Eleven years after Luther's death, in 1557, Pope Paul IV published the Roman Index of Forbidden Books, and, with certain exceptions, prohibited laymen from reading the Bible.
Not until the reign of King Edward VI was the "Act inhibiting the reading of the Old and New Testament in English tongue, and the printing, selling, giving, or delivering of any such other books or writings as are therein mentioned and condemned" (namely, in 34 Hen. VIII. Cap. 1) abrogated.
The Council of Trent ordered all Catholic publishers to see to it that their editions have the approval of the respective bishop.
Not until February 28, 1759, did Pope Clement XIII give permission to translate the Bible into all the languages of the Catholic states.
Not until November 17, 1893, did Pope Leo XIII issue an encyclical enjoining upon Catholics the study of the Bible, always, however, in editions approved by the Roman Church. (Kurtz, Kirchengesch. II, 2, 94. 217; Univers. Encycl., under title "Bible"; Peter Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata I, 99; Denzinger, Enchiridion, 1429. 1439. 1567. 1607.)
Catholic writers seek to make a great impression in favor of their Church by enumerating, on the authority of Protestant scholars, the number of German translations of the Bible that are known to have been in existence before Luther. But they omit to inform the public that not a single one of those translations obtained the approbation of a bishop. One cannot view but with a pathetic interest these sacred relies of an age that was hungering for the Word of God. The origin of these early German Bibles has been traced by scholars to Wycliffite and Hussite influences, which Rome never stamped out, though her inquisitors tried their best to do so. The earliest of these Bibles do not state the place nor the year of publication. Can the reader guess why? They were not published at the seat of the German Archbishop, Mainz, but most of them at the free imperial city of Augsburg. Can the reader suggest a reason? Many of them are printed in abnormally small sizes, facilitating quick concealment. Can the reader imagine a cause for this phenomenon? In these old German Bibles particular texts are emphasized, for example, Rom. 8, 18; 1 Cor. 4, 9; 2 Cor. 4, 8 ; 11, 23; 1 Pet. 2, 19; 4, 16; 5, 9; Acts 5, 18. 41; 8, 1; 12, 4; 14, 19. If the reader will take the trouble to look up these texts, he will find that they warn Christians to be prepared to be persecuted for their faith. Has the reader ever heard of such an officer of the Roman Church as the inquisitor, one of whose duties it was to hunt for Bibles among the people? In places these old German Bibles contain significant marginal glosses, for example, at 1 Tim. 2, 5 one of them has this gloss: "Ain mitler Christus, ach merk!" that is: One mediator, Christ—note this well!
In 1486, Archbishop Berchtold of Mainz, Primate of Germany, issued an edict, full of impassioned malice against German translations of the Bible, and against laymen who sought edification from them. He says that "no prudent person will deny that there is need of many supplements and explanations from other writings" than the Bible, to the end, namely, that a person may construe from the German Bibles the true Catholic faith. Fact is, that faith is not in the Bible. This happened three years after the birth of Luther. (Kurtz, II, 2, 304.)
Instead of finding fault, then, with Luther's ignorance of the Bible prior to 1505, we feel surprised that the young man knew as much of the Bible as he did. He must in this respect have surpassed many in his age.
The Roman Church does not permit her laymen to read a Bible that she has not published with annotations. "Believing herself to be the divinely appointed custodian and interpreter of Holy Writ," says a writer in the Catholic Encyclopedia (II, 545), "she cannot, without turning traitor to herself, approve the distribution of Scripture 'without note or comment.'" For this reason the Roman Church has cursed the Bible societies which early in the eighteenth century began to be formed in Protestant Churches, and aimed at supplying the poor with cheap Bibles. In 1816, Pope Pius VII anathematized all Bible societies, declaring them "a pest of Christianity," and renewed the prohibition which his predecessors had issued against translations of the Bible. (Kurtz, II, 2, 94.) Leo XII, on May 5, 1824, in the encyclical Ubi Primum, said: "Ye are aware, venerable brethren, that a certain Bible society is impudently spreading throughout the world, which, despising the traditions of the holy Fathers and the decree of the Council of Trent, is endeavoring to translate, or rather to pervert, the Scriptures into the vernacular of all nations. . . . It is to be feared that by false interpretation the Gospel of Christ will become the gospel of men, or, still worse, the gospel of the devil." Pius IX, on November 9, 1846, in the encyclical Qui Pluribus, said: "These crafty Bible societies, which renew the ancient guile of heretics, cease not to thrust their Bible upon all men, even the unlearned—their Bibles, which have been translated against the laws of the Church and after certain false explanations of the text. Thus the divine traditions, the teaching of the fathers, and the authority of the Catholic Church are rejected, and every one in his own way interprets the words of the Lord, and distorts their meaning, thereby falling into miserable error." (Cath. Encycl. II, 545.) The writer whom we have just quoted says: "The fundamental fallacy of private interpretation of the Scriptures is presupposed by the Bible societies." These papal pronunciamentos arc directed chiefly against the Canstein Bibelgesellschaft and her later sisters, such as the Berliner Bibelgesellschaft, and against the British and American Bible Societies.
The face of the Roman Church is sternly set against the plain text of the Scriptures. To defeat the meaning of the original text, she not only mutilates the text and adds glosses which twist the meaning of the text into an altogether different meaning, but she declares that the Bible is not the only source from which men must obtain revealed truth. Alongside of the Bible she places an unwritten word of God, her so-called traditions. These, she claims, are divine revelations which were handed down orally from generation to generation. The early fathers and the councils of the Church referred to them in defining the true doctrine and prescribing the correct practise of the Church. Nobody has collected these traditions, and nobody will. But to what extent the Roman Church operates with them, is well known.