of the Scriptures was enjoined upon the people, 
 
bonner's brutality. 55 
 
 whilst liberty of opinion and free discussion were 
 utterly prohibited, and they were required to believe, 
 under pain of death, doctrines and tenets which are 
 contradicted on every page of the Bible. Meanwhile 
 the Six Articles were rigidly enforced. Bonner gave 
 an earnest of his future zeal by crowding the prisons 
 with offenders against the popish act, and would 
 have proceeded to extreme measures, had not Lord 
 Audley, the Chancellor, boldly and generously inter- 
 fered and procured their liberation. Fox records one 
 instance of flagitious cruelty at this crisis. "A little 
 after these circumstances, a young man, named John 
 Porter, began to read the Bible aloud in St. Paul's, 
 and many used to resort to hear him ; for he could 
 read well and had a loud voice. Bonner at length 
 took offence at this, and sending for Porter, rebuked 
 him very sharply for his reading. Porter defended 
 his conduct as being according to law, and therefore 
 what he might do without giving offence. Bonner 
 then charged him with making expositions on the 
 text, and gathering great multitudes about him; to 
 this he replied that he trusted he should not be 
 proved guilty of a disturbance. At length Bonner 
 sent him to Newgate, where he was treated with 
 extreme cruelty. His friends having afterwards paid 
 the jailor to let him be placed with the other pri- 
 soners,* he took the opportunity of reproving their 
 wickedness and blasphemy, and gave them such in- 
 structions as he had learned out of the Scriptures. 
 Such offence was taken at this that he was thrust 
 into the lowest dungeon of the jail, and there so 
 cruelly treated, that he died in a week's time." From 
 
56 SOLEMN TRIFLING. 
 
 this period, one restriction after another was imposed 
 on the circulation and reading of the Scriptures, until 
 the Bible was again a prohibited if not a sealed book. 
 In February 1542, a convocation of bishops and 
 clergy was summoned to revise the translation of the 
 New Testament, by order of the king. The different 
 books were allotted to distinct bishops, the greater 
 part of whom were thoroughly opposed to the free 
 circulation of the Scriptures, and endeavoured to de- 
 lay the issue of a new edition as much as possible by 
 introducing the most trifling questions for debate, such 
 as whether the expression, The Lord, or Our Lord, 
 should be constantly used — whether ecclesia should 
 be rendered congregation or church; whether chari- 
 tas should be translated charity or love. Gardiner 
 and his adherents went so far as to suggest, as an 
 amendment to the sacred text, that in the second 
 Commandment, after the words " thou shalt not make 
 to thyself any graven image," there should be added 
 " with a design to perform divine worship to it." It 
 was manifest also that the Greek text was to be dis- 
 carded to make room for the Latin Vulgate as the 
 basis of the new translation. In the sixth session of 
 the convocation, Gardiner introduced a list oi ninety- 
 nine Latin words and phrases which he wished 
 should be left untranslated or Englished with as little 
 change as possible, in order thereby as he said, not to 
 impair their native majesty, and to give the genuine 
 meaning, but really to make the Scriptures unintelli- 
 gible to the common people. The proceedings of the 
 convention plainly showed that the bishops did not 
 desire a new version, but preferred the suppression of 
 
THE BIBLE. PROHIBITED. 57 
 
 the old translations, and that their object was to throw 
 as many obstacles as they could in the way of its 
 completion. Cranmer then proposed to the king to 
 refer the matter to the universities, and Henry assent- 
 ed, some of the bishops protesting. The king's coun- 
 sellors, however, took good care that the work should 
 not proceed in the universities with indecent haste. 
 Measures were now taken to arrest the circulation of 
 the Scriptures, March 12, 1542, and all persons, with 
 the exception of Anthony Marlar were, by a royal 
 mandate, forbidden to print the Bible for the space of 
 four years. This Marlar was a London haberdasher 
 or pedlar, and the object in granting him this exclu- 
 sive privilege evidently was to prevent the further 
 printing of the Scriptures. Grafton, who had pub- 
 lished " Matthew's Bible," was sent to prison and 
 kept there for six weeks, but was subsequently libe- 
 rated, after he had given security in ^300, " that he 
 would neither sell, print, nor cause to be printed, any 
 more Bibles until the king and the clergy could agree 
 on a translation." 
 
 THE BIBLE PROHIBITED. 
 
 At the meeting of the British parliament in 1543, 
 complaints were made of the injury which had re- 
 sulted from the indiscriminate reading of the Scrip- 
 tures, and an act was passed prohibiting Tyndale's 
 version of the Scriptures, and denouncing it as crafty, 
 false and untrue. The penalty for disobedience was 
 a fine of ten pounds for the first offence, for every 
 book, and three months' imprisonment, and for the 
 
 6* 
 
58 FRESH RESTRICTIONS. 
 
 second transgression the criminal was liable to the 
 forfeiture of all his goods and imprisonment for life. 
 Other Bibles were to remain in use, provided the pre- 
 ambles or annotations were blotted out or rendered 
 illegible; if they were not defaced, a fine of forty 
 shillings was imposed for every Bible. It was 
 moreover ordained that as the abuse of the king's 
 permission was confined to the lower orders, after 
 Oct. 1, next ensuing, no one should be allowed to read 
 the Bible aloud publicly in a church or elsewhere, un- 
 less appointed specially for that purpose by the bishop, 
 and above all, it was decreed "that no women, arti- 
 ficers, apprentices, journeymen, serving men, husband- 
 men or labourers, should read to themselves or any 
 others the Bible or New Testament in English. " The 
 higher orders might however read the Scriptures in 
 private. The convocation passed an act by which 
 it was made the duty of the parish priest or curate on 
 every Sunday and holiday throughout the year, to read 
 one chapter in the New Testament to the people in 
 English, and after having gone through the New Tes- 
 tament in course, they were to begin the Old Testa- 
 ment and progress in the same way. Thus it would 
 have required by this arrangement not less thaa seven- 
 teen years before the Bible could be read through, but 
 God in his good providence did not suffer this iniqui- 
 tous restriction to remain in force so long. Before that 
 period had elapsed, the reading of the Scriptures was 
 guaranteed to all classes in such a way, that no arti- 
 fice of Satan or Antichrist has to this day been suffi- 
 cient to deprive the people of England of this precious 
 privilege. During Henry's. reign no more editions of 
 
BIBLE MARTYRS. 59 
 
 the Bible were published — but in spite of all the pen- 
 alties which the king and his Antichristian counsellors 
 could enact, the Scriptures were read. Thousands 
 and tens of thousands of copies had been circulated 
 among the common people, and the love of God's 
 word was fixed in their hearts, and too deeply che- 
 rished to be effaced by cruel penalties. In 1545, the 
 strange spectacle was again exhibited of men put to 
 death for reading the Scriptures. John Longland, 
 Bishop of Lincoln, who had figured twenty-two years 
 before as a bitter persecutor, caused two men to be 
 burned on the same day: the one, named Thomas 
 Bernard, for teaching the Lord's prayer in English, 
 although this was expressly permitted by the law : 
 and the other, named James Morton, for keeping in 
 his possession the Epistle of St. James ! In 1546, 
 a sweeping prohibition was published in a royal pro- 
 clamation, dated July 6, 1546, which enjoins, as the 
 first item: 
 
 " That from henceforth, no man, woman, or person- 
 of what estate, condition, or degree soever he or they 
 be shall after the last day of August next ensuing, 
 receive, have, take, or keep in his or their possession, 
 the text of the New Testament of Tyndale's or Cov- 
 erdale's translation into English, nor any other than 
 is permitted by the Act of Parliament made in the 
 Session of the Parliament holden at Westminster in 
 the four and thirtieth and five and thirtieth year of 
 his Majesty's most noble reign." 
 
 In addition to this, all persons were prohibited from 
 receiving or possessing any books already printed or 
 which might afterwards be printed in English, in the 
 
60 "the poor commons." 
 
 names of Frith, Tyndale, Wicliff, Joy, Roy, Basil, 
 Bale, Barnes, Coverdale, Turner, Trasy, &c. Those 
 who had such works in their possession were requir- 
 ed to give them up to persons appointed to receive 
 them, before the last day of August, in order that 
 they might be burned. Persons complying were to 
 be forgiven and not to be closely questioned ; the 
 penalty of disobedience was imprisonment at the 
 King's pleasure with such fine as the King and coun- 
 cil might determine, and the royal indignation was 
 moreover denounced against all who should import 
 religious books from abroad without his Majesty's 
 permission. This proclamation was the means of 
 destroying vast numbers of the forbidden copies of 
 the Scriptures, and the care with which the work of 
 suppression was executed, is manifest from the fact, 
 that only four copies of the edition of 1537 are known 
 to be in existence at present. 
 
 The " Great Bible" was the only version which 
 was not prohibited, and of this edition compara- 
 tively very few found their way among the com- 
 mon people. A few months after the publication 
 of this prohibitory decree, a book appeared addres- 
 sed to the King, entitled "A supplication of the 
 Poor Commons," containing some most affecting re- 
 presentations and pungent appeals. Alluding to the 
 manner in which the Bishops arid priests had evaded 
 the injunction respecting the furnishing of the Bible 
 in every parish church, the writer says : " When your 
 highness gave commandment that they should see 
 that there was in every parish church, one Bible at 
 the least, set at liberty, so that every man might free- 
 
STRONG APPEAL. 61 
 
 ly come to it, and read therein such things as should 
 be for his consolation; many of this wicked genera- 
 tion, as well priests as others their faithful adherents 
 would pluck it either into the quire or else into some 
 pew, where poor men durst not presume to come; 
 yea there is no small number of churches that hath 
 no Bible at all. And yet not sufficed with the with- 
 holding it from the poor of their own parishes, they 
 never rested till they had a commandment from your 
 highness that no man of what degree soever he were, 
 should read the Bible in the time of God's service as 
 they call it. As though the hearing of their Latin lies, 
 and conjuring of water and salt, were rather the ser- 
 vice of God, than the study of his most holy word. 
 This was their diligence in setting forth the Bible at 
 your highness commandment. " * * * * 
 
 " We heard say that they proffered your highness 
 that you would please call in the Bible again, for as 
 much as it was not faithfully translated in all parts, 
 they would oversee it; and within seven years, set 
 it forth again. * * Your bishops, * * * if they might 
 have gotten in the Bible for seven years they would 
 have trusted that by that time, either your highness 
 should have been dead, or the Bible forgotten, or 
 else they themselves out of your highness' reach; so 
 that you should not have had like power over them 
 as you have now." After speaking of the sufferings 
 of the poor from the oppression of the priests, the 
 writer proceeds: 
 
 "If you suffer Christ's poor members to be thus 
 oppressed, look for none other than the rightful 
 judgment of God, for your negligence in your office 
 
62 THE BIBLE RESTORED. 
 
 and ministry. For the blood of all them that by your 
 negligence shall perish, shall be required at your 
 hands. Be merciful, therefore, to yourself, and to us 
 your most obedient subjects. * * * Remember that 
 your hoary hairs are a token that nature maketh 
 haste to absolve the course of your life." 
 
 What effect this "supplication" had upon Henry 
 is not known; at all events he did not long survive 
 the enactment of the prohibition. He died Jan. 28, 
 1547, in the fifty-sixth year of his age and the thirty- 
 eighth year of his reign. 
 
 THE BIBLE RESTORED. 
 
 The limits within which we are necessarily con- 
 fined, do not permit us to note many collateral de- 
 tails connected with the history of Rome's policy 
 towards the Scriptures, which are both interesting 
 and instructive. We shall confine ourselves to the 
 prominent facts, placing them in such arrangement 
 as shall render it easy to remember or refer to them. 
 
 Henry VIII. was succeeded by Edward VI., a 
 prince of a mild and amiable disposition, and favour- 
 ably disposed towards the Reformation. In the ear- 
 ly part of his reign, the burden of government rested 
 chiefly upon his uncle, who was created Duke of 
 Somerset and made Lord Protector, and one of his 
 first acts was to reverse the restrictions upon the 
 reading of the Scriptures. The Bible was re-placed 
 in the churches — the people were encouraged to read 
 God's word, and the priests were required to exam- 
 ine such as came to confession, whether they could 
 repeat the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and Ten Com- 
 
"the act" repealed. 63 
 
 mandments in English, and if any could not, they 
 were not to be admitted to the sacrament of the 
 altar. In addition to the " Great Bible," Erasmus' 
 paraphrase on the Gospel was to be provided within 
 twelve months after the issuing of the mandate. In 
 November, 1547, the Parliament formally repealed 
 the Act of the Six Articles, and annulled all 
 statutes relative to the prohibition of the Bible. 
 During the whole of Edward's reign, the Scriptures 
 had free course, and the consequence of their general 
 diffusion was, the gradual removal of the supersti- 
 tious observances of the Romish faith and ritual, and 
 the introduction of Christian worship. Amongst 
 other things, which the convocation of bishops decid- 
 ed on, it was declared, that the Lord's Supper ought 
 to be received according to the institution of Christ 
 under both kinds, and that priests might marry; the 
 reasons assigned were based upon the evidence of 
 Scripture. Even after the fall of Somerset, the work 
 of the Reformation continued to progress. He had 
 rendered the cause of the gospel essential service, 
 and had become obnoxious not only to the Bishops 
 and clergy who sympathized with the Papacy, but he 
 had also powerful enemies among the nobility. 
 Their combined influence wrought his ruin, and he 
 was beheaded Jan. 22, 1552, on Tower Hill. Dur- 
 ing the reign of Edward, thirteen editions of the 
 Bible were published, and at the close of his life, 
 July 6, 1553, there were in circulation and use in 
 England, at least one hundred and seventeen thou- 
 sand copies of the whole Bible or New Testament in 
 English, including the copies in the parish churches. 
 
64 GILBERT BOURNE. 
 
 The fruits of this great diffusion of Scripture truth 
 were made apparent during the reign of Edward's 
 successor, usually called il Bloody Queen Mary," 
 when the Bible was again shut against the common 
 people in consequence of the ascendancy of Popery. 
 The death of Edward VI., July 6, 1553, entirely 
 changed the aspect of affairs and introduced an era 
 of persecution, the records of which are almost in- 
 credible. 
 
 THE SCRIPTURES AGAIN FORBIDDEN. 
 
 One of the first acts of Queen Mary was the pub- 
 lication of a prohibition by which all ministers were 
 forbidden to preach without license from the queen; 
 by the same decree, the reading of the Scriptures 
 was ordered to be discontinued in the churches. A 
 circumstance had just occurred which afforded an 
 admirable pretext for introducing these restrictions. 
 A preacher, Gilbert Bourne, by name, had been ap-. 
 pointed by the queen to^preach at St. Paul's Cross, 
 and in the course of his harangue he extolled the 
 Popish doctrines and justified the severities practised 
 by Bishop Bonner. He was interrupted by some of 
 his hearers, who exclaimed that Bonner's doctrine 
 was abominable. The tumult increased, and the 
 Protestants in their zeal proceeded to pull the man 
 out of the pulpit, but by the interposition of Bradford 
 and John Rogers, faithful preachers of the gospel, 
 the priest was protected, and the offenders were 
 ^harply reproved for their insubordination. The 
 next day, the prohibition was published. This was 
 followed by the arrest and imprisonment of the most 
 
TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 65 
 
 eminent friends of the Reformation. Bishops Cran- 
 mer, Ridley, Hooper, and others were among the 
 number. Soon after, John Rogers and Myles Cover- 
 dale were arrested, and the latter was deprived of 
 his bishopric. In October, 1553, the Parliament and 
 convocation of clergy met. Measures were adopted 
 to restore every thing connected with the authorized 
 worship to the state, in which it had been, during 
 the latter part of Henry's reign, and to make the pro- 
 fession of the doctrine of transubstantiation an arti- 
 cle of faith, with the penalty of death against 
 those who denied it. This absurd figment had been 
 gradually relinquished during the reign of Edward. 
 Ridley, Cranmer, and Latimer had been convinced 
 that it was contrary to Scripture and had abandoned 
 it, and public opposition to this doctrine had been in 
 precise accordance with the spread qf the gospel. 
 In the lower house of the convocation, all with the 
 exception of six were ready to subscribe the Romish 
 articles, the "real presence" among the rest. John 
 Philpot, archdeacon of Winchester, was one of the 
 number, and he earnestly requested that the subject 
 might be debated before the house was called to sub- 
 scribe, and that Bishop Ridley, John Rogers, and 
 others might be heard in defence of the reformed 
 doctrine. This was agreed upon and the dispu- 
 tation was held ; the decision was in favour of 
 the Roman party although the argument and the 
 truth were manifestly on the other side. Philpot was 
 sent to prison to the Ring's Bench; in October 1555, 
 he was shut up in Bonner's coal-house, and on the 18th 
 of December of the same year, he was burned as a 
 
 7 
 
66 PGPERY RE-ESTABLISHED. 
 
 heretic, and thus the truth of transnhstantiation was 
 established. Lady Jane Grey and her husband suf- 
 fered in November, 1553, and Archbishop Cranmer 
 who had acknowledged Jane as queen was also tried 
 for high treason and heresy. In April, 1554, Cran- 
 mer, Latimer, and Ridley were sent to Oxford to 
 hold a disputation respecting the real presence, and 
 of course they were convicted, and condemned for 
 heresy. In the course of this year, the queen was 
 married to Philip of Spain, July 25, 1554. Nov. 
 30, Cardinal Pole came to England as the legate of 
 the Pope, and the realm was reconciled to the See 
 of Rome. Thus, the whole system of Popery was 
 formally re-established, and early in the ensuing 
 year, the work of destroying heretics was commenced, 
 with all the zest and zeal by which the efforts of the 
 Apostolical S^e in this department of Christian enter- 
 prize have always been signalized. John Rogers 
 was the first victim. He was convicted of heresy 
 principally on two accounts. One was, that he was 
 a married man and had been for eighteen years ; 
 the other was, that he denied the " real presence. " 
 Jan. 29, Rogers and Bishop Hooper were both con- 
 demned, and delivered over by Gardiner to the secu- 
 lar power to be punished "to the extirpation, terror, 
 and confusion of heretics," with the merciful recom- 
 mendation however, that the "rigour be not too ex- 
 treme," as if burning alive were not proceeding to 
 "extremities." After their condemnation, Gardiner 
 declared them to be under sentence of the greater 
 curse, denouncing its terrors against all who should 
 
ROGERS, THE MARTYR. 67 
 
 " eat, drink, aid, or have any communication with 
 them." To this Rogers replied : 
 
 "Well, my Lord, here I stand before God and 
 you, and all this honourable audience, and take him 
 to witness that I never wittingly or willingly taught 
 any false doctrine ; and, therefore have I a good con- 
 science before God and all good men. I am sure 
 that you and I shall come before a judge that is right- 
 eous, before whom I shall be as good a man as yon, 
 as I nothing doubt but that I shall be found there a 
 true member of the true Catholic Church of Christ, 
 and everlastingly saved. And as for your false 
 Church, ye need not excommunicate me forth of it. 
 I have not been in it these twenty years, the Lord be 
 thanked therefor. But now ye have done what ye 
 can, my Lord, I pray you yet grant me one thing. 
 
 " Gardiner. What is it? 
 
 " Rogers. That my wife, being a stranger, may 
 come and speak with me so long as I live. For she 
 hath ten children which are hers and mine, and some- 
 what I would counsel her, what were best for her to 
 do. 
 
 "Gardiner. No, she is not thy wife. 
 
 " Rogers. Yes, my Lord, and hath been these 
 eighteen years. 
 
 "Gardiner. Should I grant her to be thy wife? 
 
 "Rogers. Choose you whether ye will or not; she 
 shall be so, nevertheless. 
 
 " Gardiner. She shall not come to thee. 
 
 " Rogers. Then I have tried out all your charity." 
 
 On the morning of Feb. 4th, Rogers was awakened 
 very early by the wife of the keeper of Newgate, and 
 
68 A STRIKING FACT. 
 
 was thus suddenly warned that he was to be burned. 
 His sleep was so sound that it was with great diffi- 
 culty he was aroused. When he understood the ob- 
 ject of the call, he coolly answered, " Then I need not 
 tie my points," alluding to a part of the dress then 
 worn; if his points had been tied his undressing 
 for the stake would have required more time. He 
 was then taken with Hooper before Bonner to be 
 degraded. Here he repeated his request to be per- 
 mitted to see his wife. — It was again refused, but 
 on his way to Smithfield she met him with her eleven 
 children, ten able'to walk, the other an infant at the 
 breast. While passing to the place of death, Wood- 
 roffe, one of the sheriffs, asked if he would revoke 
 his "abominable doctrine and his evil opinion of 
 the sacrament of the altar ?" Rogers replied, " That 
 which I have preached, I will seal with my blood." 
 "Then," replied Woodroofe, "thou art a heretic." 
 Rogers answered, "That shall be known at the day 
 of judgment." " Well," replied Woodroffe, " I will 
 never pray for thee." "But I," said Rogers, " will 
 pray for you !" Arrived at Smithfield his pardon was 
 offered, on condition that he would recant, but this he 
 utterly refused, and preferred a cruel death to the de- 
 grading alternative proposed. It is a remarkable fact, 
 which we state on good authority, that the descend- 
 ants of Rogers are still living in New England, and 
 that at least one son out of every one of the ten gene- 
 rations of his posterity has been actively and faith- 
 fully engaged in the duties of the gospel ministry. 
 So marked has been God's approval of the constancy 
 of his faithful witness. The next day after Roger's 
 
RIDLEY AND LATIMER. 69 
 
 martyrdom, Hooper was sent to Gloucester to be 
 burned. The register of the cruelties perpetrated 
 during the reign of Mary cannot be inserted here; 
 suffice it, that in less than four years, two hundred 
 and seventy-seven persons were burned in England 
 by the papal authorities, amongst whom were not a 
 few of the most eminent men of the age, and the most 
 devoted ministers of the gospel of Christ, such as 
 Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Bradford, &c. The burn- 
 ing of Ridley and Latimer, and their more than hu- 
 man fortitude, excited intense sensation at the time, 
 and the moral influence of their example has prob- 
 ably done more to keep alive the martyr spirit in the 
 Church of Christ than all the effect of their preaching 
 and their holy living ever had upon men of that gene- 
 ration. Ridley's noble answer to Dr. Marshal when 
 urged to renounce his faith, are household words in 
 every Protestant family. " So long as the breath is 
 in my body, I will never deny my Lord Christ and 
 his known truth: God's will be done in me." La- 
 timer's exhortation to his fellow sufferer, when the 
 lighted fagot was laid at Latimer's feet was pro- 
 phetic: "Be of good comfort, Mr. Ridley, and play 
 the man, we shall this day light such a candle by 
 God's grace in England, as I trust never shall be put 
 out." Glorious witnesses! Your memory is blessed 
 — the light of your martyr-fire has not yet been put 
 out — and it will shine when the sun is quenched and 
 darkened. 
 
 The reign of terror drove multitudes of the Protes- 
 tants to the continent, but yet there were many who 
 continued in England at the peril of their lives to 
 
 7* 
 
70 REIGN OF TERROR. 
 
 teach and preach the gospel of Christ. The days of 
 the Lollards were revived and the poor gospellers 
 were again constrained to hide in dens and forests 
 and to meet stealthily at night in scattered companies. 
 Their numbers were constantly thinned by the mar- 
 tyrdom of such as fell into Bonner's hands, but the 
 gospel, God's precious living truth, was beyond the 
 reach of both Bonner and the Pope; in spite of the 
 wrath of antichrist, God's word prevailed; the testi- 
 mony of the gospellers was the means of salvation to 
 hundreds, so thaj their numbers increased the more 
 they were persecuted. On one occasion, in April, 
 1558, a-bout forty gospellers having met in a neld at 
 Islington, some of them were apprehended. On the 
 14th of June, seven of them were examined before 
 Bonner, and on the 27th, they were burned in Smith- 
 field. At their execution, a proclamation was made in 
 the name of the king and queen " that no man under 
 pain of death should approach them, touch them, speak 
 to them, comfort them, pray for them, or once say, 
 God help them!" In spite of this infamous prohibi- 
 tion, Thomas Bentham, a faithful minister of the gospel 
 who had recently returned from exile on purpose to 
 minister to Christ's scattered flock, cried out when the 
 fire was set to the martyr's stakes, turning to the peo- 
 ple — "We know that they are the people of God, and 
 therefore we cannot choose but wish well to them, 
 and say, God strengthen themP He then prayed, 
 "Almighty God, for Christ's sake, strengthen them!" 
 The multitude responded with united voice, "Amen ! 
 Amen !" The officers taken by surprise, knew not 
 whom to arrest or to accuse, and Bonner fearing a 
 
A HAPPY RELEASE. 71 
 
 repetition of such scenes sent six more of the gospel- 
 lers to Brentford and had them burned there. The 
 season of Satan's wrath, however, was destined to be 
 short. Nov. 17, 1558, the tyrant Mary was sum- 
 moned to answer at the bar of God for the blood of 
 his saints, which she had shed. Her death delivered 
 England from the yoke of Papal bondage, and the 
 cruelties which had been perpetrated during the short- 
 lived ascendency of the Pope of Rome so completely 
 disgusted the people, that they were disposed to hail 
 her departure as a national blessing. At the acces- 
 sion of Elizabeth, the circulation of the Scriptures 
 was restored, and since that time has never been 
 withdrawn, for the simple and most satisfactory rea- 
 son, that Popery has never regained its ascendency. 
 The narrative of the sufferings and persecutions of 
 God's people during the various periods of Popish 
 supremacy, previous to the accession of Elizabeth, 
 will be found faithfully and minutely recorded in 
 Fox's Book of Martyrs, a beautiful edition of which 
 has recently been issued by the publisher of this 
 pamphlet. It is a work which ought to be in every 
 family, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, that 
 the one may know how much it cost their fathers to 
 purchase the liberty which we now enjoy of reading 
 God's word in the English tongue, and that the other 
 may understand the fallacy of their Bishops' apologies, 
 epistles, and "cards," by which they seek to delude 
 the public into the belief that they have never desired 
 the popular suppression of the Scriptures. 
 
 We are of course most interested in the history of 
 Rome's policy towards the English Scriptures, and 
 
72 GENEVA BIBLE. 
 
 before we take a glimpse, at the treatment which 
 translations in other languages have received at her 
 hands, it will be proper to make some allusion to 
 the translation which is in use amongst us, and 
 which is commonly known as king James' version, 
 ox par excellence, the Bible; a very brief notice of 
 the other versions which preceded it will also be 
 necessary. Previous to the issue of the version of 
 the English Scriptures, now so extensively in use, 
 a translation had been executed by the exiles at 
 Geneva under the superintendence of Myles Cover- 
 dale, who went to that place from his parish of Berg- 
 zabern in the duchy of Deux Ponts. The New Tes- 
 tament was published in 1557, and the entire Bible 
 was issued in 1560. This is known as the Geneva 
 Bible, and continued to be the popular version in 
 England until it was displaced, fifty one years after- 
 wards, by the translation now in use. Coverdale 
 died in 1569, full of years, and in honour and favour 
 both with God and man. He was upwards of seven- 
 ty eight years old at the time of his death. He is the 
 connecting link in the history of two distinct periods 
 of the circulation of the Scriptures. He was the co- 
 temporary and associate of the martyr Tyndale, and 
 had been instrumental in the conversion of John 
 Rogers, the noble witness, who was the first to seal 
 the testimony of Christ with his blood during the per- 
 secutions of Mary; after a long exile and the forfeit- 
 ure of his property and benefice, he outlived the reign 
 of terror, and not only was spared to see the people's 
 right to read the Scriptures permanently established, 
 but was also restored to his friends and country, pro- 
 
the bishop's bible. 73 
 
 moted to higher honours than he had ever before en- 
 joyed, and permitted to close his life in the enjoyment 
 of the favour of all who loved the truth of God, and 
 the principles of the Reformation. 
 
 In 1568, the "Bishop's Bible was published, 
 under the superintendence of Archbishop Parker. It 
 derived its name from the circumstance of the differ- 
 ent portions of the sacred text having been revised 
 and re-translated from the original languages under 
 the immediate direction of the diocesan Bishops of 
 England, who were most distinguished for learning 
 and ability. This was the version authorized to be 
 read in parish churches, until it was superseded by 
 King James' Bible, forty-three years later, of which 
 version it constituted the basis. 
 
 In 1582, a version of the New Testament Scrip- 
 tures in English was issued by the English College 
 of Rhemes, chiefly through the agency of William 
 Allen, or Cardinal Allen, as he is more generally 
 styled. This is a Popish version, or as it might more 
 properly be termed a perversion. The publication of 
 the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue would seem 
 to involve the Church of Rome in the charge of gross 
 inconsistency. 
 
 After having persecuted Christian men, women, and 
 children for two centuries, on account of their deter- 
 mined zeal in reading and circulating the word of God 
 in English, separating husbands and wives, and breth- 
 ren, and committing to prison, and to the scaffold and 
 the flames, as obstinate heretics, hundreds and thou- 
 sands who persisted in searching the Scriptures con- 
 trary to her edicts, canons, decrees, restrictions, anathe- 
 
74 RHEMISH TESTAMENT. 
 
 mas and excommunications. Suddenly her policy is 
 changed, and she meets her enemies with weapons to 
 which her hands were hitherto unused, by publishing a 
 version which was intended to supersede the popular 
 translations then in use, and to prove that the doctrines 
 of Popery are inculcated by the word of God. This 
 was certainly a desperate enterprize, but there were 
 hearts stout enough to undertake it. Accordingly 
 the Rhemish version appeared with copious annota- 
 tions, in which the plainest precepts of Scriptures are 
 made to contradict themselves, and the most graphic 
 delineations of anti-Christian heresy and folly as re- 
 corded and portrayed by the Spirit of God, are ex- 
 plained away, or so shaded by sophistry and false- 
 hood, that the ignorant and credulous can no longer 
 discern the meaning. The palpable contradiction in 
 the policy of the papal power towards the Scriptures 
 was felt by the Rhemish translators^ and they accord- 
 ingly take care to inform the world that this transla- 
 tion of the Scriptures was made, not because they 
 "generally and absolutely deemed it more convenient 
 in itself, and more agreeable to God's word and 
 honour, or edification of the faithful to have them 
 turned into vulgar tongues than to be kept and 
 studied only in the ecclesiastical learned languages," 
 but that it was done merely " upon special considera- 
 tion of the present time, state, and condition of our 
 country, unto which divers things are either neces- 
 sary, or profitable, or medicinable now, that other- 
 wise in the peace of the Church were neither much 
 requisite, nor perchance wholly tolerable." The 
 Rhemish version is valuable. It is a perfect por- 
 
PUNISHMENT OF HERETICS. 75 
 
 traiture of the persecuting and intolerant principles of 
 the Church of Rome as they were openly avowed at 
 the close of the sixteenth century. Words cannot 
 more strongly convey the sentiments of intolerance, 
 bigotry and cruelty towards all who dissent from the 
 Roman See than the language of the annotations ex- 
 presses them. All that Rome has ever done by fire 
 and sword to spread her hateful creed and to oppress, 
 torment and wear out the saints of God, is not only 
 justified but extolled. The right to exterminate 
 heresy and hand over to the secular power, those 
 who are infected with it, is claimed as a self-evident 
 truth. With this exponent of the infallible and un- 
 wavering principles of the Apostolic See, we can 
 readily conceive that Gardiner and Bonner, and their 
 compeers in bigotry, verily supposed that they were 
 doing God service when they condemned such men 
 as Rogers, and Ridley and Latimer, to the horrid 
 ordeal of death by burning. 
 
 It may perhaps not be uninteresting to the general 
 reader to scan a few extracts from these annotations. 
 We take them from an edition of the Rhemish New 
 Testament, which was republished some years ago 
 in New York, (A. D. 1S34,) not, however, with the 
 approbation of the "Bishop of New York," but sore- 
 ly to his vexation and regret. Commenting on the 
 parable of the wheat and the tares, Matt. xiii. 29, the 
 annotators say: 
 
 u Ver. 29. Lest you pluck up also. The good must tolerate the evil, 
 when it is so strong- that it cannot be redressed without danger and 
 disturbance of the whole Church, and commit the matter to God's 
 judgment in the latter day. Otherwise where ill men, be they Heretics 
 
76 the bishop's power. 
 
 or other malefactors, may be punished or suppressed without disturb, 
 ance and hazard of the good, they may and ought by public authority 
 either spiritual or temporal to be chastised or executed." 
 
 To Rev. xvii. 6, where "the woman drunken with 
 the blood of the saints" is described, the following 
 note is appended: 
 
 " Ver. 6. Drunken of the blood. It is plain, that this woman signifieth 
 the whole corps of all the persecutors that have and shall shed so 
 much blood of the just: of the prophets, apostles, and other martyrs 
 from the beginning of the world to the end. The Protestants foolish- 
 ly expound it of Rome, for that there they put heretics to death, and 
 allow of their punishment in other countries: But their blood is not 
 called the blood of Saints, no more than the blood of thieves, man- 
 killers, and other malefactors: for the shedding of which by order of 
 justice, no commonwealth shall answer." 
 
 II. Cor. x. 4, 6 — in which passage, the Apostle* 
 declares that "the weapons of our warfare are not 
 carnal,'" presents no difficulty in the way of the 
 annotators; they remark: 
 
 " Ver. 4. Weapons* He meaneth the ample spiritual apostolical 
 power given by Christ for the punishment of false apostles, heretics 
 and rebels to God's church, who are here noted specially by pride and 
 insolence, which are the proper marks of such fellows, to extol them- 
 selves above the measure of the science of God, which consisteth in 
 humble obedience to the faith and the preachers of the same." 
 
 "Ver. 6. To revenge. You may see hereby that the spiritual power 
 of bishops is not only in preaching the Gospel, and so by persuasion 
 and exhortation only, as some heretics hold, to remit or retain sins, 
 but that it hath authority to punish, judge, and condemn heretics and 
 other like rebels : which power one of the principal rebels of this time 
 being convinced by the evidence of the place, acknowledged to be 
 grounded upon Christ's word. Whatsoever you bind in earth shall be 
 bound in heaven. Matt, xviii. 18, applying also the words spoken to 
 Jeremiah, c. i 10, Behold I appoint thee over nations and kingdoms, 
 that thou plant, pluck up, build and destroy: to confirm and explicate 
 the power apostolic here alleged by Paul. Marry, they would gladly 
 
THE ROMISH VERSION DISOWNED. 77 
 
 draw this power from the lawful successors of the Apostles, to them- 
 selves, their ministers and consistories which are nothing else but the 
 shops and councils of sedition and all the conspiracies of this time, 
 against the lawful princes of the world." 
 
 Speaking of the confession of the unclean spirits, 
 who cried out saying to Christ, Thou art the Son 
 of God, the observation is made : 
 
 " Ver. 12. Thou art the Son. The confession of the truth is not 
 grateful to God, proceeding from every person. The Devil acknow- 
 ledging our Saviour to be the Son of God, was bidden hold his peace: 
 Peter's confession of the same was highly allowed, and rewarded. 
 Aug. tract. 10. in ep. Joan. ser. 30, 31. de verb. Apostoli. Therefore 
 neither heretics' sermons must be heard, no, not though they preach 
 the truth. So is it of their prayer and service, which being never so 
 good in itself, is not acceptable to God out of their mouths ; yea, it 
 is no better than the howling of wolves. Hiero. in 7. Osee." 
 
 The reader will not be surprised when he finds 
 that the Bishops in America earnestly repudiate the 
 Rhemish version. They tell us it has never been 
 formally recognized by the Church, and therefore, 
 whatever may be the character of its doctrinal or 
 disciplinary opinions, they are not responsible for 
 them. But how is the Church to express her sanc- 
 tion? The last oecumenical and infallible Council 
 was that of Trent in 1545, and the Rhemish version 
 appeared in 1582, so that the positive authority of the 
 Church as expressed by her assembled wisdom could 
 not be given to this translation, from the simple fact 
 that Councils which are infallible are not, however 
 strange it may appear, omniscient, and therefore as 
 prescience is not of the number of attributes claimed 
 even by the Church of Rome, the Council of Trent 
 knew not that the Rhemish version was forthcoming. 
 
 8 
 
78 RHEMISH ANNOTATORS NOT BURNED. 
 
 So far all is plain; but the inference that the Church 
 is not responsible for these inhuman tenets is not 
 equally clear. In every instance in which the juris- 
 diction of the Papal See has extended over countries 
 in which the Scriptures have been circulated in the 
 vernacular tongue, she has interfered in order to sup- 
 press such translations as were not in accordance with 
 the Roman creed; she has immolated thousands upon 
 thousands of victims upon the altars of bigotry, and 
 has spared no pains "to extirpate the pest of bad 
 books" Was ever any portion of this labour ex- 
 pended in efforts'to suppress or invalidate the Rhem- 
 ish version, prior to the year 1S34, when it was re- 
 published by a Protestant bookseller in New York? 
 It was deemed an effectual antidote to Popery, from 
 the glaring effrontery with which the nefarious princi- 
 ples of the Man of Sin were promulged. Rhemes was 
 within the jurisdiction of the Pope. Were the anno- 
 tators arrested — imprisoned — burned? Did Cardinal 
 Allen share the fate of William Tyndale? Or was 
 the papal anathema hurled with a voice of thunder 
 against the men who had dared to publish sentiments 
 so utterly repugnant to the great principles of liberty 
 of conscience, and liberty of the press, which tJohn 
 Hughes and tFrancis Patrick Kenrick assure us the 
 Pope most strenuously advocates w T ith themselves, in 
 his famous Encyclical Letter? History returns 
 the ready answer: The Rhemish annotators were 
 not arrested much less burned. William Allen was 
 not presented with a martyr's crown as the reward 
 of his labour, but with a more comfortable Cardi- 
 nal's hat, and the Pope exhausted his thunder; not 
 
TWO INFALLIBLE POPES. 79 
 
 in denouncing the Rhemish version, but in cursing 
 Queen Elizabeth, and consigning her to remediless 
 perdition. Surely then we have at least negative 
 sanction if no more; and this is in fact all the appro- 
 bation which Rome has ever vouchsafed to the Scrip- 
 tures in the vulgar tongue. In the case of the Rhe- 
 mish New Testament and the editions of the Douay 
 Bible, she has connived at the judicious circulation, 
 but she has never positively sanctioned it. We 
 challenge the Bishops of the Church to produce an 
 absolutely authorized version of the Scriptures in any 
 living language. They cannot do it! 
 
 There is a remarkable fact connected with the edi- 
 tion of the Latin Vulgate, now in use as the author- 
 ized Bible in the Church of Rome, which renders her 
 position in relation to the Scriptures, still more em- 
 barrassing. Up to the time of the publication of the 
 Rhemish version, there had been no decision as to 
 what edition of the Vulgate might be regarded as 
 "authentic." In 1589, however, the faithful were 
 relieved by a Bull of Sixtus V. appended to an edi- 
 tion of the Vulgate, declaring this to be the genuine 
 Bible, and denouncing the terrors of excommunica- 
 tion against all men who should impiously dare to 
 make any alteration in the text. It was discovered, 
 however, that the pontifical edition swarmed with 
 errors, typographical and grammatical, and to reme- 
 dy the evil, Pope Clement VIII. of happy memory, 
 A. D. 1592, published another edition of the Latin 
 Vulgate, which, in a Bull prefixed, he declares to be 
 the only authentic edition, and in turn denounces all 
 attempts at innovation or improvement. The Council 
 
80 XING JAMES' VERSION 
 
 of Trent in 1545 declared the Latin Vulgate, which 
 is a translation of the original Scriptures, to be the 
 authentic version sanctioned by the Church — but of 
 what avail is this when they could not decide what 
 edition was to be received? 
 
 The annotations of the Romish version were ably 
 answered by William Fulke in his " Confutation," 
 the year after the appearance of this spurious Testa- 
 ment, which constitutes the basis of the Douay Bible 
 at present, connived at by the Papal authorities. 
 
 In January, 1604, not quite a year after the acces- 
 sion of James 1./ measures were adopted for the pre- 
 paration of a new version of the Scriptures, and in 
 order to secure the aid of the most learned men in the 
 realm, the translators were appointed by the Univer- 
 sities of Cambridge and Oxford, and by the King. 
 The task was originally apportioned among fifty-four 
 of the most eminent scholars and divines of the age, 
 but the number was subsequently reduced to forty- 
 seven. The work was completed A. D. 1613, and 
 is the Bible now in common use. The learned Sel- 
 den, whom Grotius designates "the glory of the Eng- 
 lish nation," gives the following testimony to the 
 excellence of the work and the fidelity with which 
 the meaning of the original is given: "The English 
 translation of the Bible is the best translation in the 
 world, and renders the sense of the original the best." 
 The denunciations and invectives of Romanists, 
 against this "Protestant version," as it is called, 
 would have more weight had the Church of Rome 
 entered upon the labour of providing a better trans- 
 lation for the common people. The rules which 
 
PREPARED WITH CARE. SI 
 
 were observed in the preparation of " King James's 
 Bible," a copy of which is herewith presented, will 
 show that there was no want of care at least, on 
 the part of the translators, and certainly whatever 
 mistakes may have been committed in the attempt 
 to present the sense of the original, they have no 
 where perpetrated a solecism that will compare 
 with the famous reading of the Catholic version in 
 which Jacob is represented as ivorshipping the top 
 of his staff! The rules which governed the transla- 
 tors were the following: 
 
 " The rules to be observed in translation of the 
 Bible. 
 
 "1. The ordinary Bible read in the Church, com- 
 monly called 'the Bishops' Bible,' to be followed, 
 and as little altered as the truth of the original will 
 permit. 
 
 "2. The names of the prophets and the holy writer 
 with the other names of the text, to be retained as 
 nigh as may be, according as they were vulgarly 
 used. 
 
 "3. The old ecclesiastical words to be kept; viz., 
 the word 'Church' not to be translated 'Congrega- 
 tion,' &c. 
 
 "4. When a word hath divers significations, that to 
 be kept which hath been most commonly used by 
 the most of the ancient fathers, being agreeable to 
 the property of the place, and analogy of the faith. 
 
 " 5. The division of the chapters to be altered, 
 either not at all, or as little as may be, if necessity 
 require. 
 
 "6. No marginal notes at all to be affixed, but 
 
 8* 
 
82 IMPORTANT REGULATIONS. 
 
 only for the explanation of the Hebrew or Greek 
 words, which cannot without some circumlocution, 
 so briefly and fitly be expressed in the text. 
 
 " 7. Such quotations of places to be marginally set 
 down as shall serve for the reference of one scripture 
 to another. 
 
 "S. Every particular man of each company to take 
 the same chapter, or chapters, and having translated 
 or amended them severally by himself where he 
 thinketh good, all to meet together, confer what 
 they have done^ and agree for their parts what shall 
 stand. 
 
 " 9. As any one company hath despatched any one 
 book in this manner, they shall send it to the rest to 
 be considered of seriously and judiciously, for his 
 Majesty is very careful in this point. 
 
 " 10. If any company, upon the review of the book 
 so sent, doubt or differ upon any place, to send them 
 word thereof, note the place, and withal send the 
 reasons; to which, if they consent not, the difference 
 to be compounded at the general meeting, which is 
 to be of the chief persons of each company at the 
 end of the work. 
 
 " 1 1. When any place of special obscurity is doubt- 
 ed of, letters to be directed, by authority, to send to 
 any learned man in the land for the judgment of such 
 a place. 
 
 " 12. Letters to be sent from every Bishop to the 
 rest of the clergy, admonishing them of this transla- 
 tion in hand, and to move and charge, as many as 
 being skilful in the tongues, and having taken pains 
 in that kind, to send his particular observations to 
 
EVIDENT SINCERITY. 83 
 
 the company, either at Westminster, Cambridge, or 
 Oxford. 
 
 "13. The directors in each company to be the 
 Deans of Westminster, and Chester for that place; 
 and the King's professors in the Hebrew or Greek in 
 either university. 
 
 " 14. These translations to be used when they 
 agree better with the text than the Bishops' Bible; 
 viz. Tindal's, Matthew's, Coverdale's, Whitchurche's, 
 Geneva. 
 
 "15. Besides the said directors before mentioned, 
 three, or four of the most ancient and grave divines 
 in either of the universities, not employed in transla- 
 ting, to be assigned by the Vice Chancellor, upon 
 conference with the rest of the heads, to be overseers 
 of the translations, as well Hebrew as Greek; for 
 the better observation of the fourth rule above spe- 
 cified." 
 
 The framing of these regulations evinces a sincere 
 desire to be faithful in the performance of the duty 
 which had been undertaken, and is itself a sufficient 
 answer to the charges of negligence and perversion 
 which have been unceasingly preferred, but never 
 proved by the opponents of Protestant truth. This 
 version the Church of Rome has never been able to 
 suppress, and we rejoice in the firm conviction, that 
 it is destined in the good providence of God to be a 
 chosen instrument in effecting the overthrow of Po- 
 pery. The establishment of Bible societies in Great 
 Britain and America, with the avowed object of ulti- 
 mately placing a copy of the sacred volume within 
 the reach of every family in the wide world, that is 
 
84 BIBLE SOCIETIES. 
 
 willing to receive and able to read it, is a grand 
 enterprize. The translation of the Scriptures into 
 all the living languages of our world, and their sub- 
 sequent diffusion, will give the finishing blow to the 
 already tottering fabric of anti-christian error and 
 superstition, and the clouds and darkness which brood 
 over the millions of the human family and fill the mind 
 with doubt and despondency and gloom, must event- 
 ually, by God's appointment, flee away before the 
 brightness of his sacred truth. Before concluding 
 our review of the,policy of Rome towarc^ the Eng- 
 lish Scriptures, we may remark in a general way, 
 that similar facts may be traced in the history of the 
 vernacular Bible of every country in Europe, where 
 Popery has at any time prevailed. The permanent 
 expression of Rome's principles is recorded in the 
 rules of the index, enacted by the infallible Council 
 of Trent, A. D. 1545; these have already been pre- 
 sented in the "Voice from Rome," which we have 
 answered, and we deem it sufficient to refer the 
 reader to them, with the single remark that the fourth 
 rule pointedly condemns the universal and indiscri- 
 minate circulation of the Scriptures, in the vulgar 
 tongue, as productive of more harm than good. This 
 of course relates to every age and country, and is as 
 much the expression of papal opinion in 1844, as it 
 was in 1545. 
 
 Fox relates the following incident relative to the 
 Bible in France, towards the close of the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 "The Bishop of Aix, with some priests, being at 
 Avignon together, were one day walking along the 
 
FRENCH BOOKSELLER BURNED. 85 
 
 streets with some courtezans. Seeing a man who 
 sold obscene pictures, they purchased several, and 
 presented them to the women. Close by was a book- 
 seller, who had a great number of Bibles in the 
 French language for sale. The bishop stepping up 
 to him, said, 'How darest thou be so bold as to sell 
 French merchandize in this town ?' The bookseller 
 replied with a kind of a sneer, 'My Lord, do you not 
 think that Bibles are as good as those pictures which 
 you have bought for the ladies V Enraged at the 
 sarcasm, the bishop exclaimed, Til renounce my 
 place in paradise if this fellow is not one of the Wal- 
 denses. Take him away — take him away — take him 
 away to prison/ These expressions occasioned him 
 to be terribly used by the rabble; and the next day 
 he was brought before the judge, who at the instiga- 
 tion of the bishop, condemned him to the flames. 
 He was accordingly burned with two Bibles 
 hanging from his neck, the one before and the other 
 behind/' 
 
 Luther's version of the Scriptures in German eli- 
 cited a bull from Leo X. couched in the most oppro- 
 brious language, in which the Pontiff calls upon the 
 Almighty and the Saints to rise up against the foxes 
 which threatened to destroy the vineyard ; and com- 
 plains that the heretics by their translations of the 
 Scriptures make the Bible, "not the gospel of Christ, 
 but of man, or, which is worse, of the devil." This 
 bull farther condemned all persons who did not sur- 
 render Luther's books, and it was the forerunner of 
 one of the most bloody persecutions which the powers 
 of Rome have ever inflicted upon Christian men 
 
86 dk. Wiseman's plea. 
 
 In the year 1490, "many copies of the Hebrew 
 Bible were committed to the flames at Seville, in 
 Spain, by order of Torquemada, the Inquisitor; and 
 in an auto da fe celebrated soon after at Salamanca, 
 six thousand volumes of the Scriptures shared the 
 same fate." (McCrie's Reformation in Spain, p. 
 105.) 
 
 Dr. Wiseman has attempted to prove that the 
 Church of Rome is distinguished for its love of the 
 Scriptures, and mentions, as evidence of this regard, 
 that an Italian version, of the Bible by Bruccioli, was 
 printed, A. D. 1532, in Venice, and revised in 1538, 
 with the approval of the local authorities, but he for- 
 gets to state the very'important fact, that Bruccioli's 
 Bible was ranked among prohibited books in the 
 Index of the Council of Trent, A. D. 1545. (McCrie's 
 Reformation in Italy, p. 55.) In 1589, an Italian 
 version of the Scriptures was published by Pope 
 Sixtus V., but it was speedily suppressed, the King of 
 Spain and the Cardinals remonstrating against it as 
 " bordering very nearly on heresy" Sixtus was 
 both arbitrary and whimsical ; his reply to Count 
 Olivarez, who remonstrated in behalf of the King of 
 Spain against the Pope's vernacular translation, is 
 characteristic of the man. After listening patiently 
 for above an hour, at the conclusion of the ambassa- 
 dor's harangue, Sixtus maintained perfect silence, 
 until Olivarez said, "Will not your holiness be pleased 
 to let me kno.w your thoughts upon this matter?" 
 "I am thinking," replied Sixtus, "to have you thrown 
 out of the window, to teach other people how to 
 behave, when they address themselves to the Pon- 
 tiff!" 
 
THE BIBLE IN ITALY. 87 
 
 The modern traveller who asks for a Bible in Italy 
 will be shown a compilation of stories taken from 
 the historical parts of Scripture, with what are called 
 moral reflections ! This is one of Rome's substi- 
 tutes for the Bible. Let a true version of the Scrip- 
 tures in the language of the people, reach the terri- 
 tory of the Pope, and it must be carefully concealed, 
 or the priests will burn it. This is the present policy 
 of Rome towards the Bible in papal countries. The 
 following statements which will be found in a Report 
 of the Thirty-Second Anniversary of the British and 
 Foreign Bible Society, illustrate this remark : 
 
 " The Rev. W. Acworth states that his Bible was taken from him 
 in a large town in Italy — that at Naples, the police demanded some 
 Bibles, that had been given to the people, to be given up, 'and their 
 Bibles were publicly burned.' At Cork, at the Spring assizes, in 
 March, 1836, a priest, the Rev. Edward Jeffords, was tried and 
 punished for an assault upon a poor old man of seventy years of age, 
 for reading the Bible, and the following is the language with which 
 this worthy endeavoured, without success, before assaulting him 
 himself, to stir up the hatred of the people against the poor man : 
 4 Take care, take care of yourselves ; take care, good people, for 
 Downey, the Bible reader is here! Downey, my curse upon you, and 
 I denounce you as the chief prince of devils.' You are aware that 
 many of these poor Bible readers have been murdered for no crime 
 but reading the Bible." 
 
 " Mr. Finch, M.P., made the following statement at the late Ninth 
 Anniversary meeting of the British Reformation Society, London : 
 ' The principle which dictated that feeling (hatred to the Bible) was 
 not confined to Ireland, it was general throughout the Romish Church. 
 When at Nice, he heard of a number of Bibles being burned by order 
 of the priests. In Syria, the Roman Catholic priests were very active 
 in searching out copies of the Bible, and burning them, &c.' He 
 then states on the authority of a letter from an Irish Presbyterian 
 clergyman, that out of eight hundred and twelve Roman Catholic 
 
SS POPE LEO AND THE BIBLE SOCIETY. 
 
 teachers, employed by the Irish Society to read the Scriptures, only 
 ten had escaped persecution, four of them were cruelly murdered." 
 
 The Irish journals constantly furnish facts like the 
 following: 
 
 " Mr. Costello, in introducing Mr. O'Ferall to the O'Connell Asso- 
 sociation, said, 4 Fie had one remark to make about Mr. O'Ferall. 
 Early in life he went to Scotland, and amassed a considerable pro- 
 perty. On his return, he opened an extensive woollen establishment 
 in Cookstown. About this time the incendiaries were spreading the 
 Bible for purposes of mischief among the people. Mr. O'Ferall pub- 
 lished an advertisement in the newspapers that he would buy up all 
 the Bibles that should 'be brought to him, and he actually did purchase 
 two cart loads of them. That he thought was a good plan for putting 
 a stop to their diabolical efforts.' " — Dublin Evening Packet^ Nov. 
 17, 1836. 
 
 " In the first Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education 
 Inquiry, a Mr. Griffith states in evidence, that all the measures (by 
 the priests) he has heard of, are of extreme violence, denouncing the 
 people, and stating from the altar, that if they read the Bible, or took 
 it into their houses, they shall be damned; that the devil was in 
 the Bible." 
 
 In 1824, Leo XII., in his Encyclical Letter, dated 
 Rome, May 3d, writes thus: 
 
 "You are aware, venerable brethren, that a certain Society, com- 
 monly called 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 ascer- 
 tained to have happened as to some passages, may also occur with 
 regard to others: to wit, that by a perverse interpretation, the Gos- 
 pel of Christ be turned into a human gospel, or what is still worse, 
 into the gospel of the Devil. To avert this plague, our predecessors 
 published many ordinances; and in his latter days, Pius VII., of 
 
"poisonous pastures." 89 
 
 blessed memory, sent two Briefs, one to Ignatius, Archbishop of 
 Gnesen, the other to Stanislaus, Archbishop of Mohilow ; in which 
 are many proofs, accurately and wisely collected from the Sacred 
 Scriptures, and from tradition, to show how noxious this most w t icked 
 novelty is both to faith and morals. We also, venerable brethren, 
 in conformity with our apostolic duty, exhort you to turn away your 
 flock hy all means from these poisonous pastures. Reprove, be- 
 seech, be instant in season and out of season, in all patience and 
 doctrine, that the faithful intrusted to you, adhering" strictly to the 
 rules of our congregation of the Index, be persuaded, that if the Sacred 
 Scriptures be everywhere indiscriminately published, more evil than 
 advantage will arise thence, on account of the rashness of men." 
 
 This is testimony of recent date, and when the 
 Pope ventures to stigmatize the Protestant Bible, 
 which is the only true translation of the Scriptures, 
 as the Gospel of the Devil, a most wicked 
 novelty, poisonous pastures, &c, we might reason- 
 ably conclude, even without the aid of additional evi- 
 dence, that the Church of Rome bears the same im- 
 placable hatred as ever against the people's claim to 
 read the Scriptures. 
 
 The Bible Societies have been honoured with seve- 
 ral special Bulls of denunciation, but the following, 
 which bears date, May 8th, A. D. 1844, is the most 
 recent, and may serve as a specimen. Ex uno disce 
 omnes. 
 
 CIRCULAR LETTER FROM HIS HOLINESS THE POPE. 
 
 To all Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and Bishops, 
 
 " Venerable Brothers, health and greeting Apostolical. — Amongst 
 the many attempts which the enemies of Catholicism, under whatever 
 denomination they may appear, are daily making in our age, to seduce 
 the truly faithful, and deprive them of the holy instructions of the 
 faith, (les saints enseignemens de la foi) the efforts of those Bible So- 
 cieties are conspicuous, which, originally established in England, and 
 propagated throughout the universe, labour every where to dissemi- 
 nate the books of the Holy Scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue; 
 
 9 
 
90 Gregory's last bull 
 
 consign them to the private interpretation of each, alike amongst 
 Christians and amongst infidels; continue what St. Jerome formerly 
 complained of — pretending to popularize the holy pages, and render 
 them intelligible, without the aid of any interpreter, to persons of 
 every condition, to the most loquacious woman, to the light-headed 
 old man (viellard dilerant,) to the worldly cavalier (verbeux sophiste,) 
 to all, in short, and even by an absurdity as great as unheard of, to 
 the most hardened infidels. 
 
 You are but too well aware, my reverend brethren, to what the 
 efforts of these societies tend. You know what is revealed in the 
 Holy Scriptures, and what is the advice of St. Peter the prince of the 
 Apostles — 
 
 After having quoted the Epistles of St. Paul — they contain, says 
 he, many things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned 
 and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their 
 own destruction. Then you know what he adds : Ye, therefore, be- 
 loved, seeing you know these things, beware lest ye also, being led 
 away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. 
 2d Peter, chap. iii. ver. 16, 17. 
 
 You see what was even in the earliest times of the Church, the 
 appropriate artifices of heretics; and how, discarding divine tradition 
 and Catholic enlightenment, they already strove to either materially 
 interpolate the sacred text or to corrupt its true interpretation. You 
 are also aware with what caution and wisdom the words of the Lord 
 ought to be translated into another tongue, and yet nothing is more 
 •common than to see these versions multiplied, to admit, either through 
 imprudence or malice, the grave errors of so many interpreters — 
 errors which dissemble too frequently, by their multiplicity and va- 
 riety, to the misery of souls. So far as these societies are concerned, 
 it matters little whether those who read the holy books, translated 
 into vulgar language, fall into this or that error. — They only care au- 
 daciously to stimulate all to a private interpretation of the divine ora- 
 cles, to inspire contempt for divine traditions, which the Catholic 
 Church preserves upon the authority of the holy fathers — in a word, 
 to cause them to reject even the authority of the Church herself. This 
 is the reason why the Bible Societies care not to calumniate her (the 
 Church) and the august throne of St. Peter, as if she had wished for 
 ages to deprive the faithful of the knowledge of the holy books, when 
 the most forcible evidence will prove the immemorial and particular 
 care w T hich the sovereign pontiffs even down to the most modern 
 times, and in conjunction with their Catholic pastors, have taken to 
 ground the people in the word of God, whether written or delivered 
 by tradition. 
 
 In the first place, it is known that, by the decrees of the Holy 
 Council of Trent, bishops are enjoined to see that the Holy Scriptures 
 and Divine Laws be more frequently taught in their dioceses. It is 
 known that, even exceeding the prescriptions of the Council of Latern 
 (1215,) the Council of Trent recommends that there should be in the 
 several cathedral churches and collegiates of the towns and cantons 
 a stipend provided for a Doctor of Divinity, and that none should be 
 
AGAINST BIBLE SOCIETIES. 91 
 
 appointed to that office, but a man fully competent to teach and ex- 
 pound the Holy Scriptures. It is known how frequently, in the pro- 
 vincial councils which followed this prebendary, founded upon the 
 decree of the Council of Trent, was mentioned, and how often the in- 
 structions which the canon entrusted with this office should deliver to 
 the clergy and people, were taken into consideration. 
 
 The same disposition (to instruct the people in the Word of God) 
 was especially observable in the Council of Rome in the year 1725, 
 to which our predecessor, Benedict XIII., of happy memory, sum- 
 moned not only all the Prelates of the Romish Church, but. even a 
 great number of Archbishops, Bishops, and other ordinaries immedi- 
 ately subject to the Holy See. The same desire animated the Ro- 
 man Pontiff of whom we have been speaking, in the various edicts 
 which he issued and addressed to all the Bishops of Italy and the 
 neighbouring islands. In short, you yourselves, my venerable breth- 
 ren, who are in the habit of forwarding to the Holy See, at stated in- 
 tervals, every thing calculated to interest religion — you know, by the 
 repeated answers which our Congregational Council has returned 
 hitherto to yourselves or your predecessors, how much the Holy Ro- 
 mish Church rejoices, in concert with the Bishops, w T hen they have 
 in their dioceses theologians who acquit themselves with honour in their 
 duty in expounding the Holy Books, and that she neglects no oppor- 
 tunity of encouraging and supporting them. 
 
 But, to return to Bibles translated into the vulgar tongue ; it is 
 long since pastors found themselves necessitated to turn their atten- 
 tion particularly to the versions current at secret conventicles, and 
 which heretics laboured, at great expense, to disseminate. 
 
 Hence the warning and decrees of our predecessor Innocent III., 
 of happy memory, on the subject of lay societies and meetings of 
 women who had assembled themselves in the diocese of Metz for 
 objects of piety and the study of the Holy Scriptures. Hence the 
 prohibitions which subsequently appeared in France and Spain, dur- 
 ing the sixteenth century, with respect to the vulgar Bible (relative, 
 merit aux Bibles vulgaires.) It became necessary subsequently to 
 take even greater precautions, when the pretended Reformers, Lu- 
 ther and Calvin, daring by a multiplicity and incredible variety of 
 errors, to attack the immutable doctrine of the Faith, omitted nothing 
 in order to seduce the faithful by their false interpretations and trans- 
 lations into the vernacular tongue which the then novel invention 
 of printing contributed more rapidly to propagate and multiply. 
 "Whence it was generally laid down in the regulations dictated by 
 the Fathers, adopted by the Council of Trent, and approved by our 
 predecessor Pius VII., of happy memory, and which (regulations) 
 are prefixed to the list of prohibited books, that the reading of the 
 Holy Bible translated into the vulgar tongue, should not be permitted 
 except to those to whom it might be deemed necessary to confirm in 
 the faith, and piety. Subsequently when heretics still persisted in their 
 frauds, it became necessary for Benedict XIV. to superadd the in- 
 junction that no versions whatever should be suffered to be read but 
 those which should be approved of by the Holy See, accompanied by 
 
92 Gregory's complaint 
 
 notes derived from the writing of the Holy Fathers, or other learned 
 and Catholic authors. Notwithstanding this, some new sectarians of 
 the school of Jansenius, after the example of the Lutherans and 
 Calvinists, feared not to blame these justifiable precautions of the 
 Apostolical See, as if the reading of the Holy books had been at all 
 times, and for all the faithful, useful, and so indispensable that no 
 authority could assail it. 
 
 But we find this audacious assertion of the sect of Jansenius with- 
 ered by the most rigorous censures in the solemn sentence which was 
 pronounced against their doctrine, with the assent of the whole 
 Catholic universe, by two sovereign pontiffs of modern times, Clement 
 XI., in his unigenitus constitution of the year 1713, and Pius VI., 
 in his constitution auctorem jidei, of the year 1794. 
 
 Consequently, even before the establishment of Bible societies was 
 thought of, the decrees of the Church, which we have quoted, were 
 intended to guard the faithful against the frauds of heretics, who 
 cloak themselves under, the specious pretext that it is necessary to 
 propagate and render common the study of the holy books. Since 
 then our predecessor Pius VII., of glorious memory, observing the 
 machinations of these societies to increase under his pontificate, did 
 not cease to oppose their efforts, at one time through the medium of 
 the apostolical nuncios, at another by letters and decrees, emanating 
 from the several congregations of cardinals of the Holy Church, and 
 at another by the two pontifical letters addressed to the Bishop of 
 Gnesen and the Archbishop of Mohilif. After him, another of our 
 holy predecessors, Leo XII., reproved the operations of the Bible 
 societies, by his circulars addressed to all the Catholic pastors in 
 the universe, under date May 5, 1824. Shortly afterwards, our im- 
 mediate predecessor, Pius VII., of happy memory, confirmed their 
 condemnation by his circular letter of May 24, 1829. We in short, 
 who succeed them, notwithstanding our great unworthiness, have not 
 ceased to be solicitous on this subject, and have especially studied to 
 bring to the recollection of the faithful the several rules which have 
 been successively laid down with regard to the vulgar versions of the 
 holy books. 
 
 We have good cause, however, to rejoice, venerable brethren, inas- 
 much as supported by your piety, and confirmed by the letters of 
 our several predecessors, which we have referred to, you have never 
 neglected to caution the flock which has been entrusted to you 
 against the insidious manoeuvres of the Bible Societies. This solici- 
 tude of the Bishops, seconding with so much zeal the solicitude of 
 our Holy See, has been blessed by the Lord. Already several im- 
 prudent Catholics who had gone over to these societies, enlightened 
 at last as to their objects, have separated themselves from them for 
 ever, and the remainder of the faithful, with very few exceptions, 
 have escaped from the contagion by which they were threatened. 
 
 The partisans of the Bible Societies little doubted in their pride 
 but that they could at least bring over the unfaithful to the profes- 
 sion of Christianity by means of the sacred books translated into the 
 vernacular tongue — moreover they took care to disseminate them by 
 
AGAINST THE CHRISTIAN LEAGUE. 93 
 
 innumerable copies, and to distribute them every where, even 
 amongst those who wanted them not, at the hands of their mission- 
 aries, or rather, their emissaries. But the men who strove to pro- 
 pagate the Christian faith, independently of the rules established by 
 Jesus Christ himself, have only succeeded in increasing the difficul- 
 ties of the Catholic priest, who, clothed with the mission of the Holy 
 See, goes amongst the unfaithful and spares no fatigue in order to 
 conquer new children for the Church, either by preaching the divine 
 word or by administering the sacraments — always prepared, at all 
 events, to shed his blood for the salvation of souls and the testimony 
 of the faith. Amongst the sectarians of whom we are speaking, 
 deceived in their hopes, and in despair at the immense sums which 
 the publication of their Bibles costs them, without producing any 
 fruit, some have been found, who, giving another direction to their 
 manoeuvres, have betaken themselves to the corruption of minds, not 
 only in Italy but even in our own ^capital. Indeed, many precise 
 advices and documents teach us that a vast number of members of 
 sects in New York, in America, at one of their meetings, held on 
 the 4th of June last year, have formed a new association, which will 
 take the name of the Christian League, (Foederis Christiani,) a 
 league composed of individuals of every nation, and which is to be 
 further increased in numbers by other auxiliary societies, all having 
 the same object, viz : to propagate amongst Italians, and especially 
 Romans, " the principles of Christian liberty," or, rather, an insane 
 indifference to all religion. These, indeed, confess that the Roman 
 institutions, as well as Italian, had in bygone times so much influ- 
 ence that nothing great was done in the world but had its origin 
 in our august city. Not that they ascribe the fact to the Pontifical 
 See, which was then founded by the disposition of God himself, but 
 verily to some remains of the Roman power, subsequently usurped, 
 as they say, to our predecessors who succeeded to that power. 
 
 This is why, determined to afford to all people •* liberty of con- 
 science" (or rather, it should be said, liberty to err,) from which, ac- 
 cording to their theory, must flow as from an inexhaustible source, 
 public prosperity and political liberty, they think they should before 
 all things win over the inhabitants of Rome and Italy, in order to 
 avail themselves after of their example and aid in regard to other 
 countries. 
 
 They hope to obtain this result easily by favour of the Italians 
 scattered over the world. They flatter themselves that on returning 
 in large numbers to their country, and bearing with them, whether 
 the exaltation of novelty, corruption of manners, or the excitement of 
 want, they would hardly hesitate to affiliate themselves to the League, 
 and at least second it through venality. This society strains every nerve 
 to introduce amongst them, by means of individuals collected from all 
 parts, corrupt and vulgar Bibles, and to scatter them secretly amongst 
 the faithful ; at the same time their intention is to disseminate worse 
 books still, or tracts designed to withdraw from the minds of their 
 readers all respect for the Church and the Holy See. These books 
 and tracts have been composed in Italian, or translated into Italian 
 
 9* 
 
94 THE SEE OF ST. PETER SAFE. 
 
 from other languages, with the aid of Italians themselves, and amongst 
 these books should be particularly cited "The History of the Refor- 
 mation," by Merle d'Aubigne, and " Calendar of the Reformation in 
 Italy," ("Fostes de la Reforme en Italie,") by Jean Crie. As for the 
 character of these works, it is sufficient to know that, according to 
 the records of the society of which we are speaking, the commission 
 entrusted with the choice of books for publication cannot count upon 
 more than one individual belonging to one and the same religious 
 belief. 
 
 Scarcely were we made aware of these facts, but we were pro- 
 foundly grieved on reflecting upon the danger which threatened not 
 only remote countries, but the very centre of unity itself: and we 
 have been anxious to defend religion against the like manoeuvres. 
 Although there be no reason to apprehend the destruction of St. Pe- 
 ter's See at any time, in which the Lord our God has placed the im- 
 movable foundation of his Church, yet we are bound to maintain its 
 authority. . The holy duties of our apostolic ministry remind us of 
 the awful account which the Sovereign Prince of Shepherds will ex- 
 act of us for the growing tares which an enemy's hand may have 
 sown in the Lord's field during our sleep, and for the sheep which 
 are entrusted to us, if any perish through our fault. 
 
 Wherefore, having consulted some of the Cardinals of the Holy Ro- 
 man Church, after having duly examined with them every thing, and 
 listened to their advice, we have decided, venerable brothers, on ad- 
 dressing you this letter, by which we again condemn the Bible So- 
 cieties, reproved long ago by our predecessors, and by virtue of the 
 supreme authority of our apostleship, we reprove by name, and con- 
 demn the aforesaid society called the Christian League, formed last 
 year at New York: it, together with every other society associated 
 with it, or which may become so. 
 
 Let all know then the enormity of the sin against God and his Church 
 which they are guilty of who dare to associate themselves with any of 
 these societies, or abet them in any way. Moreover, we confirm and 
 renew the decrees recited above, delivered in former times by aposto- 
 lic authority against the publication, distribution, reading, and posses- 
 sion of books of the Holy Scriptures translated into the vulgar tongue. 
 With reference to the works of whatsoever writer, we call to mind 
 the observance of the general rules and decrees of our predecessors, 
 to be found prefixed to the index of prohibited books ; and we invite 
 the faithful to be upon their guard, not only against the books named 
 in the index, but also against those prescribed in the general prescrip- 
 tions. 
 
 As for yourselves, my venerable brethren, called as you are, to di- 
 vide our solicitude, we recommend you earnestly in the Lord, to an- 
 nounce and proclaim, in convenient time and place, to the people 
 confided in your care, these Apostolic orders, and to labour carefully 
 to separate the faithful sheep from the contagion of the Christian 
 League : from those who have become its auxiliaries no Jess than 
 those who belong to other Bible Societies, and from all who have any 
 communication with them. You are consequently enjoined to re- 
 
EXHORTATION TO VIGILANCE. 95 
 
 move from the hands of the faithful alike the Bibles in the vulgar 
 tongue, which may have been printed contrary to the decrees above 
 mentioned of the Sovereign Pontiffs, and every book proscribed and 
 condemned, and to see that they learn, through your admonition and 
 authority, what pasturages are salutary and what pernicious and 
 mortal. 
 
 Be more careful every day to see, my venerable brothers, that the 
 Divine Word be preached, not only by yourselves, but also by the 
 various other pastors and competent ecclesiastics in each diocese. 
 Watch attentively over those who are appointed to expound the Holy 
 Scriptures, to see that they acquit themselves faithfully, according to 
 the capacity of their hearers, and that they dare not, under any pre- 
 text whatever, interpret or explain the holy pages contrary to the tra- 
 dition of the Holy Fathers, and to the service of the Catholic Church. 
 
 Finally, as it is the part of a good Shepherd not only to protect and 
 feed the sheep which follow him, but also to seek and bring home to 
 the fold those which wander from it, it becomes an undivided obliga- 
 tion on your part and on ours to use all our endeavours to the end 
 that whoever may have allowed himself to be seduced by sectarians 
 and propagators of evil books, may admit under the influence of Di- 
 vine Grace, the heinousness of his fault, and strive to expiate it by 
 the atoning works of a salutary repentance. 
 
 We are bound not to exclude from our sacerdotal solicitude the 
 seducers of our erring brethren, nor even the chief masters of impie- 
 ty, w^hose salvation we should seek by every possible means, although 
 their iniquity be far greater. 
 
 Moreover, venerable brothers, we recommend the utmost watchful- 
 ness over the insidious measures and attempts of the Christian 
 League, to those who, raised to the dignity of your order, are called 
 to gcvern the Italian churches, or the countries which Italians fre- 
 quent most commonly, especially the frontiers and ports whence tra- 
 vellers enter Italy. As these are the points on which the sect- 
 arians have fixed to commence the realization of their projects, it is 
 highly necessary that the Bishops of those places should mutually 
 assist each other, zealously and faithfully, in order, with the aid of 
 God, to discover and prevent their machinations. 
 
 Let us not doubt but your exertions, added to our own, will be 
 seconded by the civil authorities, and especially by the most influ- 
 ential sovereigns of Italy, no less by reason of their favourable re- 
 gard for the Catholic religion than that they plainly perceive how 
 much it concerns them to frustrate these sectarian combinations. 
 Indeed, it is most evident from past experience, that there are no 
 means more certain of rendering people disobedient to their princes 
 than rendering them indifferent to religion, under the mask of reli- 
 gious liberty. The members of the Christian League do not conceal 
 this fact from themselves, although they declare that they are far 
 from wishing to excite disorder; but they, notwithstanding, avow 
 that, once liberty of interpretation obtained, and with it what they 
 term liberty of conscience amongst Italians, these last will naturally 
 soon acquire political liberty. 
 
96 ROME HATES THE BIBLE 
 
 But, above all, venerable brothers, let us elevate our hands to hea- 
 ven, and commit to God with all humility and the fervour of which we 
 are susceptible, our cause, the cause of the whole flock of Jesus 
 Christ and of his Church. Let us, at the same time, recur to the 
 intercession of St. Peter, the Prince of Apostles, as also to that of the 
 other Saints, especially to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom it has 
 been given to destroy all the heresies of the universe. 
 
 We conclude with giving you with our whole heart, and as a pledge 
 of our most ardent charity, the Apostolic blessing; to you all, our 
 venerable brethren, and to the faithful, alike ecclesiastic and lay, 
 committed to your jurisdiction. 
 
 Given at Rome from the Basilic of St. Peter, on the 8th of May, 
 in the year 1844, and the fourteenth of our Pontificate. 
 
 (Signed) GREGORY XVI., S. P. 
 
 Thus far the Pope's impudence, which for lack of 
 space must pass without further comment. Enough, 
 this Bull sanctions and renews former decrees, and is 
 itself sufficient proof that Rome hates Christian lib- 
 erty as heartily as ever. We come now to the 
 demonstrations of papal hostility to ,the Scriptures 
 which have been exhibited in our own country. It 
 is a fact which is beginning to be generally under- 
 stood and appreciated, that the Bible is the basis 
 of American liberty. We believe that the great 
 truth is destined to be established beyond dispute, 
 that no country can be enslaved in which the peo- 
 ple's right to read the Scriptures is maintained, and 
 that the contrary proposition will be proved with 
 equal clearness, that no nation can be free without an 
 open Bible. These are principles which are well un- 
 derstood at Rome. Hence the strenuous efforts which 
 are made by the papal emissaries in every land upon 
 which they gain a foothold to embarrass the circula- 
 tion of the Scriptures, and if they cannot wholly sup- 
 press the Bible, to restrict its use as much as possible. 
 Where is the country in any quarter of the globe, 
 
ALWAYS AND EVERY WHERE THE SAME. 97 
 
 which is under papal control, where the light of God's 
 truth is permitted to shine forth from that Word which 
 David loved as the Lamp to his feet? Is the Bible 
 the people's book in Italy — in the South of Ireland — 
 in France — in Austria — in South America — or in Ca- 
 nada? Show us on the map of the world, a kingdom, 
 empire, republic, or province, in which Popery is the 
 acknowledged and established religion, and we will 
 show a dark spot on the face of the earth, filled with 
 habitations of cruelty, where men are bound in 
 affliction and iron — where gross darkness covers the 
 people — where the light of life is obscured, and the 
 precious Bible is a forbidden book! Tell us the age 
 and name the men, whom the Spirit of Truth has 
 urged to the noble work of bursting the shackles of 
 papal bondage, scattering the blessings of gospel light 
 and putting the sacred Scriptures into the hands of 
 their abused and down-trodden countrymen, and we 
 will tell the century in which the fires of persecution 
 have blazed — we will name the men who have been 
 slain for the witness of Jesus and the word of God — 
 we will point you to the dungeons in which they have 
 pined — to the instruments of cruelty with which they 
 have been tortured — to the gallows and the trees on. 
 which they have been hung with every mark of in- 
 dignity — to the stake at which aged men and women 
 of fourscore — young men and maidens have been 
 burned alive for the crime of reading God's holy 
 word, or listening to its recital from others, or keeping 
 its pages in their possession! What version of the 
 Scriptures has ever been prepared for general distribu- 
 tion that has not been blackened, distorted and de- 
 
9S K0MISI1 BLASPHEME. 
 
 famed by the wretched emissaries of Antichrist? 
 When they have lost the power to kill the readers of 
 the Bible, when have they ever failed to load the sa- 
 cred book with calumnies? The history of Rome's 
 policy towards the Bible is written in the tears and 
 blood, which it has wrung from those who have loved 
 it better than they loved life. It is written in the 
 flames in which the copies of the Holy Scriptures 
 have been consumed — in all ages and countries, where 
 Popery has prevailed, though but for " one hour" — 
 and it is written in the vindictive calumnies which 
 the church has invented and propagated, in order 
 to excite suspicion, and prejudice against the living 
 oracles of God! 
 
 Who that has read the foregoing pages requires 
 any further solution of the atrocious outrage commit- 
 ted two years ago in the northern part of New York, 
 where hundreds of Bibles were burned in open day 
 and in the presence of many spectators by the priests 
 of Rome ? This was merely a continuation of the 
 ancient policy. Who, after all this testimony, will 
 be surprised to find such language as the following 
 in the columns of a Catholic Herald, of Novem- 
 ber, 1843? 
 
 "What have the Bible Societies accomplished for the United 
 States? Let the universal complaint now told in almost every news- 
 paper, testify. Let the vast scale on which dishonesty has been 
 practised by men in responsible situations — let the forgeries, breaches 
 of trust, assassinations, murders, the conflict of eminent men in 
 political affrays— let the bowie knife and the pistol, and the disposi- 
 tion manifested by the rising generation, in the late riots of this city 
 — let all these speak of the result of scattering Bibles through the 
 land." 
 
"rights of conscience." 99 
 
 Is any reader startled by this blasphemy? Does 
 any Christian turn pale at the thought of ascribing 
 the "dishonesty, forgeries, breaches of trust, assassi- 
 nations, murders, &c.," so lamentably prevalent, to 
 the wide circulation of the Holy Scriptures? True, 
 this blasphemy chills the blood — this impiety is ap- 
 palling — but, bethink you, it is the language of Rome 
 — it is the utterance of her hatred of the Bible, and 
 you cease to wonder, whilst you shudder at the pro- 
 fanity ! 
 
 In the light of all this evidence, is any one so blind 
 as to be unable to discern the meaning of the recent 
 efforts to restrict the use of the Bible in our Public 
 Schools? We need not review the controvesy in de- 
 tail. — Our readers are familiar with the denials, the 
 equivocations, the disclaimers, the cards, the epistles, 
 the feints and the stratagems by which the apostles 
 of Popery in New York and Philadelphia have en- 
 deavoured to act out the provisions of their oath and 
 the mandates of their lord the Pope. They may 
 tell us they do not wish to banish the Bible from our 
 Public Schools, but who will believe them? 
 
 With plaintive moan they may bewail the hard lot 
 of their children in being constrained to read the 
 Scriptures, — they may weep over this infringement 
 on the "rights of conscience;" but Americans are 
 beginning to inquire how it is that men who are 
 sworn to believe that liberty of conscience is "a most 
 pestilential error," should complain, even were 
 its rights invaded. No ! Ye crafty vassals of the 
 Roman despot! You can deceive us no longer. 
 Long have you practised upon our credulity and 
 
100 "the lord seeth." 
 
 abused our confidence — artfully have you screened 
 your assaults upon our cherished liberties, but, sirs, 
 did you not know that, whilst we were sleeping, 
 "the Lord seeth?" Have you forgotten that in 
 every age and every land, whilst Rome has taken 
 counsel against the Lord and against his Anointed, 
 He has ever been the keeper and the guardian of his 
 people's right to read the Scriptures ? 
 
 Hearken, ye blind leaders of the blind! When you 
 traduce God's holy word — when you ascribe to its 
 influence deeds of darkness, of theft and forgery, of 
 murder and riot, remember — " the Lord seeth." 
 
 When in every land in which Heaven's abused 
 forbearance still permits the power of Rome to pros- 
 per, you seek to fetter and destroy the Scriptures, 
 forget not, sirs, your efforts must at last be vain, for 
 "the Lord seeth." 
 
 When in our own beloved city, which your deeds 
 of violence have robbed of its fair name — your poor 
 dupes more honest, but less crafty than yourselves, 
 assail our citizens and shed their blood, through 
 hatred of the Bible ; and when still more recently 
 you triumph in the success of the plot by which 
 neighbours and friends have been separated, arrayed 
 one against another, and slain in open conflict — let 
 this truth be ever present to your minds — bind it as 
 a frontlet between your eyes — write it on the door 
 posts of your dwellings — trace it on the walls of your 
 churches — " the Lord seeth." 
 
 THE END, 
 

 
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