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DEAR SIR, Stonor Park, Sept. 15. PHE conversation which, a few days ago, we had in your Library, recalled my thoughts to Biblical literature, a branch of study in which I formerly took much pleasure; but which, for several years past, I have abandoned. What I recollect of the little knowledge of it that I once possessed, enables me to commit to paper the following miscellaneous observations on the DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME, RESPECTING THE GENERAL PERUSAL OF THE SCRIPTURES BY THE LAITY, one of the topicks of our conversation. They may be found to give some account, I. Of the Ancient Discipline of the Church of Rome, respecting the General Perusal of the Scriptures by the Laity: II. Some account of the Change made in the ancient Discipline, in consequence of the troubles occa sioned by the Waldenses and Albigenses: III. Some account of the AcTual State of the Discipline of the Church of Rome in this respect: IV. A short statement of the Sentiments of some respectable Protestant Writers. on the unrestricted perusal of the Scriptures: V. Some observations on the notion entertained by several Protestants, of our considering it unlawful to print a Translation of the Scriptures in a vulgar tongue, without Notes: VI. Some facts which shew the earnest wish of the Church of Rome to promote the circulation of the Scriptures, both in the original languages and in translations: VII. Some facts which shew the groundlessness of the charge brought against the Church of Rome, that she did not allow Translations of the Bible into vulgar tongues to be printed, till she was forced to it against her will by the Protestant Translations: and VIII. Some account of the English Catholic versions of the Bible.

1. The early discipline of the Church of Rome, in respect to the perusal of The Scripture by the general body of The Laity, has varied. On this head I cannot do better than extract the folJowing passages from a Letter of Femelon to the Bishop of Arras (Oeuvres Spirituels de Fenelon, 8vo. IV. 241).

"I think (says the illustrious Prelate) that much trouble has been taken in our times, very unnecessarily, to prove what UENT. MAG. January, 1814.

is incontestible, that; in the first ages of the Church, the Laity read the Holy Scriptures. It is clear as daylight, that all people read the Bible and Liturgy in their native languages; that, as a part of good education, children were made to read them; that, in their sermons, the Ministers of the Church regularly explained to their flocks whole Books of the Sacred Volumes; that the sacred text of the Scriptures was very familiar to the people; that the Clergy exhorted the people to read them; that the Clergy blamed the people for not reading them and considered the neglect of the perusal of them as a source of heresy and immorality. But in all this (continues the illustrious Prelate) the Church used a wise economy; adapting the general practice to the circumstances and wants of individuals. It did not think, however, that a person could not be a Chrisligion, without perusing the Sacred Writings. Whole countries of barbarians, and innumerable multitudes of the faithful, were rich (to use the words of St. Paul) in words and science, though they had not read the Sacred Writings. To listen to the Pastors of the Church, who explain the Scriptures to the faithful, and distribute among them such parts as are suited to their wants, is to read the Scriptures."

tian, or not be well instructed in his re

Thus far, I have copied the words of Fenelon. In confirmation of what is said by him, that a considerable proportion of the faithful derived their knowledge of the Gospel, not from a perusal of the Scriptures themselves, but from the explanation of them by their Pastors, I beg leave to refer you to what my most learned friend Dr. Herbert Marsh, the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, in his "Illustrations of his Hypothesis on the Origin and Composition of the three first Canonical Gospels," has ob served on the very small number of manuscript copies of the Gospels which were possessed by the early Christians.

IL Fenelon then proceeds to notice the Change of the discipline of the Church in the point I have mentioned, in consequence of the troubles occesioned by the Waldenses and Albi genses.

Waldenses and Albigenses obliged the "It should seem (he says) that the Church to have recourse to her strict authority, in refusing the perusal of the Sacred Scripture to all persons who were not disposed to read it to their ir advan

tage,

tage. I do not, however, undertake to assert that this prohibition was then is sued by the Church for the first time; but, certainly, the indocility and spirit of revolt which then appeared among the Laity, the neglect of the Pastors to explain the Scriptures, and the contempt which the people began then to shew for their instructions, made it manifest that it had become unsafe to permit the people at large to read the Sacred Text; and Consequently made it necessary for the Church to withhold from the Laity the perusal of it without the permission of their Pastors."

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Thus far the venerable Prelate. will observe, that the disorganizing tendency of the doctrines of the Wal denses and Albigenses, and their equal hostility both to the State and to the Church, are not always sufficiently attended to; and as these Sectaries propagated their doctrines, among the Laity, principally by a misapplication of the Sacred Text, the withholding of It from general perusal was an obvious remedy. If it be thought an extreme remedy, it should not be forgotten that the evil which it was intended to gure was also extreme.

Fenelon next proceeds to state the Principal Councils, Synods, and Episcopal Ordinances, by which the general perusal of the Scriptures by the Laity was restricted. In a further "part of his Letter, he enumerates several passages, both of the Old and - New Testament, which are likely to be understood in a wrong sense by the ignorant or ill disposed, and to be wrested by then, as he terms it after St. Paul, to their own perdition.Hence Fenelon concludes, "that the Church acted wisely in withholding the Sacred Text from the rash criticisms of the vulgar." He says, that before the people read the Gospel, they should be instructed respecting it; that they should be prepared for it by degrees, so that, when they come to read it, they should be qualified to understand it, and thus be full of its Spirit before they are entrusted with its letter. The perusal of it should only be permitted to the simple, the docile, and the humble-to those who wish to nourish themselves with its divine truths in silence. It should never be committed to those who merely seek to satisfy their curiosity, to dispute, to dogmatize, or to criticize. In a word, it should be given to those only who, receiving it from

the hands of the Church, seek for nothing in it but the sense of the Church." This is, and ever has been, the doctrine of the Church." Her discipline in this article," says Fenelon, in another part of his Letter, "has sometimes varied; her doctrine has ever been the same.”

III. I shall proceed to state the actual Dispositions of the Church of Rome on this important point of her Discipline. For this purpose, I beg leave to copy what Mr. Alban Butler says, in his Sixth Letter on Mr. Archibald Bower's "History of the Popes."

"The people (these are his words) daily hear the Scriptures read and expounded to them, by their Pastors, and in good books. Even children have excellent abridgements of the Sacred His liar manner to their capacity, put into tory, adapted in the most easy and fami their hands. The divine books them

selves are open to all who understand. Latin, or any other of the learned languages, in every Catholic country; and every one may read them in the vulgar languages, if he first ask the advice of his Confessor, who will only instruct him in what spirit he is to read them."

IV. From what I have said, it seems. evident that the limitation with which the Roman Catholic Church allows the general body of the Laity to peruse the Scriptures in a vulgar tongue has not a very extensive operation and I must observe, that some emi nent Protestants so far agree with the Roman Catholic Church on this head, as to think that the indiscriminate pere usal of the Scripture by the Laity is attended with bad consequences, and should therefore have some limitation.

1. For proof of this, I particularly refer you to the Treatise of Dr. Hare, a late Bishop of Chichester," On the Difficulties which attend the Study of the Scriptures in the way of PrivateJudgment."

2. In respect to the Protestant prac tice of putting the Scriptures into the hands of Children in their tender years, Mr. Benjamin Martin, in his Preface to his "Introduction to the English Tongue," laments and cene sures the "putting of the Sacred Book into the hands of every bawling schoolmistress, and of thoughtless children, to be torn, trampled upon, and made the early object of their aversion, by being their most tedious task, and their punishment." He seems inclined to ascribe the growth

of

6thly. Among the versions without notes, I must contend that the versions of our Missal into the vulgar tongue should have a place. Our Missal, which in this instance has been followed by the Common Prayer Book, contains so much of the Gos pels as gives the heads of the history and doctrine of Christ. The versions of it are numerous, and many of them have no notes.

7thly. I must add, that no Syriac, no Armenian, no Ethiopic, no Arabic version of the Bible has any notes; yet those are the vulgar tongues of large portions of the world.

I beg, however, not to be misunderstood. While I mention the multitude of Roman Catholic Bibles and versions of Bibles without notes, 1 admit, most unequivocally, that it is the acknowledged right of our Church and her Pastors to direct when, where, and what notes should accompany them. But I must think that the various instances in which I shew that they have been published without notes, prove incontrovertibly how unjustly we are charged with admitting it, as a principle of our religion, that the versions of the Bible into a vulgar tongue should not be published without them.

VI. I shall now cite a few miscellaneous facts, to shew how much the Church of Rome has at all times desired to promote the general circulation and perusal of the Sacred Writings, both in the original language, and in Translations from it.

1. To begin with the Practice of the Church in the Middle Ages, I refer you to the second part of Dr. Hody's Historia Scholastica Textûs Versionumque Græcæ et Vulgatæ." It is impossible to peruse it, without acknowledging it to prove beyond controversy, that there never was a time, even in the darkest ages, when the study of the Scriptures, and that, too, in their original languages, was not cultivated and encouraged by the Roman-Catholic Clergy. In our own country, the works of the Venerable Bede, of Holy Robert of Lincoln, and of Roger Bacon, shew how much Biblical learning was cultivated and encouraged in those days.

2. Every candid scholar must sure ly own it to be principally owing to the labours of the Monks of the MidIdle Ages, that we are now in pos

session of the Sacred Writings. This will appear clear to every one who peruses the Tenth Chapter of Mr. Lingard's invaluable "Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church," and the Fourth Chapter of the Third Book of Dr. Henry's History of Britain. Gerhardus Tyschen, Professor of Philosophy and Oriental Literature in the United Universities of Butzow and Rostock, in his "Tentamen de variis Codicum Hebræorum Veteris Testamenti MSS. Rostochii, 1772,” expresses himself in terms of astonishment at the labours of the Monks in the transcription of the Sacred Writings, and the singular felicity of their execution. "I am sensible (he says) that it is the general opinion that the study of the fine arts was buried during the middle ages. It is, however, certain, that while Literature was crushed every where else, she found a refuge in Monasteries." He parti cularly mentions how much the inhabitants of those pious abodes studied the Hebrew language; and how many of them were employed in transcribing Hebrew manuscripts. He says, that Calligraphy arrived in them at its summit of excellence; the beauty of their transcriptions, he remarks, is such as could not have been attained, unless they possessed some art of fixing the forms of written letters, to which we are strangers.

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3. The typographie art was no sooner discovered, than the Catholic presses were employed in printing, in every size, from the folio to the twenty-fourth, the Old and New Testament, or particular parts of them, in the Hebrew and Greek originals, and the Latin Translations,

4. Every Catholic acknowledges with readiness the transcendant merit of the London Polyglott; and every candid Protestant should admit with equal readiness, that the London Polyglott was preceded by the Catholic Polyglotts of Complutum, Antwerp, and Raris; and that without them the London Polyglott would not have existed.

5. Many examples shew, that when any Nation has been converted or recalled to the Catholic religion, the Church of Rome has been careful to supply it with a Translation of the Scriptures in its vernacular language. The numberless Translations of the whole Scriptures, or of different parts

of

of them, into the Latin, which was once the language of the whole Western Empire, are well known. So early as the fourth century, St. Augustin observed, that "the number of those who had translated the Scriptures from the Hebrew into the Greek might be computed; but that the number of those who had translated the Greek into the Latin could not for that, immediately on the introduction of Christianity, if a person got possession of a Greek manuscript, and thought he had any knowledge of the two languages, he set about translating the Scriptures."

6. The Peshito, or Sincere version of the Four Gospels into Syriac, was certainly made before the Fourth; and there are circumstances which render it probable that it was made at the end of the First, or the beginning of the Second, Century. In 1552, the Maronite Christians having, under the direction of Ignatius their Patriarch, sent Moses of Marden to Pope Julius the Third, to acknowledge the supremacy of the See of Rome, and to be received into his communion; the Emperor Ferdinand caused a new edition of this version to be printed at his own expence at Vienna, and transmitted to Syria.

7. In 1548, there appearing to be an opening for the introduction of Christianity into Ethiopia, Pope Paul the Third caused an Ethiopic version of the New Testament to be published at Rome for the use of the new Ethiopic Christians.

8. An Arabic version of the whole Bible was published at Rome in 1591; and in 1671, the Congregation at Rome de Propagandů fide, published, for the use of the Arabic Christians in communion with her, an Arabic version of the whole Bible, in three volumes folio, under the direction of Sergius Risius, Bishop of Damascus. We are informed by Abbas Nazarias, in his Diarium Eruditum, that it was the labour of 46 years. With the same beneficent view, an Arabic version of the Four Gospels was printed in 1591, at the Medicæan press in Rome.

9. The extreme difficulty of acquir. ing even a slight knowledge of the Chinese language; the small number of those who can but imperfectly read it, and the immense expense attending the printing of the smallest work

tion.

1. The earliest printed Protestant version is that, in the German language, by Martin Luther. The New Testament of that version was printed in 1522; the Old in 1530.

It had been preceded, first, by Fust's celebrated Bible, printed at Mentz in 1462; secondly, by Bemler's, printed at Augsburgh in 1467; and, thirdly, by the four versions mentioned by Beausobre (Hist. de la Reformation, Liv. 4).

2. The earliest printed French Protestant version is that of Olivetan, assisted by Calvin. It contains the whole Bible, and was finished in 1537; the year 1535 (which is the date mentioned in the title-page) being the year in which it was first committed to the press.

This version had been preceded, first, by the French version of the New Testament, by Julian, an Augustinian'monk, printed in 1477; secondly, by the French version of the whole Bible, by Guyards des Moulins, printed in 1490; and, thirdly, by that of Estaples, the New Testament of whose version was printed in 1523, The last of and the Old in 1528. these editions was particularly used by Olivetan.

3. The earliest printed Italian Protestant version appeared in 1562.

It had been preceded, first, by Malermi's, printed in 1471; and, secondly, by Bruccioli's, in 1532, which last

version