nst 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 distort