The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1913-08-23
LUTHER AND THE BIBLE.

In sermon delivered in the
Congregational church, Excelsior,
Mimi, and reproduced in the
Minnetonka Record" of last
week, the Rev. P. A. Cool at
tempts to clash" before the eyes
of his readers, bird s eye view
of three thousand years of Bible
history.
While he speaks with reverence
of the Bible, he cannot resist the
temptation to take a gratuitous
fling at the Church, without whose
fostering care the Bible would not
have been preserved throughout
the ages. The Book of God, he
says, became the sacred treasure
of the Church and Empire, and the
authority in the literary world.
Rome guarded her secret well, if
not wisely. Learning was kept
alive but the people, without the
word of God, sat in darkness. :"
Evidently, Mr.. Cool has not
learned to read Alright the history
of the what he calls the Dark
Ages, as set forth in the writings
of a Protestant historian, Dean
Maitland, who is far from charg-
ing the Church with preventing
the diffusion of knowledge among
the people.
The period to which he refers
was by no means an age of ignor-
ance. 1t was one of the most
enlightened eras in the history Of
the world, and if, as he rightly
declares, the Bible was the au-
thority in the literary world, how
could it be a closed book to the
people?
However, Mr.. Cool's statement
is only preliminary to a laud-
alton of Martin Luther as the
one who first gave the Bible to
the people in their own language.
Mr.. Cool finds it necessary to con-
trast the alleged attitude Of the
Church in preventing the spread
of the Bible in the vernacular
with that of Martin Luther who
is supposed to have placed the
"Book Of God" in the hands of
the people, thus opening up to
them, for the first time, it's treas
ures of wisdom and enlighten-
ment. He does not hesitate to
reiterate the oft-refuted story
that Martin Luther stumbled upon
copy of the Bible at the age Of
twenty. Had he stopped to think
for a moment before making this
unfounded assertion, he would
surely have realized that the
statement carries it's own refuta-
ton. At the age of twenty, Mar
tin Luther was a student at the
University of Erfurt, and, if we
grant for the sake of argument,
that he did come across copy of
the Bible for the first time, is it
not strange that he still continued
a fervent Catholic, even though
che saw that Christ could save
men without the Pope?" More
than that, he not only continued
to be a good Catholic, but, two
years afterwards, he entered the
Augustinian Monastery at Erfurt,
was ordained at the age of TWEEN
! ty-four, and for ten years con-
tinued to serve the Church in the
ranks Of the priesthood. During
his theological studies and during
the years of his priestly ministra-
tions, he must have been familiar
with the Bible, as it was then
taught in the seminaries and used
in the liturgy of the Church.
But Mr.. Cool would have us be-
lieve that Luther's whole life
changed after he found the Bible
at the age of twenty. If there was
a change, it was for the better.
The change for the worse, which
ushered in the so-called Reforma-
ton, did not take place for nearly
score of years after he is sup
posed to have found the first copy
of the Bible.
As a matter of fact, there were
| German editions of the Bible be-
fore Luther's time. He was not
the first to translate it into the Ian
guage of the people. This calumny
rests on the authority of D'Aub-
igne in his unscholarly history Of
the Reformation, and has been
refuted by Dean Maitland in his
work on "The Dark Ages. - The
facts of the case are thus stated
by Father Gigot in his Biblical
Lectures
Before the first Protestant
version was sent forth into the
world there appeared 81 printed
editions of Holy Writ in the an
Gent languages. In the
Latin, which occupied a special
position as being the universal
language of the educated men of
the time, there were published 343
editions. of which 148 were of the