“With all power and signs and lying wonders” 2 Thessalonians 2:9
Dear Reader
This article is illuminating. It is hard to believe that a Christian church would ban the Bible, destroy copies of it, and persecute and kill any who would publish, promote, possess or read it. How thankful we are to our heavenly Father for the freedom to not only possess the Bible, but to understand its precious message.
Editor
Paradoxically, the greatest enemy of the Catholic Church is an open Bible. This is because it enables men and women to personally enquire at the counsel of God and develop a conscience based on their individual contact with the Word of God. For that reason the Papacy has historically and openly waged war against the Bible and all those who have been instrumental in making it freely available to the average man and woman.
Many of us would have difficulty conceiving of a time when owning a Bible was a criminal offence, and that the Bible was considered to be a book so dangerous that it warranted being burnt at the stake. But the Papacy has waged war with the Bible and the saints from its inception, in fact this is one of the hall-marks of the iron system of Rome and of the Papal horn: “Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast … and of… that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows. I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them” (Dan 7:1921).
As far back as Diocletian, the emperor of pagan Imperial Rome, war was waged against the Bible. Diocletian and his soldiers burned all the Bibles that they could find: “During the fourth century Diocletian ruled from 303 to 311. He ordered all Scriptures to be publicly burned and persecuted the true Christians who would not worship the sun” (Richard Rives, Too Long in the Sun).
Owning a Bible a criminal offence
In 860 AD, Pope Nicholas I, sitting on a throne built specially for the occasion in the town square, pronounced against all people who expressed interest in reading the Bible, and reaffirmed its banned public use. In 1073 AD, Pope Gregory supported and confirmed the ban, and in 1198 AD, Pope Innocent III declared that anyone caught reading the Bible would be stoned to death by “soldiers of the Church military” (Diderot’s Encyclopaedia, 1759). In 1229, the Council of Toulouse passed another decree “that strictly prohibits laics from having in their possession either the Old or New Testaments; or from translating them into the vulgar tongue”. By the 14th Century, possession of a Bible by the laity was a criminal offence and punishable by whipping, confiscation of real and personal property, and burning at the stake.
Thus the papacy endorsed the public suppression of the Bible for twelve hundred and thirty years, right up until after the Reformation and the printing of the King James Bible in 1611.
Papal Rome against the Bible
From the 1200s to the 1800s, Papal leaders openly condemned the reading of the Bible in the vernacular and even persecuted those caught with copies of the Scriptures in their possession. In more recent times the Roman Catholic Church has ameliorated its previous public declarations and position. Yet the Vatican has not changed. Papal Rome’s opposition to Bible truth remains to this day. Note these historical statements:
At the Council of Toulouse (1229 AD), papal church leaders ruled: “We prohibit laymen possessing copies of the Old and New Testament … We forbid them most severely to have the above books in the popular vernacular … The lords of the districts shall carefully seek out the heretics in dwellings, hovels, and forests, and even their underground retreats shall be entirely wiped out” (Pope Gregory IX, Council Tolosanum, 1229 AD).
The Roman Catholic Council of Tarragona also ruled that: “No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after the promulgation of this decree, so that they may be burned” (D. Lortsch, Histoire de la Bible en France, 1910, p 14).
The Council of Trent (1545–1564) placed the Bible on its list of prohibited books, and forbade any person to read the Bible without a licence from a Roman Catholic bishop or inquisitor. The Council added these words: “That if any one shall dare to read or keep in his possession that book, without such a license, he shall not receive absolution till he has given it up to his ordinary”. “Since it is clear from experience that if the Sacred Books are permitted everywhere and without discrimination in the vernacular there will by reasons of the boldness of men arise therefrom more harm than good…” (Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, p 274).
Papal opposition to the Bible in recent times
Pope Pius VII (1800–1823) expressed shock at the circulation of the Scriptures. He declared, “It is evidence from experience, that the holy Scriptures, when circulated in the vulgar tongue, have, through the temerity of men, produced more harm than benefit.”
Pope Gregory XVI (1831–1846) railed: “against the publication, distribution, reading, and possession of books of the holy Scriptures translated into the vulgar tongue.”
Pope Leo XII called the Protestant Bible the “Gospel of the Devil” in an encyclical letter of 1824. In January 1850, he condemned the distribution of Scripture by stating that its distribution has “long been condemned by the holy chair.”
Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903) declared, “As it has been clearly shown by experience that, if the holy Bible in the vernacular is generally permitted without any distinction, more harm than utility is thereby caused…” (Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII, pp 412,413).
Jesuit Marianus de Luce (1901) stated, “The Catholic Church has the right and duty to kill heretics because it is by fire and sword that heresy can be extirpated.”
John Wycliffe
The first complete English translation of the Bible appeared in the 1380s. This translation was made by John Wycliffe, an English priest, and his followers called Lollards. It was a translation of a translation, namely of the Latin Vulgate, into English. Wycliffe was a parish priest of Lutterworth and although he lived and died a beneficed clergyman, he became regarded by the hierarchy with such relentless animosity that forty years after his death his very bones were exhumed and burnt, and his ashes cast into the waters of the River Swift, adjoining the Church, thence to the oceans of the world.
It was Wycliffe’s Teutonic love of truth and freedom which moved him to give his countrymen the open Scriptures as their best safeguard and protection against the moral corruptions, bondage and obscurantism of Papal Rome; and it was the growth of the English language into a literary medium of expression, which first made a people’s Bible possible. Wycliffe’s first translation saw the light of day in 1382. This was later revised in 1388 by his followers after his death, in 1384. After a life devoted to translating all Scripture into English, John Wycliffe suffered a series of strokes and died, thereby escaping the hands of angry Bishops who accused him of inventing a new translation. The Roman Catholic system summarised his life with the following epitaph:
“The devil’s instrument, Church’s enemy, people’s confusion, heretic’s idol, hypocrite’s mirror, schism broacher, hatred’s sower, lies’ forger, flatteries’ sink, who, stricken by the horrible judgement of God, breathed forth his soul to dark mansion of the black devil” (Epitaph).
Wycliffe’s followers
Wycliffe’s followers, the “Lollards”, suffered extreme hardships and indignities at the hands of the ‘Church’. They were hunted like wild beasts and many were burned with copies of Wycliffe’s Bible around their necks. Children were forced to light the fires, which would claim the lives of their parents. Wycliffe’s Bible was the last to be handwritten. Soon after this time printing was invented, which, along with the introduction into Europe of the manufacture of cheap paper, meant that Bibles could be produced at such a rate that the Bible-burning bishops were unable to keep up with production. This, coupled with a revival in learning of the Hebrew and Greek languages and a widespread desire for reform proved too much for the Church.
William Tyndale
The German Protestant reformer Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German in 1522 and the rest of the Bible in 1534. About the same time, William Tyndale, a gifted linguist, translated the Bible into English while living in Germany. It was said of Tyndale by his contemporaries that “he was so skilled in seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish and English, that in whichever he spoke, you would suppose it was his native tongue.” Tyndale based some of his translation on Luther’s German version.
Publication of Tyndale’s New Testament began in Cologne, Germany, in 1525. Portions of the Old Testament appeared in 1530 and 1531. The vigorous language of Tyndale’s translation greatly influenced most later translations of the Bible into English to the point where Tyndale has been described as “the true father of our present Bible”. The success of Tyndale’s work was due to his deep and burning determination to see the English people instructed in God’s precious Word. He was certain that the bishops and friars had no intention of bringing the common people to the Bible. At his own cost, therefore, and even at the risk of his life, the Bible should be brought to the people. Tyndale did not keep his design secret, but, whilst private chaplain to Sir John Walsh, in Gloucestershire, he was engaged in dispute with a certain ecclesiastical magnate who commented, “We were better without God’s laws than the Pope’s”, to which he responded with what has been described as the greatest ‘comeback’ of all time, “I defy the Pope and all his laws and if God spare my life, ere many years I will cause that a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.” Now that his contraband design had been divulged, he had become more than ever a marked man and it was unsafe for him to remain in England and so he undertook self-exile in Germany.
William Tyndale’s copy of the New Testament was the first to be directly translated from the Greek into English. These were clandestinely smuggled into England among bales of various merchandise. He next translated parts of the Old Testament directly from the original Hebrew before he was betrayed to the authorities and martyred in October 1536, when he was put to death by strangulation and his body burnt at the stake. Foxe gives but one solitary detail of his martyrdom. He cried with a fervent and loud voice, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes”, a cry which was speedily to be answered in the Royal recognition (1537) of the Coverdale and the Matthew Bibles.
The King James Bible
In 1604, King James I of England authorised a committee of about 50 scholars to prepare a revision of earlier English translations of the Bible. The new version appeared in 1611 and became known as the Authorised, or King James, Version. The beauty and grace of the translation established the Authorised Version as one of the great treasures of the English language. It has been estimated that the Authorised Version of the Bible retains something like 80% of Tyndale’s work in the Old Testament and 90% in the New. If this is true then we are indebted to Tyndale for the style, the richness and the beauty of the language of the Authorised Version. This has been described in the following words:
“For felicity of diction, and for dignity of rhythm, Tyndale never has been and never can be surpassed … Far from vulgarising the Bible by lowering his standard of language down to the popular level, he lifted the common language, in a true nobility of homeliness, up to the sublime level of the Bible. He worked, like a sane and sound scholar, on the principles of the grammar and philology. He endeavoured, in a spirit of unpedantic sincerity and conscientiousness, to find out what it was that each sacred writer had meant to say, and then to say it in plain and vigorous Saxon-English with all the idiomatic simplicity, and grace, and stateliness which characterise the Authorised Version” (Our English Bible, H.W. Hoare).
Papal hatred of the Bible
It took 900 years for the Papal system to destroy most Old Latin Bibles and kill their owners. Then John Wycliffe (1320–1384) translated the Scripture from Latin into English. By 1380 he had translated the New Testament, and by 1382, the complete English Bible. The Jesuits hated one Bible with a passion – the King James Bible – and vowed to destroy it! Papal Rome has waged relentless war against the Bible and on Bible-believing saints for centuries. Initially the Papacy endeavoured to destroy all the Bibles it could find and to murder those possessing, printing, or distributing them! However, when the frontal assault failed, a different tactic was employed, namely, the undermining of the authority of the Bible, and sowing confusion in the minds of men with a plethora of newer “Bible” versions.
A precious heritage
What a privilege and blessing it is that we are able in these turbulent times of the Gentiles to have a clear guide in the Scriptures – the very Word of God – supplied in the vernacular whereby we may consult the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27, ESV). In his parting words to the elders of the Ephesian ecclesia, Paul declared the immense power of God’s Word: “And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). It remains for us to revere the Scriptures: “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Pet 1:4).