[Page 267.] Efforts To Suppress and Destroy the Bible.—Referring to the long-continued efforts in France to suppress the Bible—particularly versions in the language of the common people, Gaussen says: “The decree of Toulouse, 1229,” which established the “tribunal of the Inquisition against all the readers of the Bible in the vulgar tongue, ... was an edict of fire, bloodshed, and devastation. In its 3d, 4th, 5th, and 6th chapters, it ordained the entire destruction of the houses, the humblest places of concealment, and even the subterranean retreats of men convicted of possessing the Scriptures; that they should be pursued to the forests and caves of the earth; and that even those who harbored them should be severely punished.” As a result, the Bible “was everywhere prohibited; it vanished, as it were, underground; it descended into the tomb.” These decrees were “followed for five hundred years by innumerable punishments, in which the blood of the saints flowed like water.”—L. Gaussen, “The Canon of the Holy Scriptures,” [pg 685] part 2, bk. 2, ch. 7, sec. 5, prop. 561; and ch. 13, sec. 2, prop. 641, par. 2.
On the special efforts made to destroy Bibles during the Reign of Terror, late in 1793, Dr. Lorimer says: “Wherever a Bible could be found it might be said to be persecuted to death; so much so, that several respectable commentators interpret the slaying of the two witnesses in the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse, of the general suppression, nay, destruction, of the Old and New Testaments in France at this period.”—J. G. Lorimer, “An Historical Sketch of the Protestant Church in France,” ch. 8, par. 4, 5.
See also G. P. Fisher, “The Reformation,” ch. 15, par. 16; E. Petavel, “The Bible in France,” ch. 2, par. 3, 8-10, 13, 21 (Paris ed., 1864); G. H. Putnam, “The Censorship of the Church of Rome,” Vol. I, ch. 4 (1906 ed., pp. 97, 99, 101, 102); Vol. II, ch. 2 (pp. 15-19); S. Smiles, “The Huguenots: Their Settlements, Churches, and Industries,” etc., ch. 1, par. 32, 34; ch. 2, par. 6; ch. 3, par. 14; ch. 18, par. 5 (with note); S. Smiles, “The Huguenots in France after the Revocation,” ch. 2, par. 8; ch. 10, par. 30; ch. 12, par. 2-4; J. A. Wylie, “History of Protestantism,” bk. 22, ch. 6, par. 3.
[Page 276.] The Reign of Terror.—On the responsibility of misguided leaders, in both church and state, and particularly in the church, for the scenes of the French Revolution, see W. M. Sloane, “The French Revolution and Religious Reform,” Preface, and ch. 2, par. 1, 2, 10-14 (1901 ed., pp. vii-ix, 19, 20, 26-31, 40); P. Schaff, in “Papers of the American Society of Church History,” Vol. I, pp. 38, 44; S. Smiles, “The Huguenots after the Revocation,” ch. 18, par. 4, 6, 9, 10, 12-16, 27; J. G. Lorimer, “An Historical Sketch of the Protestant Church of France,” ch. 8, par. 6, 7; A. Galton, “Church and State in France, 1300-1907,” ch. 3, sec. 2 (London ed., 1907); Sir J. Stephen, “Lectures on the History of France,” lecture 16, par. 60.
[Page 280.] The Masses and the Privileged Classes.—On social conditions prevailing in France prior to the period of the Revolution, see H. von Holst, “Lowell Lectures on the French Revolution,” lecture 1; also Taine, “Ancient Régime,” and A. Young, “Travels in France.”
[Page 283.] Retribution.—For further details concerning the retributive character of the French Revolution, see Thos. H. Gill, “The Papal Drama,” bk. 10; E. de Pressensé, “The Church and the French Revolution,” bk. 3, ch. 1.
[Page 284.] The Atrocities of the Reign of Terror.—See M. A. Thiers, “History of the French Revolution,” Vol. III, pp. 42-44, 62-74, 106 (N. Y. ed., 1890, tr. by F. Shoberl); F. A. Mignet, “History of [pg 686] the French Revolution,” ch. 9, par. 1 (Bohn ed., 1894); A. Alison, “History of Europe,” 1789-1815, Vol. I, ch. 14 (N. Y. ed., 1872, Vol. 1, pp. 293-312).
[Page 287.] The Circulation of the Scriptures.—In 1804, according to Mr. William Canton, of the British and Foreign Bible Society, “all the Bibles extant in the world, in manuscript or in print, counting every version in every land, were computed at not many more than four millions.... The various languages in which those four millions were written, including such bygone speech as the Mœso-Gothic of Ulfilas and the Anglo-Saxon of Bede, are set down as numbering about fifty.”—“What Is the Bible Society?” p. 23 (rev. ed., 1904).
A hundred years later, at the close of its first centenary, the British and Foreign Bible Society was able to report a total distribution of Bibles, Testaments, or portions thereof, by that society alone, to the number of 186,680,101—a total that, in 1910, had grown to upwards of 220,000,000 copies, in nearly four hundred distinct tongues.
To these totals must be added the millions of copies of the Scriptures or portions thereof, in many languages, distributed by other Bible societies and by various commercial agencies. The American Bible Society,—the greatest of the daughters of the British parent society,—during the first ninety-four years of its work, reported a total distribution of 87,296,182 copies. (See Bible Society Record, June, 1910.) According to conservative estimates, about six million copies of the Bible are printed annually by commercial houses, which, added to the combined output of the Bible societies, gives a total yearly circulation of more than fifteen million copies.