THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE.
The Church, as we have just seen, is the only Divinely constituted teacher
of Revelation.
Now, the Scripture is the great depository of the Word of God. Therefore,
the Church is the divinely appointed Custodian and Interpreter of the
Bible. For, her office of infallible Guide were superfluous if each
individual could interpret the Bible for himself.
That God never intended the Bible to be the Christian’s rule of faith,
independently of the living authority of the Church, will be the subject
of this chapter.
No nation ever had a greater veneration for the Bible than the Jewish
people. The Holy Scripture was their pride and their glory. It was their
national song in time of peace; it was their meditation and solace in time
of tribulation and exile. And yet the Jews never dreamed of settling their
religious controversies by a private appeal to the Word of God.
Whenever any religious dispute arose among the people it was decided by
the High Priest and the Sanhedrim, which was a council consisting of
seventy-two civil and ecclesiastical judges. The sentence of the High
Priest and of his associate judges was to be obeyed under penalty of
death. “If thou perceive,” says the Book of Deuteronomy, “that there be
among you a hard and doubtful matter in judgment, ... thou shalt come to
the Priests of the Levitical race and to the judge, ... and they shall
show thee the truth of the judgment.... And thou shalt follow their
sentence; neither shalt thou decline to the right hand, nor to the
left.... But he that will ... refuse to obey the commandment of the
Priest, ... that man shall die, and thou shalt take away the evil from
Israel.”(135)
From this clear sentence you perceive that God does not refer the Jews for
the settlement of their controversies to the letter of the law, but to the
living authority of the ecclesiastical tribunal which He had expressly
established for that purpose.
Hence, the Priests were required to be intimately acquainted with the
Sacred Scripture, because they were the depositaries of God’s law, and
were its expounders to the people. “The lips of the Priest shall keep
knowledge, and they (the people) shall seek the law at his mouth, because
he is the angel (or messenger) of the Lord of hosts.”(136)
And, in fact, very few of the children of Israel, except the Priests, were
in possession of the Divine Books. The holy manuscript was rare and
precious. And what provision did God make that all the people might have
an opportunity of hearing the Scriptures? Did He command the sacred volume
to be multiplied? No; but He ordered the _Priests_ and the _Levites_ to be
distributed through the different tribes, that they might always be at
hand to instruct the people in the knowledge of the law. The Jews were
even forbidden to read certain portions of the Scripture till they had
reached the age of thirty years.
Does our Savior reverse this state of things when He comes on earth? Does
He tell the Jews to be their own guides in the study of the Scriptures? By
no means; but He commands them to obey their constituted teachers, no
matter how disedifying might be their private lives. “Then said Jesus to
the multitudes and to His disciples: The Scribes and Pharisees sit upon
the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you,
observe and do.”(137)
It is true our Lord said on one occasion “Search the Scriptures, for you
_think_ in them to have life everlasting, and the same are they that give
testimony to Me.”(138) This passage is triumphantly quoted as an argument
in favor of private interpretation. But it proves nothing of the kind.
Many learned commentators, ancient and modern, express the verb in the
indicative mood: “Ye search the Scriptures.” At all events, our Savior
speaks here only of the Old Testament because the New Testament was not
yet written. He addresses not the multitude, but the Pharisees, who were
the teachers of the law, and reproaches them for not admitting His
Divinity. “You have,” He says, “the Scriptures in your hands; why then do
you not recognize Me as the Messiah, since they give testimony that I am
the Son of God?” He refers them to the Scriptures for a proof of His
Divinity, not as to a source from which they were to derive all knowledge
in regard to the truths of revelation.
Besides, He did not rest the proof of His Divinity upon the _sole_
testimony of Scripture. For He showed it First—By the testimony of John
the Baptist (v. 33), who had said, “Behold the Lamb of God; behold Him who
taketh away the sins of the world.” See also John i. 34.
Second—By the miracles which He wrought (v. 36).
Third—By the testimony of the Father (v. 37), when He said: “This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.” Matt. iii. 16; Luke
ix. 35.
Fourth—By the Scriptures of the Old Testament; as if He were to say, “If
you are unwilling to receive these three proofs, though they are most
cogent, at least you cannot reject the testimony of the Scriptures, of
which you boast so much.”
Finally, in this very passage our Lord is explaining the sense of Holy
Writ; therefore, its true meaning is not left to the private
interpretation of every chance reader. It is, therefore, a grave
perversion of the sacred text to adduce these words in vindication of
private interpretation of the Scriptures.
But when our Redeemer abolished the Old Law and established His Church,
did He intend that His Gospel should be disseminated by the circulation of
the Bible, or by the living voice of His disciples? This is a vital
question. I answer most emphatically, that it was by preaching alone that
He intended to convert the nations, and by preaching alone they were
converted. No nation has ever yet been converted by the agency of Bible
Associations.
Jesus Himself never wrote a line of Scripture. He never once commanded His
Apostles to write a word,(139) or even to circulate the Scriptures already
existing. When He sends them on their Apostolic errand, He says: “Go
_teach_ all nations.”(140) “_Preach_ the Gospel to every creature.”(141)
“He that heareth you heareth Me.”(142) And we find the Apostles acting in
strict accordance with these instructions.
Of the twelve Apostles, the seventy-two disciples, and early followers of
our Lord only eight have left us any of their sacred writings. And the
Gospels and Epistles were addressed to particular persons or particular
churches. They were written on the occasion of some emergency, just as
Bishops issue Pastoral letters to correct abuses which may spring up in
the Church, or to lay down some rules of conduct for the faithful. The
Apostles are never reported to have circulated a single volume of the Holy
Scripture, but “they going forth, _preached_ everywhere, the Lord
co-operating with them.”(143)
Thus we see that in the Old and the New Dispensation the people were to be
guided by a living authority, and not by their private interpretation of
the Scriptures.
Indeed, until the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, it was a
thing unheard of from the beginning of the world, that people should be
governed by the dead letter of the law either in civil or ecclesiastical
affairs. How are your civil affairs regulated in this State, for instance?
Certainly not in accordance with your personal interpretation of the laws
of Virginia, but in accordance with decisions which are rendered by the
constituted judges of the State.
Now what the civil code is to the citizen, the Scripture is to the
Christian. The Word of God, as well as the civil law, must have an
interpreter, by whose decision we are obliged to abide.
We often hear the shibboleth: “The Bible, and the Bible only, must be your
guide.” Why, then, do you go to the useless expense of building fine
churches and Sabbath-schools? What is the use of your preaching sermons
and catechizing the young, if the Bible at home is a sufficient guide for
your people? The fact is, you reverend gentlemen contradict in practice
what you so vehemently advance in theory. Do not tell me that the Bible is
all-sufficient; or, if you believe it is self-sufficient, cease your
instructions. Stand not between the people and the Scriptures.
I will address myself now in a friendly spirit to a non-Catholic, and will
proceed to show him that he cannot consistently accept the silent Book of
Scripture as his sufficient guide.
A copy of the sacred volume is handed to you by your minister, who says:
“Take this book; you will find it all-sufficient for your salvation.” But
here a serious difficulty awaits you at the very threshold of your
investigations. What assurance have you that the book he hands you is the
_inspired_ Word of God; for every part of the Bible is far from possessing
intrinsic evidences of inspiration? It may, for ought you know, contain
more than the Word of God, or it may not contain all the Word of God. We
must not suppose that the Bible was always, as it is now, a compact book,
bound in a neat form. It was for several centuries in scattered fragments,
spread over different parts of Christendom. Meanwhile, many spurious
books, under the name of Scripture, were circulated among the faithful.
There was, for instance, the spurious Gospel of St. Peter; there was also
the Gospel of St. James and of St. Matthias.
The Catholic Church, in the plenitude of her authority, in the third
Council of Carthage, (A. D. 397,) separated the chaff from the wheat, and
declared what Books were Canonical, and what were apocryphal. Even to this
day the Christian sects do not agree among themselves as to what books are
to be accepted as genuine. Some Christians of continental Europe do not
recognize the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke because these Evangelists
were not among the Apostles. Luther used to call the Epistle of St. James
a letter of straw.
But even when you are assured that the Bible contains the Word of God, and
nothing but the Word of God, how do you know that the translation is
faithful? The Books of Scripture were originally written in Hebrew and
Greek, and you have only the translation. Before you are certain that the
translation is faithful you must study the Hebrew and Greek languages, and
then compare the translation with the original. How few are capable of
this gigantic undertaking!
Indeed, when you accept the Bible as the Word of God, you are obliged to
receive it on the authority of the Catholic Church, who was the sole
Guardian of the Scriptures for fifteen hundred years.
But after having ascertained to your satisfaction that the translation is
faithful, still the Scriptures can never serve as a complete Rule of Faith
and a complete guide to heaven independently of an authorized, living
interpreter.
A competent guide, such as our Lord intended for us, must have three
characteristics. It must be within the reach of everyone; it must be clear
and intelligible; it must be able to satisfy us on all questions relating
to faith and morals.
First—A complete guide of salvation must be within the reach of every
inquirer after truth; for, God “wishes all men to be saved, and to come to
the knowledge of the truth;”(144) and therefore He must have placed within
the reach of everyone the means of arriving at the truth. Now, it is clear
that the Scriptures could not at any period have been accessible to
everyone.
They could not have been accessible _to the primitive Christians_, because
they were not all written for a long time after the establishment of
Christianity. The Christian religion was founded in the year 33. St.
Matthew’s Gospel, the first part of the New Testament ever written, did
not appear till eight years after. The Church was established about twenty
years when St. Luke wrote his Gospel. And St. John’s Gospel did not come
to light till toward the end of the first century. For many years after
the Gospels and Epistles were written the knowledge of them was confined
to the churches to which they were addressed. It was not till the close of
the fourth century that the Church framed her Canon of Scripture and
declared the Bible, as we now possess it, to be the genuine Word of God.
And this was the golden age of Christianity! The most perfect Christians
lived and died and went to heaven before the most important parts of the
Scriptures were written. And what would have become of them if the Bible
alone had been their guide?
The art of printing was not invented till the fifteenth century (1440).
How utterly impossible it was to supply everyone with a copy of the
Scriptures _from the fourth to the fifteenth century_! During that long
period Bibles had to be copied with the pen. There were but a few hundred
of them in the Christian world, and these were in the hands of the clergy
and the learned. “According to the Protestant system, the art of printing
would have been much more necessary to the Apostles than the gift of
tongues. It was well for Luther that he did not come into the world until
a century after the immortal invention of Guttenberg. A hundred years
earlier his idea of directing two hundred and fifty million men to read
the Bible would have been received with shouts of laughter, and would
inevitably have caused his removal from the pulpit of Wittenberg to a
hospital for the insane.”(145)
And even _at the present day_, with all the aid of steam printing presses,
with all the Bible Associations extending through this country and
England, and supported at enormous expense, it taxes all their energies to
supply every missionary country with Bibles printed in the languages of
the tribes and peoples for whom they are intended.
But even if the Bible were at all times accessible to everyone, how many
millions exist in every age and country, not excepting our own age of
boasted enlightenment, who are not accessible to the Bible because they
are incapable of reading the Word of God! Hence, the doctrine of private
interpretation would render many men’s salvation not only difficult, but
impossible.
Second—A competent religious guide must be clear and intelligible to all,
so that everyone may fully understand the true meaning of the instructions
it contains. Is the Bible a book intelligible to all? Far from it; it is
full of obscurities and difficulties not only for the illiterate, but even
for the learned. St. Peter himself informs us that in the Epistles of St.
Paul there are “certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned
and the unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own
destruction.”(146) And consequently he tells us elsewhere “that no
prophecy of Scripture is made by private interpretation.”(147)
We read in the Acts of the Apostles that a certain man was riding in his
chariot, reading the Book of Isaiah, and being asked by St. Philip whether
he understood the meaning of the prophecy he replied: “How can I
understand unless some man show me?”(148) admitting, by these modest
words, that he did not pretend of himself to interpret the Scriptures.
The Fathers of the Church, though many of them spent their whole lives in
the study of the Scriptures, are unanimous in pronouncing the Bible a book
full of knotty difficulties. And yet we find in our days pedants, with a
mere smattering of Biblical knowledge, who see no obscurity at all in the
Word of God, and who presume to expound it from Genesis to Revelation.
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
Does not the conduct of the Reformers conclusively show the utter folly of
interpreting the Scriptures by private judgment? As soon as they rejected
the oracle of the Church, and set up their own private judgment as the
highest standard of authority, they could hardly agree among themselves on
the meaning of a single important text. The Bible became in their hands a
complete Babel. The sons of Noe attempted in their pride to ascend to
heaven by building the tower of Babel, and their scheme ended in the
confusion and multiplication of tongues. The children of the Reformation
endeavored in their conceit to lead men to heaven by the private
interpretation of the Bible, and their efforts led to the confusion and
the multiplication of religions. Let me give you one example out of a
thousand. These words of the Gospel, “This is My Body,” were understood
only in one sense before the Reformation. The new lights of the sixteenth
century gave no fewer than eighty different meanings to these four simple
words, and since their time the number of interpretations has increased to
over a hundred.
No one will deny that in our days there exists a vast multitude of sects,
which are daily multiplying. No one will deny(149) that this multiplying
of creeds is a crying scandal, and a great stumbling-block in the way of
the conversion of heathen nations. No one can deny that these divisions in
the Christian family are traceable to the assumption of the right of
private judgment. Every new-fledged divine, with a superficial education,
imagines that he has received a call from heaven to inaugurate a new
religion, and he is ambitious of handing down his fame to posterity by
stamping his name on a new sect. And every one of these champions of
modern creeds appeals to the unchanging Bible in support of his
ever-changing doctrines.
Thus, one body of Christians will prove from the Bible that there is but
one Person in God, while the rest will prove from the same source that a
Trinity of Persons is a clear article of Divine Revelation. One will prove
from the Holy Book that Jesus Christ is not God. Others will appeal to the
same text to attest His Divinity. One denomination will assert on the
authority of Scripture that infant baptism is not necessary for salvation,
while others will hold that it is. Some Christians, with Bible in hand,
will teach that there are no sacraments. Others will say that there are
only two. Some will declare that the inspired Word does not preach the
eternity of punishments. Others will say that the Bible distinctly
vindicates that dogma. Do not clergymen appear every day in the pulpit,
and on the authority of the Book of Revelation point out to us with
painful accuracy the year and the day on which this world is to come to an
end? And when their prophecy fails of execution they coolly put off our
destruction to another time.
Very recently several hundred Mormon women presented a petition to the
government at Washington protesting against any interference with their
abominable polygamy and they insist that their cherished system is
sustained by the Word of God.
Such is the legitimate fruit of private interpretation! Our civil
government is run not by private judgment, but by the constituted
authorities. No one in his senses would allow our laws to be interpreted,
and war to be declared by sensational journals, or by any private
individuals. Why not apply the same principle to the interpretation of the
Bible and the government of the Church?
Would it not be extremely hazardous to make a long voyage in a ship in
which the officers and crew are fiercely contending among themselves about
the manner of explaining the compass and of steering their course? How
much more dangerous is it to trust to contending captains in the journey
to heaven! Nothing short of an infallible authority should satisfy you
when it is a question of steering your course to eternity. On this vital
point there should be no conflict of opinion among those that guide you.
There should be no conjecture. But there must be always someone at the
helm whose voice gives assurance amid the fiercest storms that _all is
well_.
Third—A rule of faith, or a competent guide to heaven, must be able to
instruct in all the truths necessary for salvation. Now the Scriptures
alone do not contain all the truths which a Christian is bound to believe,
nor do they explicitly enjoin all the duties which he is obliged to
practice. Not to mention other examples, is not every Christian obliged to
sanctify Sunday and to abstain on that day from unnecessary servile work?
Is not the observance of this law among the most prominent of our sacred
duties? But you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you
will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The
Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we
never sanctify.
The Catholic Church correctly teaches that our Lord and His Apostles
inculcated certain important duties of religion which are not recorded by
the inspired writers.(150) For instance, most Christians pray to the Holy
Ghost, a practice which is nowhere found in the Bible.
We must, therefore, conclude that the Scriptures _alone_ cannot be a
sufficient guide and rule of faith because they cannot, at any time, be
within the reach of every inquirer; because they are not of themselves
clear and intelligible even in matters of the highest importance, and
because they do not contain all the truths necessary for salvation.
God forbid that any of my readers should be tempted to conclude from what
I have said that the Catholic Church is opposed to the reading of the
Scriptures, or that she is the enemy of the Bible. The Catholic Church the
enemy of the Bible! Good God! What monstrous ingratitude! What base
calumny is contained in that assertion! As well might you accuse the
Virgin Mother of trying to crush the Infant Savior at her breast as to
accuse the Church, our Mother, of attempting to crush out of existence the
Word of God. As well might you charge the patriotic statesman with
attempting to destroy the constitution of his country, while he strove to
protect it from being mutilated by unprincipled demagogues.
For fifteen centuries the Church was the sole guardian and depository of
the Bible, and if she really feared that sacred Book, who was to prevent
her, during that long period, from tearing it in shreds and scattering it
to the winds? She could have thrown it into the sea, as the unnatural
mother would have thrown away her off-spring, and who would have been the
wiser?
What has become of those millions of once famous books written in past
ages? They have nearly all perished. But amid this wreck of ancient
literature, the Bible stands almost a solitary monument like the Pyramids
of Egypt amid the surrounding wastes. That venerable Volume has survived
the wars and revolutions and the barbaric invasions of fifteen centuries.
Who rescued it from destruction? The Catholic Church. Without her
fostering care the New Testament would probably be as little known today
as “the Book of the days of the kings of Israel.”(151)
Little do we imagine, in our age of steam printing, how much labor it cost
the Church to preserve and perpetuate the Sacred Scriptures. Learned
monks, who are now abused in their graves by thoughtless men, were
constantly employed in copying with the pen the Holy Bible. When one monk
died at his post another took his place, watching like a faithful sentinel
over the treasure of God’s Word.
Let me give you a few plain facts to show the pains which the Church has
taken to perpetuate the Scriptures.
The Canon of the Bible, as we have seen, was framed in the fourth century.
In that same century Pope Damasus commanded a new and complete translation
of the Scriptures to be made into the Latin language, which was then the
living tongue not only of Rome and Italy, but of the civilized world.
If the Popes were afraid that the Bible should see the light, this was a
singular way of manifesting their fear.
The task of preparing a new edition of the Scriptures was assigned to St.
Jerome, the most learned Hebrew scholar of his time. This new translation
was disseminated throughout Christendom, and on that account was called
the _Vulgate_, or popular edition.
In the sixth and seventh centuries the modern languages of Europe began to
spring up like so many shoots from the parent Latin stock. The Scriptures,
also, soon found their way into these languages. The Venerable Bede, who
lived in England in the eighth century, and whose name is profoundly
reverenced in that country, translated the Sacred Scriptures into Saxon,
which was then the language of England. He died while dictating the last
verses of St. John’s Gospel.
Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, in a funeral discourse on Queen
Anne, consort of Richard II., pronounced in 1394, praises her for her
diligence in reading the four Gospels. The Head of the Church of England
could not condemn in others what he commended in the queen.
Sir Thomas More affirms that, before the days of Wycliffe, there was an
English version of the Scriptures, “by good and godly people with devotion
and soberness well and reverently read.”(152)
If partial restrictions began to be placed on the circulation of the Bible
in England in the fifteenth century, these restrictions were occasioned by
the conduct of Wycliffe and his followers, who not only issued a new
translation, on which they engrafted their novelties of doctrine, but also
sought to explain the sacred text in a sense foreign to the received
interpretation of tradition.
While laboring to diffuse the Word of God it is the duty, as well as the
right of the Church, as the guardian of faith, to see that the faithful
are not misled by unsound editions.
Printing was invented in the fifteenth century, and almost a hundred years
later came the Reformation. It is often triumphantly said, and I suppose
there are some who, even at the present day, are ignorant enough to
believe the assertion, that the first edition of the Bible ever published
after the invention of printing was the edition of Martin Luther. The fact
is, that before Luther put his pen to paper, no fewer than fifty-six
editions of the Scriptures had appeared on the continent of Europe, not to
speak of those printed in Great Britain. Of those editions, twenty-one
were published in German, one in Spanish, four in French, twenty-one in
Italian, five in Flemish and four in Bohemian.
Coming down to our own times, if you open an English Catholic Bible you
will find in the preface a letter of Pope Pius VI., in which he strongly
recommends the pious reading of the Holy Scriptures. A Pope’s letter is
the most weighty authority in the Church. You will also find in Haydock’s
Bible the letters of the Bishops of the United States, in which they
express the hope that this splendid edition would have a wide circulation
among their flocks.
These facts ought, I think, to convince every candid mind that the Church,
far from being opposed to the reading of the Scriptures, does all she can
to encourage their perusal.
A gentleman of North Carolina lately informed me that the first time he
entered a Catholic bookstore he was surprised at witnessing on the shelves
an imposing array of Bibles for sale. Up to that moment he had believed
the unfounded charge that Catholics were forbidden to read the Scriptures.
He has since embraced the Catholic faith.
And perhaps I may be permitted here to record my personal experiences
during a long course of study. I speak of myself, not because my case is
exceptional, but, on the contrary, because my example will serve to
illustrate the system pursued toward ecclesiastical students in all
colleges throughout the Catholic world in reference to the Holy
Scriptures.
In our course of Humanities we listened every day to the reading of the
Bible. When we were advanced to the higher branches of Philosophy and
Theology the study of the Sacred Scriptures formed an important part of
our education. We read, besides, every day a chapter of the New Testament,
not standing or sitting, but on our knees, and then reverently kissed the
inspired page. We listened at our meals each day to selections from the
Bible, and we always carried about with us a copy of the New Testament.
So familiar, indeed, were the students with the sacred Volume that many of
them, on listening to a few verses, could tell from what portion of the
Scriptures you were reading. The only dread we were taught to have of the
Scriptures was that of reading them without fear and reverence.
And after his ordination every Priest is obliged in conscience to devote
upwards of an hour each day to the perusal of the Word of God. I am not
aware that clergymen of other denominations are bound by the same duty.
What is good for the clergy must be good, also, for the laity. Be assured
that if you become a Catholic you will never be forbidden to read the
Bible. It is our earnest wish that every word of the Gospel may be
imprinted on your memory and on your heart.