1 and both Universities were drawn into the whirlpool of politics. But political divinity has rarely stimulated learning.' With the middle of Elizabeth's reign there came a great revival, but by then the Protestant theology interested only the Puritans, and when they were to have their short day of rule, literature and learning were to suffer again. But the great Protestant stand-by is the 'Bible,' and yet even here we must at least enter a caveat. Professor Pollard has satirised very neatly the prevailing and absolutely unhistorical view of most of the manuals of Church History which Protestant ministers have been so fertile in producing: The discovery of America was not a Protestant enterprise any more than the Bible is a Nonconformist publication.' 2 One would imagine from reading-and dull and heavy work it is these numerous compilations that Protestantism was the re-saving of a darkened, ruined world. These good-intentioned, misinformed gentlemen consider that the Reformers suddenly discovered the Bible,' and tell the oft-repeated story of Luther's discovery of the Holy Scriptures' at Erfurt. It is worth our while to consider a little closely this wonderful phenomenon of the loss and discovery 1 In Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. iii. chap. xix., 'English Universities, Schools, &c., in Sixteenth Century,' by W. H. Woodward. 2 Factors in Modern History, by A. F. Pollard, p. 38. of the sacred writings. One eminently characteristic fable which all the older and even some modern Protestant writers have circulated, is that the translation of the Holy Scriptures into the vulgar tongues was the work of Protestantism, and yet we know that the New Testament was printed at Lyons in 1477 in French, and that the whole Bible was printed in French at Paris about ten years later. Gasquet has shown without a shadow of doubt that copies of the English Bible were circulated with clerical permission at all events before Luther was heard of.1 We know that the Bible had been translated into Spanish with ecclesiastical approval. The very first book printed in Germany was a Bible. In every country, in every age, the Bible had been no forgotten book buried in obscure corners of monastic libraries to be discovered by Luther. Luther himself characteristically complains: 'Now they' (the Romanists)' invert this: the Bible is the first thing they study; this ceases with the Bachelor's degree, the Sentences are the last, and these they keep for ever with the Doctor's degree, and this, too, under such sacred obligation that one that is not a Priest may read the Bible, but a Priest must read the Sentences; so that, as far as I can see, a married man 1 Gasquet, F. A., The Old English Bible and Other Essays. 2 Balmez, Protestantism and Catholicity, translated by Hamford and Kershaw, p. 172. P might be a Doctor in the Bible, but not in the Sentences. How should we prosper so long as we act so perversely and degrade the Bible, the Holy Word of God? '1 So far from prohibiting Biblical study, we here find Luther complaining of married men being able to be Doctors in the Bible. Did they (the Romanists) study the Bible? Here again we have Luther's testimony of his own day: 'Our adversaries read the translation of the Bible much more frequently than we do. I believe Duke George has read it more carefully than any one of the nobles who are with us.' 2 Of himself while still in the Church Luther says: 'I read very much in my Bible whilst I was a monk during my youth.'s Now what was the actual course of studies of the theological student in the Middle Ages? We turn to Canon Rashdall's learned work on The Universities in Europe during the Middle Ages and we find 'The theological student passed the first six years of his course as a simple auditor. For four years he attended lectures on the Bible, for two years on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard, these being the only text-books with which the theological Doctor necessarily became acquainted during : 1 Luther's Primary Works, Wace and Buchheim, p. 232. the whole of his fifteen or sixteen years of study.' 1 But besides these, you can hardly turn to any books dealing in any way with moral or religious questions written during the Middle Ages without finding abundance of quotations from the Scriptures. If we accept Luther's discovery of the Bible it is only by admitting his stupendous ignorance of the learning of the day. We will not undertake to decide the question. Luther was always given to rhetorical exaggeration and to dramatic moments. Solemn writers like the Rev. Mr. Babington treat this statement of Luther's discovery as a terrific fact showing the terrible state of Christianity. Perhaps a little more knowledge of what they are writing about might tend to a little less wonder and a good deal more fair-mindedness amongst compilers of this class; and the late Mr. Demaus might have thought it worth his while, which he states he did not-but we will use his own words, they are too good to lose: 'I have not thought it necessary to subjoin proofs of statements which could be substantiated by volumes of evidence, which indeed only gross ignorance can call in question's one of the 'statements' for which no proof is necessary being that ignorance, 1 Universities in Europe in the Middle Ages, by Hastings Rashdall, vol. i. p. 464. 2 The Reformation, by Rev. J. A. Babington, p. 10. 3 Hugh Latimer, by Rev. R. Demaus, note to page 465. which has always been the great strength of Romanism, was again settling down upon the land.' The worthy gentleman no doubt meant what he said; that is the lamentable fact about it; but to prove his own words he had best have become a convert to Romanism himself. Bossuet wrote truly about Protestantism when he said: The only fundamental article is, to cry out amain against the Pope and Church of Rome; but if with Wycliffe and John Huss you stretch so far as to call that Church the Church of Antichrist, this doctrine is the remission of whatever sins, and covers all kinds of errors.' 2 In Italy itself, Professor Pastor points out that the number of New Testaments printed there shows the popularity of the Gospels before Luther was heard of,3 and, as Miss Stone has pointed out, we learn from the Caxton Exhibition of 1877 that from the invention of printing until Erasmus published in 1516 his edition of the New Testament, at the lowest computation seventy editions of the whole Bible were published by the presses of Europe in those first sixty-six years of printing, ten being in different vernaculars. And this list is by no means exhaustive, as it 1 Demaus, op. cit. p. 465. 2 The History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches, by James B. Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, translated, Dublin, 1829, vol. ii. p. 141. 3 The History of the Popes, by Dr. L. Pastor, translation, edited Antrobus, vol. x. pp. 21-22. |