TWO LETTERS TO A FRIEnd.

THE

LETTER I.^

DEAR SIR, Stonor Park, Sept.15. HE 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 plea sure; 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 scveral Protestants, of our considering it unlawful to print a Trauslation 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 following passages from a Letter of Fenelon 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 GENT. MAG. Januury, 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 the Ministers of the Church regularly to read them; that, in their sermons, 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 Writian, or not be well instructed in his retings. 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."

Thus far, I have copied the words of Fenelon. In confirmation of what is said by him, that a considerable pro portion 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 observed on the very small number of manuscript copies of the Gospels which were possessed by the early Christians.

H. Fenelon then proceeds to notice the Change of the discipline of the Church in the point I have mentioned, in consequence of the troubles occa sioned by the Waldenses and Albigenses.

"It should seem (he says) that the Waldenses and Albigenses obliged 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 advan

tage.

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tage. I do not, however, undertake to assert that this probibition 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."

I

Thus far the venerable Prelate. will observe, that the disorganizing tendency of the doctrines of the Waldenses 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 Epis copal Ordinances, by which the generai perusal of the Scriptures by the Laity was restricted. In a further part of his Letter, be 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 them, 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 critieisms 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 critiIn a word, it should be given to those only who, receiving it from

cize.

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 ever been the same." "has sometimes varied; her doctrine

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 Hisliar 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 5 and I must observe, that some emi nent Protestants so far agree with the Roman Catholic Church on this head, us to think that the indiscriminate perusal 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 Private Judgment."

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 censures 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." seems inclined to ascribe the growth

Ile

of

of irreligion, and the contempt of holy things, to this source.

3. Mr. Edmund Burke thus expresses himself in his " Speech on the Act of Uniformity :"

"The Scripture (he says) is no one summary of Christian doctrine regularly digested, in which a man could not mistake his way; it is a most venerable,

but most multifarious collection of the records of the Divine economy; a collection of an infinite variety of Cosmogony, Theology, History, Prophecy, Psalmody, Morality, Apologue, Állegory, Legislation, Ethicks, carried through different books, by different authors, at different ages, for different ends and purposes.

"It is necessary to sort out, what is intended for example, what only as a narrative; what to be understood literally, what figuratively; where one precept is to be controuled or modified by another; what is used directly, and what only as an argument ad hominem; what is temporary, and what of perpetual obligation; what appropriated to one state, and to one set of men, and what the general duty of all Christians. If we do not get some security for this, we not only permit, but we actually pay for all the dangerous fanaticism which can be produced to corrupt our people and to derange the public worship of the Country. We owe the best we can (not infallibility, but prudence) to the subjects; first, sound doctrine-then ability to use it."-Speech on the Act of Uniformity, Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, vol. V. page 335.

4, I request your attention, in the last place, to that numerous portion of the Protestant Subscribers to the Bible Societies, which contends that the Bibles distributed should be accompanied with the Common Prayer Book, "as a safeguard," to use the expression of Dr. Herbert Marsh, (whose learning justly places him at the head of these gentlemen,) “against the misinterpretation of the Bible." Surely the Protestant who, by a general adoption of safeguards against the misinterpretation of the Scriptures, must admit such misinterpretation to be probable,cannot quar rel with the Roman Catholic for his cautionary preventatives of it.

V. This leads me to mention a strange opinion, which prevails much among Protestants, that it is contrary to the General Principles of the Catholic religion to publish the Bible in a vulgar tongue, without Notes.

To be convinced of the erroneousness of this opinion, it is only neces sary to walk into the shops of the French Booksellers in this town, where several French Catholic versions of the New Testament, without any notes, are constantly on sale. I will refer you to six only of the most common of these versions.

The first is the version published by Father Amelotte, an Oratorian. It was originally published by him in 1666, in 4 vols. 8vo. with notes, principally relating to the literary difficulties of the text; but, soon after the publication of this edit on, he published the version by itself, in one duodecimo volume. The approba tions of several persons of high rank and authority in the Catholic Church are prefixed to it; a table of the Epis tles and Gospels follows. At the top of each page of the Gospel, the age of Christ is mentioned; and small asterisks are sometimes introduced, to shew where the text of the Vulgate introduces words which are not in the original. But it contains no note; it does not even contain summaries of the contents of the chapters. The edition before me is of the year 1683.

2dly. The next edition is that of Mons, by the gentlemen of Port Royal, originally published with notes; but repeatedly published with

out them.

3dly. To these, Futher Bouhours, a Jesuit, opposed his version. It has passed through various editions; and has neither comment nor note.

4thly. Neither the translation of Mons, nor that of Father Bouhours, was so current as Amelotte's; but Amelotte's was greatly superseded by "Le Manuel Chretien." This publication contains, in one small cheap octavo, the Psalms, all the New Testament, the Imitation of Christ, and the Ordinary of the Mass, in the French language, without a single note. It is the version of the New Testament generally used by the French Laity.

5thly. Among persons of liberal education, M. de Sacy's version is in request. The original edition, and many of the subsequent editions, are accompanied by copious annotations's but many (some of which are noticed by Le Long) have been published without theur.