• Biographical booklet
• Altar Card
• Golden Jubilee Book

• Rome the Goal of the Oxford Movement
• Loyalty to the Church of England
• The Cart of Abinadab
• Benediction in the Church of England
• Canterbury and York: Two Provinces of Rome

• Meditations on the Spiritual Life
• The Sacrament of Orders
• What is Catholic Authority?
• The Holy Ghost the Source of Infallibility
• The Popes and The Bible
• The Bishops of London and Benediction

ONE duty with which we, as Anglicans, are concerned is the removal of prejudice and to do our utmost to clear up misunderstandings about the Popes. On this occasion we desire to remove wrong ideas about the Popes and the Bible.

The attitude of the Popes to the Bible is a subject of in-trinsic importance, because the Bible must have an honoured place in any system which claims to be Christian. No more damaging indictment can be made against a Christian body than that, in its System, there is either no place for the Bible or that no adequate provision is made for the right use of it. No such indictment can be made against the Papacy.

I. THE PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN THE RULE OF FAITH.

The prevalence of wrong ideas about the Bible as a test of Catholic Truth renders it extremely difficult to make the Catholic method of Truth prevail.

The Catholic way has always been more or less independent of any written tradition. When there were disputes on Church matters the appeal was always made to the Bishops in the Apostolic Sees: and to the Councils of the Church, in which each Diocesan was asked to record the practice and tradition of his Diocese. The consensus of unwritten tradition was the ultimate authority and the definitions were made accordingly, and signed by the Pope.

The Apostles were sent without Bibles. The Bible did not convert the world. It was the Church without the Bible. St. Irenaeus for this reason says that " the truth is to be found nowhere but in the Catholic Church ". In the Bible apart from the Church it is not found. The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose. Heretics do so too.

Disputes about the Bible are due to the divisions of Chris-tendom. And it is because of a desire to reject the Popes that the attempt is made to set up the Bible as though it could be a rival of the system of truth set up by Our Lord. Bible-worshippers are always anti-papists.

Our Lord did not write a book, nor did He order any book to be written: nor any records of His Life to be set down m writing What He did was to set up a Church, a Living Body with perpetual life under a living Head, infallible and indes-tructible. And all authority is given to this Church and not to the Bible. The New Testament did not yet exist when the Lord gave authority to His Church.

The reading of a book has never been laid upon God's people as a duty. There is no such injunction in the Ten Command-ments: nor in the Six Precepts of the Church. This fact should give pause to those who presume to criticise any Church authority in guarding the use of the Vernacular. Such a thing must be of a disciplinary nature. There are millions in heaven who were illiterate on earth, and who never pos-sessed a Bible.

In Old Testament times the Oracles of God were not en-trusted to any but the Priests and the Scribes. The Christian Church weathered ten persecutions without being in possession of the Bible as a whole. It is true that parts of the New Testament were the property of private Christians and their owners were put to death if the writings were discovered. Those who gave up their Scriptures were dubbed traditors. The attempt to destroy the Scriptures was a new feature in the Diocletian persecution, a significant fact showing that about the beginning of the fourth century the reading of the Bible was becoming more general among Catholics.

Nevertheless, the Bible is the Church's book and the Bible owes all its authority to the Church. Apart from the Church s signature the Scriptures would be merely human documents with the authority only of any other history, li^^P0^ or drama. The Church does not depend on the Bible but the Bible on the Church.

Our knowledge that the Bible is inspired rests on the au-thority of the Catholic Church, of which Irenaeus says that she soes to the heathen and preaches so that those outsiders become converted having " Salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit without paper and ink, and they also preserve the ancient tradition". The Church has never adopted or practised the method of converting the heathen by distributing Bibles. Imagine St. Patrick giving Bibles to the Druids. In our own Foreign missions converts are made years belore any parts of the Bible are put into the vernacular. Oiten it is not done at all.

It is while discussing the source and the ultimate seat of Church authority that St. Irenaeus wrote that famous passage which shows the supreme position of the Papacy even in those early days (150 A.D.). The Saint lays down that the criterion of doctrine and custom in the Catholic Church ultimately resides in the Succession of Bishops in the Apostolic Sees.

In order to avoid the tediousness involved in tracing the successions in all the Churches St. Irenaeus indicates the tradi-tion of Rome as the one to be followed. He describes it as (( that tradition derived from the Apostles, of that very great, that very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organised at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, and also that faith which comes down to us by means of the successions of the Bishops. For it is a matter of neces-sity that every Church should agree with this Church on ac-count of its pre-eminent authority". (Adv. Haeres III. III.). The Church of England can safely agree with the Roman tradition on the sacred Scriptures: for it is a matter of neces-sity that every Church should agree "with this Church ".

II. THE PAPAL RULE: A TRADITION FROM ST. PETER.

St. Peter was the founder of the tradition according to which the See of Rome has become famous for faithfulness to the Sacred Scriptures. The New Testament, especially in St. Peter's two Epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles, ex-hibits St. Peter as a man versed in the Old Testament. At the election of St. Matthias and on the Day of Pentecost he made felicitous applications of the Old Testament writings to the events of the day. He stamped the Apostolic See as the faith-ful guardian of the Word of God: and his successors in the Chair have all faithfully kept the tradition of careful guardian-ship and loyal adherence to the Bible.

Succeeding Pontiffs have been remarkable for their faith-fulness to their trust. There is no instance of any Pope being carried away by novel theories about the Bible.

St. Peter's connection with Antioch before he went to Rome was preserved by his successors in their encouragement of the more sober Antiochene exegetes of that great succession of Bible scholars which takes its name from Antioch: nor were they unmindful of the great Alexandrian School of Bible scholars. It was from Rome that St. Peter wrote his first Epistle. In this Epistle he speaks of the prophets of the Old Testament having enquired and searched diligently for salvation, and that they prophesied of the grace which had come to his converts. He opens his quotations from the Old Testament with the formal "As it is written". He urges the Clergy to speak as the Oracles of God ", his title for the Old Testament.

In the second Epistle he says "No prophecy of the Scriptures is of any private interpretation." On this we have an echo in Pope St. Clement's Recognitions. St. Peter continues that " prophecy came not in old time by the will of man but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." (2 Pet. I. 21). His illustrations are drawn from the Old Testament. He draws his lessons from Noah, Abraham, and Sodom and Gomorrah.

All the Popes have adhered to the tradition of St. Peter. St. Clement I of Rome was a convert, a hearer and a disciple of St. Peter. He is named in the Canon of the Mass: " joining in Communion with, and venerating the memory of Linus, Cletus, Clement ". This Clement was so great a Pope that various works have been attributed to him as to a likely author and some have used his name to gain credit for their own forgeries. Besides the False Decretals which bear his name there are other works, some still in dispute, but showing him as a man handing on the tradition of St. Peter's emphasis on the Scriptures rightly interpreted. In the Recogmtzons, St. Clement in Book X, Chapter xlii writing on " The Inter-pretation of Scripture ", quotes his master, St. Peter, as saying that " Ingenious men take many similies from the things they read. On this account great care is to be taken, that when the law of God is read, it be not read according to the under-standing of our own minds. For there are many sayings in the Divine Scriptures which can be drawn to that sense which everyone has preconceived for himself: and this ought not to be done. For you ought not to seek a foreign and extraneous sense, which you have brought from without, and which you think to confirm from the authority of the Scriptures. But you must take the sense of truth from the Scriptures them-selves. Therefore it behoves you to learn the meaning of the Scriptures from him who keeps it according to the truth handed down to him from his fathers, so that he can authoritatively declare what he has rightly received. But when one has received an entire and firm rule of truth from the Scriptures, it will not be improper if he contribute to the establishment of true doctrine anything from common education and from liberal studies, which it may be, he has attached himself to in his boyhood: yet so that when he has learned the truth, he renounces falsehood and pretence ". In this passage St. Clement, the Pope, is represented as quotingjSt. Peter on how to use the Bible.

For my purpose it is irrelevant to decide whether St. Clement was the author of the Recognitions, although some of the greatest names support his authorship: and I have no doubt of it myself. It is enough for me that the writer quotes St. Peter: and that the love of the Popes for the Scriptures interpreted by the Church was so notorious that a man who wanted to get credit for his writing would exploit successfully the reputation of such a great Pope as Clement I in support of the Bible.

All the Popes have adhered to the tradition of St. Peter. There were some who were conspicuous for their insistence on the Bible and its Catholic use, and for their love for, and knowledge of, the Scriptures. Of the early Popes in the second century a few may be named for special honour: St. Hyginus, St. Pius I, and St. Victor: in the following century St. Fabian encouraged the labours of Origen, that prince of Bible scholars, on whom Leo XIII in 1893 pronounced a high eulogium.

St. Damasus ordered St. Jerome to translate into Latin the LXX and the Hebrew version of the Old Testament. Some of the Popes were themselves Bible scholars, as for example St. Gregory the Great and St. Leo the Great. The Popes were also patrons of Bible scholars. All the great versions were brought out under their patronage. The very chair in which St. Peter sat is still in the Church of St. Peter at Rome. It is supported by the figures of four Bible doctors; two^ Greek, St. Chrysostom and St. Athanasius: and two Latin, St. Augustine and St. Ambrose. It stands as a symbol that east and west were united under the rule of Peter, and that the Popes rule from a chair which is supported by both Greek and Latin Bible Doctors.

A strong argument to show the continuous interest of the Popes in the translation of the Scriptures can be drawn from the fact that all the great manuscripts of the Bible were made in monasteries. The Scriptorium was a part of many monas-teries where manuscripts were copied and translations were made. Were it not for the monasteries it is doubtful whether there would be any Bibles in existence.

Some moderns rush in where angels fear to tread. Protes-tant bias leads them to belittle the work of Popes or priests, and monks for the Bible. Instead of monasteries producing Bibles they prefer to think that in the streets of Antioch there were big publishing firms where numerous scribes were employed in a great commercial venture in reproducing Bibles for rich patrons who were not prepared to pay a living wage. They cannot imagine any time when great business m books was unknown. They read back into the past the great sales of Printing House Square, and the Times Edition ot tne Encyclopaedia Britannica. It would never do for them to think that the great manuscripts of the Bible were the product of love in quiet far-away monasteries, where they have actually been found. That there were monasteries and scriptoria we know for a fact, but that there were any great publishing-firms, apart from the monasteries, interested in making Bibles is an unfounded conjecture.

The monks were and are still under the especial patronage of the Popes and their activities are such as the Popes desire to promote. It is not a far-fetched thing to say that the interest in the Bible which prevailed throughout the Church and especially in monasteries was due to the Holy See.

Priests who daily recite the Divine Office will appreciate the force of the argument I am about to propose. It is that the Breviary is more interpenetrated with Holy Scripture than any book other than the Bible itself. The Breviary is the Pope's book and the Popes are entitled to the credit for its scriptural character. Besides the Psalms and Bible Lessons and Scriptural Responsories and Antiphons there are contained in the Breviary a regular sequence of Expositions of Scripture by the greatest of the ancient Commentators. A few names that come to mind are St. Gregory the Pope: St. Leo the Pope: St. Ambrose: St. Jerome: St. Chrysostom: and St. Bernard.

From the Commentaries and Expositions of the Second and Third Nocturns of Sundays and Feasts you gather the names of those expositors whom the Church prefers above others, and whom she judges should be our guides. These names are also suggestive of the soundness of the tradition of the Popes in their use of the Sacred Scriptures.

No paper on the attitude of the Popes to the Bible can be complete without the Decree of the Council of Trent on the Scriptures. The Decree of Trent on the Scriptures lays down for all time the rule for the Church in her use of the Bible. It was a Pope who initiated the Council: and succeeding Popes have based their Encyclicals on the Tridentine Decree.

The Council was held under Paul III. In its Fourth Session the Council passed the Decree concerning the Canonical Scriptures in April 1546. The first thing of importance dealt with by the Council was the Creed. And the very next was Scripture. A Catalogue of the Sacred Books was embodied in the Decree. The Old Latin Vulgate was pronounced to be the authentic edition. There was a solemn warning against interpretations contrary to the sense held by the Church, as contained in the Written Books, and in the unwritten tradition received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself. Books of the Scriptures were not to be printed except by licence. Provision was made that the Sacred Scriptures and especially the Old Latin Vulgate be printed in the most correct manner possible.

The Tridentine Decree established the principle often applied by later Popes in various Encyclicals dealing with the abuses of the Scriptures by heretics." The established Papal Principle may be summarised as follows. The Bible must be the whole Bible: and not a mutilated one. It must be the approved edition. The Bible as the Written Tradition must be used with, and interpreted by, the Unwritten Tradition received from Christ by the Apostles.

In order to restrain turbulent spirits, it decrees that no one relying on his own skill in matters of faith and of morals, and wresting the Sacred Scriptures to his own senses, shall'dare to interpret the said Sacred Scriptures contrary to that sense which Holy Mother Church, whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation, hath held and doth hold, or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.

This most enlightened Council also passed in its Decree, an order which is either ignored or utterly misrepresented'by Protestant detractors of the Papacy. It says: " Henceforth the Sacred Scriptures and especially the Old Vulgate Edition is to be printed in the most correct manner possible ". Hereby the door is left open for any corrections in the text which scholarship may suggest and which authority may at any time approve.

The Council was determined to do away with all kinds of irreverence and contempt by which the words of scripture were wrested from their right meaning and applied to all manner of profane uses. Besides restraining the abusers of the Bible, the Council called upon every Bishop to make provision for a stall in every Cathedral for a Prebend, to be conferred only on those capable of expounding and interpreting the Sacred Scriptures.

That the Church does not lay it as a duty on all her children indiscriminately to read the Bible may be gathered from the fact that no such duty is laid down in The Catechism of the Council of Trent which was passed by the same authority as the Decree on Scripture. Scripture is used throughout the Catechism to prove the truth taught by the Church. In it you have the great principle carried out " The Church to teach, the Bible to prove ".

It would be monotonous to name all the Popes of the Reformation period who promoted Bible study and Bible reading. From 1522 to 1592, the most energetic period of the Reformation, there were thirteen Popes. When you think of the way they kept abreast of Bible controversy in that period of intense theological upheaval, with Luther in Germany, Calvin in Geneva and Cranmer in England, you stand amazed that anyone can be so prejudiced as to say that the Popes were indifferent to the Bible.

Between Clement VII and Clement VIII there were twelve Popes. Besides the two Clements no fewer than nine of the Popes were actively concerned in the promotion of Bible knowledge and its propagation. It is to a Pope Sixtus V that we owe the famous Sixtine Edition of the LXX and of the Vulgate of 1590. With his own hand he corrected the proofs. We have reason to remember this Pope with gratitude for his fatherly sympathy with Mary, Queen of Scots. He was one of the few who deserved to receive or were capable of inspiring the confidence of that unhappy Queen.

Of later Popes it is to Clement XI we owe the condemnation of Quesnel's Commentaries on the Gospels which tended to exploit the Gospels in favour?of the Jansenist heresy. Bene-dict XIII confirmed the famous Bull " Unigenitus Dei " of Clement XI, which condemns wrong interpretations favouring Jansenism.

As occasion arose we find the Popes issuing Encyclicals to deal with current ways of misusing the Bible.

II

THE attitude of the Popes to the Bible is brought home to us the more forcibly as we approach our own times. When we came to the period of the rise of the Oxford Movement we can discern the signs of Papal influence both in its effects on the Oxford Movers and in the diatribes against them as Papists and Romanisers.

IV. THE PAPAL RULE IN RECENT TIMES.

Pius VIII (1829) was one of the Popes renowned for his knowledge of Biblical literature. Before his elevation to the supreme power he had made his name as a Canonist; but his favourite pursuit was dealing with German rationalistic systems on the Scriptures.

In his Encyclical he attacks the Bible Societies which pre-judice the Catholic Faith by corrupt and mutilated transla-tions of the Bible. He regards this as a new danger for the faith. He reaffirms the Decree of Trent; and warns against the poisonous draughts conveyed by the perversion of Scrip-ture. He is superb on the integrity of Scripture. He abhors a mutilated Bible.

Encyclicals and Papal pronouncements within the last hundred years leave no doubt about the opportuneness of the traditional policy of the Holy See, to meet and defeat the evil activities of modern Bible Societies.

Gregory XVI in 1844 wrote to the Bishops: " Among the chief machinations of non-Catholics directed to ensnare men from our holy faith, the Bible Societies hold a conspicuous place. First started in England they disseminate immense numbers of copies far and wide among Christians and infidels alike. And they entice everyone to read them without any guide. Thus, as St. Jerome complained in his day, the loquacious old woman and the doting old man, and the verbal caviller and all who can read are supposed to understand the Scriptures without a teacher, and what is still more absurd and unheard of the very infidel nations are not thought in-capable of understanding God's word, without any teacher or guide ".

Those who bring their doctrinal errors to the reading of the Bible, always wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction. So convinced are they that their errors are the truth that they slip their own words into the Bible or they pervert its meaning, or they make changes in the text to support their preconceptions.

Translations are notoriously misleading, and so numerous are the translations put forth by the Bible Societies that it is impossible but that injury is done to countless souls through the errors that are freely disseminated with copies of the Bible.

The great object seems to be that every man be made to think that he is free to judge the meaning of the Scriptures- without any knowledge of Catholic Tradition. So you find that the literary products of Bible Societies incessantly calum-niate the Church and the Pope. Their bias is Anti-Roman. The unintentional good done by them is that their diatribes send a sensible person to investigate. The result is frequently another convert to Catholicism.

The splendid proofs of the extraordinary zeal of the Popes to instruct the Catholic nations in the Divine Word both written and by tradition are lost upon these blasphemers of the See of Peter. Century by century they renew the lying charge that the Popes try to keep the Bible from the faithful.

The Popes are aware of the evils wrought by groups and by clandestine gatherings, where under the cloak of the Bible they talk of things that ought not to be talked of: and rouse passions which should be kept dormant, and sublimated to virtuous uses.

V. THE PAPAL RULE IS SALUTARY.

It becomes necessary from time to time to put the Rules of Trent into force, and to prohibit the Bible in the vulgar tongue except to those judged likely to benefit in faith and morals bv it. From our own experience we know what obstacles are placed in the way of priests who are commanded to preach the Word of God and to administer the Sacraments. Every priest comes across some parishioners who are prepared to prove from the Bible that the Catholic Faith is all wrong. It is the old, old trouble which the Papacy has suffered and opposed from time immemorial: every man his own priest, and teacher, and expositor of the Bible. Every parish priest suffers for his own parish what the Pope suffers more poignantly for the whole Church and for the World.

It is difficult to think of any way to bring home the mischievous tendencies of Protestant commentaries. The methods of heretics are subtle and varied. Some of us owe our chief religious difficulties to subtle untruth passed to us under the guise of the Scriptures. We have been misled by some who alter the text. Others insinuated error by wrong interpretations. Here are a few instances of the subtle poison conveyed by versions of the Scriptures and com-mentaries upon them.

Marcion, the arch-heretic and denier of Christ's Divinity altered the Bible in many places to suit his heresies. One favourite way of his was by false punctuation.

Many moderns hash up the heresies of the Manicheans on the subject of the Old Testament. They question its credibility, they censure its morality, and they say that it is at variance with the New Testament. Such theories have ever been condemned by the Papacy. The errors of the Manicheans and the Gnostics were renewed with some vigour by German heretics in the latter half of the nineteenth century. They were old-fashioned and out-of-date in the early years of this century. Nevertheless they have been served up as a sort of new revelation in A New Commentary of Scripture issued by the S.P.C.K. The poisonous ideas of this Commentary were out-of-date forty years before it appeared. The ideas on which its conclusions were based had long since been used by Agnos-tics, Theists, Pantheists, Nestorians and various sorts of Protestants in support of their false systems.

More than forty years ago in the Divinity School of Trinity College, Dublin, these ideas received crushing replies from Dr. Salmon, Dr. Gwynn and Dr. Bernard. Also in England, even before that, Dr. Pusey had given them the quietus. In spite of these refutations they are hashed up for innocent students of our Theological Colleges of to-day. The tendency of this Commentary is anti-Catholic: and logically and intellectually it is anti-Christian, and would lead to atheism. No Pope would have allowed such a mischievous book to go forth with Apostolic authority.

The Authorised Version with all its literary cadences and its lovely English stands condemned for some deliberate corruptions in the text which was altered to suit the denial by the Reformers of some truths; e.g. the denial of concomitance, by altering the word " or " to the word " and " in Corinthians XI, 27, where the true rendering is " Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread OR drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the Body AND Blood of the Lord." This means that whosoever shall eat this Bread unworthily is guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord: and whosoever shall drink this cup unworthily shall be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord. We ought to be profoundly thankful to have in the Popes and their Scriptural Commission watchful guardians warning us of the wolves in sheep's clothing, lurking behind the supposed authority of the Bible, mutilating the Canon or corrupting the text, to support their erroneous teachings.

A glaring instance of the mutilation of the Canon was accomplished by the Reformers, who ruled out no less than seven Books and some portions of Books because they con-tained Catholic teaching which the Reformers had rejected. For example the 2nd Book of the Maccabees was dropped because of its plain teaching of Prayers for the Dead. These are instances of the sort of poison against which Pius VIII issued his great Encyclical.

A few more instances of the corruption of the text may be noted.

In Jeremiah xvii, 9 to favour the heresy of the total de-pravity of the human soul the word " unsearchable " in the original is rendered " desperately wicked." The text really runs: " The heart is perverse above all things and unsearch-able, who can know it ? " The Reformers to suit their error rendered it: "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." There is no such thing in the original as " desperately wicked."

Another instance is to be found in Malachi ii, 7. The Reformers did not believe in priests, except as a Jewish order that became extinct with the old sacrifices of animals. They would not allow that the priest had any special charge of the Word of God or of divine knowledge. This text in the original reads " The lips of the priest shall keep knowledge." The Reformers to take away a divine charge to priests and to show that the duty of priests in regard to knowledge was the same as that of ordinary people rendered the text: (( The lips of the priest should keep knowledge." The change is as if you were to say: "Thou shouldst not commit adultery" instead of "thou shalt not commit adultery."

VI. THE PAPAL RULE AND THE VERNACULAR.

The Church has always provided vernacular versions of the Bible where possible. The numerous versions in various languages is proof of it.

As for legislation on the use of the vernacular there was none for a thousand years. From about the year 1000 to the year 1500 various regulations were made in various countries. Some like Gregory VII forbade translations as likely to foster irreverent and wrong interpretations. Innocent III said the reading of the Blble was Praiseworthy, but dangerous to the laith of the simple and unlearned. The trend of local Canons was against the indiscriminate use of the Bible. The Synod of Oxford, because of the crimes of the Lollards and their poisonous interpolations in the text, ordered that only versions approved by the Ordinary should be permitted.

From about I500 to the present time the regulations for the reading of the Bible in the vernacular become more frequent and general. In addition to the Decree of Trent passed in 1546 we may say in general that the Pope allowed the Old Testament for the pious and learned: and the Bishops controlled the reading of the New Testament in the vernacular bome Popes reserved this power to themselves, or referred it to the Congregation of the Index. Some required that notes be provided from the Fathers or approved authors. Clement XI condemned certain propositions of the Jansenist Quesnel-and especially he condemned QuesneFs requirement that to read the Bible is the duty of everyone.

The indiscriminate reading of the Bible by the laity was discouraged. A great change took place in 1836 by which a return was made to the practice of the seventeenth century by which vernacular versions approved by the Holy See and with notes by Catholic authors were allowed to the laity I his permission was eagerly seized by Irish Catholics. And a number of approved versions of the Bible were in circulation. In his splendid Encyclical of 1844, already quoted, Pope Gregory XVI repeated the Regulations of 1836.

The Church has always allowed Vernacular Versions of the Bible under proper safeguards. The countless versions in numerous languages, before the Bible Society existed, is a proof of the Church's rule that the Bible being her Book it can be trusted to those who are grounded in the Catholic Faith and with a sound education.

VII. REFUTATION.

There are two great Institutions which are signal and challenging refutations of the false charge that the Popes are not Promoters of Biblical knowledge. First there is the -biblical Commission at Rome. And second there is a Scripture Faculty in Rome which confers licentiates and doctorates on those who are highly qualified by their profound knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures.

There is nothing in England to correspond with the Biblical Commission which sits twice a month in Rome. Twice a month five Cardinals receive reports from carefully selected scholars. The scope of the Commission is:

To protect and defend the integrity of the Catholic Faith on all Bible questions;

to further the exposition of the Bible: noting all recent discoveries;
to decide controversies among Catholic Scholars;
to give answers to enquirers all over the world;
to see that the Vatican Library is properly supplied with codices and books; and
to publish studies of Scripture as occasion may arise.

There is no such emporium of Bible knowledge elsewhere in the world.

The Pope's interest in propagating the Scriptures may be gathered from the fact that degrees in Sacred Scriptures are conferred in Rome. Licentiates in the faculty of Sacred Scriptures are given on the recommendation of the Commission. Also Doctorates in the faculty of Sacred Scriptures are given. The Judges are five of the Consultors, or selected scholars. I do not know of any University in any Protestant land where a man learned in the Scriptures can obtain a doctorate in that subject alone.

When the Popes are foolishly charged with not promoting Bible studies, it is well to bear in mind that Popes are not omniscient, and that their use of the Bible is to be found in their signatures to Canons, definitions of dogma, and anathemas on heresies. A Pope is a high official under whom great works in various departments are carried forward. It is one of the disadvantages of such a position that such evils as occur in his reign are put down to the Pope as though he connived at or even encouraged them. In the same way good things are put down to sovereigns who had nothing to do with them, as for instance to the sovereign who has got the name of Good Queen Bess. The outstanding fact is that through the history of the Church there runs the golden thread of Papal insistence on truth, always supported by Scripture and tradition.

It is not to be expected that Rulers be expert in every branch of learning. Even Alfred the Great of Wantage confined his learning to only a few subjects. There are numerous branches of sacred learning. No Pope could be expert in them all.

The reigning Pontiff, Pius XI, is a man of varied culture, and he has been not only an encourager of those who make a special study of the Sacred Scriptures but prior to his eleva-tion to the Chair of Peter he has often given to scholars practi-cal help in regard to difficult Biblical manuscripts. At a later time his researches in the great National Library of France, in the Vatican at Rome, in the Bodleian, and in the British Museum made him aware of all great Bible problems. And he is not the man to litter up great subjects with uncalled for Bulls and Encyclicals.

VIII. LEO XIII ON INSPIRATION.

It was a Pope, Leo XIII, who in 1893 put forth the greatest work on the Inspiration of the Bible that has ever left the hand of man. In his Encyclical Providentissimus Deus the Pope has given us the nearest thing to a definition of Inspiration which has ever been made or which is ever likely to be made. In it Holy Scripture is shown to be most profitable for Doctrine and Morality: it is an arsenal of heavenly arms: it is dictated by the Holy Ghost: and the reader is assisted by the same Holy Ghost.

In it is shown what the Bible owes to the Catholic Church, both for great Bible writers, and also for Popes in the cele-brated editions of the Bible of Pius IV and Clement VIII. He gives directions how to study the Bible, with rules of inter-pretation. He shows of what sort is the authority of Scripture. He deals with Modern Criticism and Physical Science in relation to the Bible.

The subject of its Inspiration is dealt with fully. It is described minutely: and a definition of it is given. Every Bible student should study this masterpiece on Bible Inspira-tion. A full translation of it is given in the Catholic Student's Aids to the Bible by Dr. Hugh Pope, O.P.

We are too close to the great Encyclical of Leo XIII to have any need of further authoritative statement^ on the Bible. We do not anticipate any further law of Papal In-fallibility. The definition of Pius IX will suffice for ages to come. There is no sense in looking for vain repetition in the Papal Decrees. For every Christian doctrine there is a day of final settlement by clear definition. It was so with the doctrine of the Trinity: of the Mother of God: of the Two Wills in Christ: of Transubstantiation: of the Immaculate Conception: and of Papal Infallibility: all have been settled: so I believe it to be with Inspiration of the Scriptures. Leo XIII settled it in the great Bible Encyclical, Providentissimus Deus of 1893.

The subject of the Sacred Scriptures is one of such fundamen-tal consequence that there is no need for continual references to it by an authority which has never altered in its attitude towards the Bible.

CONCLUSION.

To put shortly in a few words the difference between Catholics and others on the relation of the Bible to the Church. The Catholic view is that the Bible depends on the Church. The other view is that the Church depends on the Bible. But it is from the Church that we get the Bible, and the Bible is not the cause of the Church. Churches made out of the Bible are false Churches. They are not the Church of Christ.

We ought not to place non-Catholic Commentaries in the hands of the young. Because all of them put forth false views of the Catholic Church, and of the Seven Sacraments. Besides all this they have no appreciation of the work done by Catholic authors such as St. Augustine and St. Jerome. Protestants convey a false impression about the Scriptures, leading men to think that before the Reformation the Bible was a sealed book.

Their notion of Inspiration is not only defective but utterly false and misleading. It wobbles about from the extreme ignorant verbal infallibility of a bad version to the poetical notion that the Bible is like any book of inspired and beautiful literature.

In countries like Germany and England which have cast off the Papal Obedience you get ever recurring theories about the Bible. You are expected to follow the latest German Thought: or the most up-to-date Modernistic Will-o-the-Wisp. These constant changes show lack of faith and lack of principle.

Not so the Popes. There has never been in the long and chequered history of the Papacy one Pope to raise subtle questions on the Bible. Theories come and theories go, but the Papacy has always held to the Rule of Faith, the Bible and the Living Voice of the Church: or put otherwise. Tradi-tion, Written and Oral. We know where we are on the subject of the Bible and the Popes. Every Pope held to the sanctity of the Scriptures.

The Papal Tradition received from St. Peter and faithfully handed down leaves us in no doubt about the place of the Bible in the Rule of Faith. The Living Voice plainly utters the Truth, which is proved by the Oracles of God.