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Evoi And now my task is finished, and you, dear reader, if you have followed it up, will utter, I am sure, a hearty Deo gratias! As sincerely and as clearly as possible, I have tried to show that it is to the Catholic Church under God that we owe the preservation and integrity of the Sacred Scriptures. The Old Testament she took over from the Jewish Church; to it she added the New Testament, the work of her own Apostles and Bishops, and comprising them in one great whole, declared that they had the Holy Ghost for their author, and were neither to be increased nor diminished. Throughout the ages when there was no other Church she has preserved them from error, saved them from destruction, multiplied them in every language under Heaven, and put them with the necessary prudence in her people’s hands. Again and again heretics and apostates have tried to mutilate and corrupt them – indeed, have actually done so; but the Roman Church has ever preserved a version pure and entire. She claims that she alone knows the meaning of their teaching, and alone possesses the right to interpret them to men. She will tolerate no tampering with the sacred text, and in these days especially, when scientists and critics who have lost belief in the supernatural attack them and labor to overthrow their Divine authority and authorship, Rome alone stands as their protector; to her alone pious lovers of the Sacred Volume, be they Catholic or Protestant, must look to save it and defend it. The Pope has appointed a standing Biblical Commission to guard the integrity and authenticity of Holy Scripture. This is but natural; for he stands as it were in loco parentis; the Bible is the Church’s offspring. But it is surely the keenest irony of history that, whilst Protestants themselves are striving with might and main to pull to pieces the ancient object of their veneration, the Catholic Church, ever reputed its deadliest enemy, alone is left of all Christian bodies to save it from destruction. And this she will do, as she has ever done in the past; it is part of her office in this world; there is no other that has either the right or the power to do it. If the Bible loses its sovereign place in the heart and mind of non-Catholics, as it is rapidly doing, it is the work of those who, whether in Germany, or Britain or America, have loudly professed themselves its greatest champions. The Catholic Church on the other hand, in her long history has nothing to be ashamed of in her treatment of it, but deserves the praise and thanks of all Christians for so zealously and fearlessly protecting it from corruption and contempt. Indeed, I will say that a simple study of her attitude towards the inspired Scriptures, in comparison with that of all heretical bodies, will furnish one of the strongest arguments that she is the True Church of Christ. Venerable and inspired as Catholics regard the Bible, great as is their devotion to it for spiritual reading and support of doctrine, we yet do not pretend to lean upon it alone, as the Rule of faith and morals. Along with it we take that great Word that was never written, Tradition, and hold by both the one and the other interpreted by the living voice of the Catholic Church speaking through her Supreme Head, the infallible Vicar of Christ. Here we have a Guide that has never failed, and never can, in teaching us our duty both to God and man. Not on the quicksands of human and varying judgment, but on the Rock of Divine Authority, we place our feet; and, amidst the warring of opinions and the conflict of numberless editions and versions of Sacred Scripture, and the confused and contradictory interpretations of texts, we find an unassailable refuge in the decision of Rome, and in submitting to the judgment of that Church to which Christ gave Divine authority to teach when He said, ‘Go ye and teach all nations’, we find a sure consolation and an abiding peace. Individual interpretation of the Bible – the most sublime but also the most difficult Book ever penned – can never bring satisfaction, can never give infallible certainty, can never place a man in possession of that great objective body of truth which Our Blessed Lord taught, and which it is necessary to salvation that all should believe. The experience of many centuries proves it. It can not do so because it was never meant to do so. It produces not unity, but division; not peace, but strife. Only listening to those to whom Jesus Christ said, ‘He that heareth you heareth Me,’ only sinking his own fads and fancies and submitting with childlike confidence to those whom the Redeemer set out to teach in His Name and with His authority – only this, I say, will satisfy a man, and give to his intellect repose, and to his soul a ‘peace the surpasseth all understanding’. Then no longer will he be tormented with contentious disputings about this passage of the Bible and that, no longer racked and rent and ‘tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine’, changing with the changing years. He will, on the contrary ,experience a joy and comfort and certainty that nothing can shake in being able to say, ‘O my God, I believe whatever Thy Holy Catholic Church believes and teaches, because Thou hast revealed it Who canst neither deceive nor be deceived.’ God grant that many Bible-readers and Bible-lovers may obtain the grace to make this act of faith, and pass from an unreasoning subservience to a Book to reasonable obedience and submission to its maker and defender – the Catholic and Roman Church.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Catholic . Abbe Begin The Bible: Its Use and Abuse. Paul McLachlan. Concerning the Holy Bible. J.S. Vauhan. Text-Books of Catholic Theology. – Tanquerey, Hunter, etc. Catholic Dictionary, Catholic Cyclopedia. C.T.S. Publications. – Clarke, Anderson, Donnelly, M. C. L., Allnatt, etc. The Question Box, Faith of our Fathers, etc. Introduction to Old Testament and New Testament. Cornely. The Old English Bible. Gasquet. Catholic Students "Aids" to the Study of the Bible. H. Pope, O.P. Protestant . – Dixon, Hook, Blunt. The Bible and the Church. Westcott. The Dark Ages. Maitland. History of the English Bible. Burnett Thompson. The English Bible. Milligan. How the Bible came to us. Herne. English Bibles. Dore. Our Bible. Talbot. How we got our Bible. Smyth. Introduction to New Testament Criticism. Scrivener. Helps to Study of the Bible. (Oxford.) The Bibles of England. Edgar. Our English Bible. Hoare.
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