The Church of Rome in general does not endeavor to bring forward Scripture evidence to show that Scripture ought not to be read. That is in reality superinducing the habit of going to the Word of God as the standard of faith and practice. Experience is a more common argument.
Thus, the Council of Trent says, "Inasmuch as it is manifest from experience that if the Holy Bible translated into the vulgar tongue be indiscriminately allowed to every one, the temerity of men will cause more evil than good to arise from it, it is on this point referred to the judgment of the bishop or inquisitors, who may, by the advice of the priest or the confessor, permit the reading of the Bible translated into the vulgar tongue by catholic authors to those whose faith and piety they apprehend will be augmented and not injured by it."
Who ever heard of a parent granting permission to some of his children to eat a portion of daily food, and prohibiting others? The wise and affectionate father would see to it that the bread were wholesome, and taken at proper times, and in proper quantities—but never would it occur to him to benefit any of his family by an entire refusal of the staff of life.
If the body be living and healthy, it must have food; it can neither subsist upon the air nor on medicine. If the soul be lively and vigorous, it must have some of the heavenly manna; it cannot exist upon the vanities or purgatives which man supplies.
Experience tells us this—and experience tells us just as emphatically, that whenever the Bible has been taken away from any people, they have gradually sunk until the national strength has been exchanged for weakness—the national religion for impiety—and the national morality for crime the most revolting and extended.
The onward progress of civilization has removed the barriers which self-interest might have raised to the free introduction of bread, because it is a prime necessary of life—yet Rome, even to this very day, would lay upon the importation of the Bible, into every land and household, such a duty that it amounts to a virtual prohibition; and all this that the clergy may have a monopoly, and that all who wish to buy religious knowledge must purchase it from them, on terms which they themselves have settled.
If the Bible be worthy of the name of "holy," why are Romanists so much afraid of its circulation? Why do some of them, like the infidels, turn to passages in it which they aver cannot safely be read by the youth? Why do they keep the "Holy Bible" in a species of quarantine, as if they suspected that it carried a plague along with it?
Let them speak out honestly, and deny the Divine origin of the Bible, and then we will know how to reason with them; but we cannot conceive how they can honour the Scriptures with lofty names, and yet act toward it as they would toward one that was placed upon the list of the proscribed! Away with such a mockery of reverence!
If the Bible be the word of man or of Satan, let it be buried or burned—but if it be the Word of God, let it be raised as the lighthouse on the rock, by its well-reflected light speeding the travelers on ocean joyously through the darkest hours of night, past the fatal shore, to their destined harbour.
