Why We Resist The Doctrines Of The Church of Rome
Part 14 in a series of articles by A.G. Ashdown, from The Protestant Alliance
Reproduced by Manchester Orange Order under kind permission from The Protestant Alliance.
THE ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME TO THE BIBLE
Many evangelicals think that because, especially in Protestant countries, there is a more relaxed attitude to the reading of the Bible among Roman Catholics, their Church is moving to a more evangelical position. Sadly this is not the case. Since the Reformation their Church has added three doctrines to its beliefs, the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary (1854), Papal Infallibility (1870) and The Assumption of the Body of the Virgin Mary into Heaven (1950).
None of these doctrines have any basis in Scripture. No appeal to Scripture can be made in support of them. In recent times the teaching of the Roman Church on the doctrine of the Virgin Mary has been made popular, especially by the Jesuit Order and Pope John Paul II. Various apparitions have been reported in support of these doctrines, but they have no Scriptural support at all. It may be that more Romanists are reading the Bible. If they come to accept its authority it will lead them out of their Church. Every effort should be made to encourage them. Many former Roman Catholics now in evangelical Churches were led out of Romanism through reading the Bible.
THE LESSON OF HISTORY
The Roman Church has a long history of the denial of the Bible to her laity. It was not so in the early history of the Church in Rome. Damascus Bishop of Rome gave an order to Jerome, the Latin Father and scholar, to make a new translation of the Bible from the Hebrew and Greek into Latin about 384 A.D. This was called the “Vulgate” because it was intended to provide ordinary people - the vulgar people - with the Bible. This was at a time when the Bishops of Rome were not styled or regarded as “Popes”. This happened latter, in 451 A.D. As the Papacy came into being and the doctrines it adopted were not founded upon Scripture, but were taught on the authority of the Church alone, the Bible was neglected and confined to the Latin language. The Roman Empire had fallen and the Papacy had arisen on its ashes. This gave the Church the opportunity to confine the Scriptures and the church service to Latin. Pope Vitalius is reputed to have directed, in the year 666 A.D., that the Vulgate Bible and the services of the Church should remain in Latin until Doomsday. However he was infallibly wrong, being a Pope, for today translations of the Vulgate have been made by Romanist scholars and services are held in vernacular languages.
Throughout history the Roman Church has prevented her people from becoming familiar with the Bible. Often reading of the Bible and especially the possession of it was a passport to the stake or to execution by some other cruel method. The case of Thomas Harding of Amersham and Chesham is a typical example. He was seen reading a copy of the Psalter in English while sitting in a copse, instead of attending the Mass in Chesham Parish Church, in the spring of 1532. He was a Lollard, a follower of John Wycliffe, and had already been branded in the cheek with a hot iron with the letter “H” for heretic at the burning of William Tylsworth at Amersham in 1506. He was arrested, imprisoned in the Bishop’s prison at Wooburn Green, in the dungeon of “Little Ease” where a man could neither stand up nor lie down but only crouch down, and then burned at Chesham in May 1532.
In the period of the reign of Mary I (Tudor), sometimes styled as “Bloody Mary”, George Marsh was burned with his Bible and Derek Carver of Brighton was also burned with his at Lewes in Sussex. William Wolsey and Robert Piggott and copies of the Tyndale New Testament were burned at Ely, Cambridgeshire. The canon of the Council of Toulouse, held during the pontificate of Gregory IX in 1229, was enforced as much as possible. It read - “We prohibit also the permitting of the laity to have the books of the Old or New Testament, unless anyone should wish from a feeling of devotion to have a psalter or a breviary for Divine service, or the hours of the Blessed Mary, But we strongly forbid them to have the above mentioned books in the vulgar tongue”.
This order was defied by the evangelical bodies that existed before the Reformation, the Lollards in England, the Albigenses in France, the Brothers of the Common Life in Germany and the Waldensians. Some of the produced vernacular versions of the Bible or portions of it. In later times the Papacy strongly denounced the Bible Societies.
DID THE CHURCH PRODUCE THE BIBLE ?
The teaching of the Roman Church is that the Church produced the Bible and is therefore superior to it. If therefore the Church decrees something, even if contrary to Scripture, it must be accepted. The truth is that the Bible is of Divine origin, its larger part is the Old Testament, which was written by Jews, and the New Testament was also written by Divinely inspired Jews who had embraced the Gospel. The confusion is partly due to the Roman claim that she is the Catholic or Universal Church, founded by Christ on St. Peter, the Rock, whom it regards as its first Pope. This claim is both unscriptural and unhistorical. It unchurches all others, who, although now styled as “separated brethren” are regarded as either heretics (the Protestant Churches) or as schismatics (the Orthodox Churches of the East). It claims that as the New Testament writers were members of the Early Church and it is its successors, the Bible is subservient to them - the true Church - a totally false claim.
IMPOSSIBLE RULES OF INTERPRETATION
There are two rules for the interpretation of the Scriptures laid down in the Creed of
Pope Pius IV (1560), which is a digest of the decrees of the Council of Trent 1545 to 1563. Here is the quotation -
I most steadfastly admit and embrace the Apostolic and Ecclesiastical Traditions and all other observances of the same Church.
I also admit the Holy Scriptures, according to that sense which our Holy Mother Church has held, and does hold, to which it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures: neither will I ever take or interpret them otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.”
These are two impossible rules. The Roman Church has never issued an entire commentary on the Bible by which this first rule could be applied, further there is no such unanimous consent of the Early Church Fathers. Bishop Strossmayer, at the Vatican Council of 1869, pointed out that even on the important passage in Mathew’s Gospel (
Matthew 16:15-20) that was referred to in support of the Papal claim of infallibility, there was no such unanimous consent. The Fathers greatly differed. Some thought the “Rock” was Christ Himself, others that it was the “Faith”, others that it was His Divinity and very few that it was Peter himself. How could a well educated Romanist, reading the Latin Vulgate, ever apply these rules? The study of the Bible, which is held to be of paramount importance in evangelical Protestant Churches, becomes impossible under these rules in Romanism,. In the St. Peter Catechism, published in 1972, and regarded as a guide to religious instruction in Roman Catholic Schools, Question No. 658 on page 61 states, “Ought we often to read good books especially Holy Scripture, the lives of the Saints and the spiritual classics?”
Thus the Bible is given no special place, it is just a religious book, equal with the lives of the saints or any religious classic. This clearly shows how Rome regards tradition more important than the Bible as Cardinal Baronius says:
“Tradition is the foundation of the Scriptures, and surpasses them in so far that whereas the Scriptures could not subsist were they not fortified by tradition, tradition has weight enough without the Scriptures.” (
Annals, An 58. No. 11).
THE MODERN DRIFT FROM SCRIPTURE INTO ERROR
The reason why the Roman Church does not now fear the Bible as she did is that there is such a swing away from Biblical Authority in the main Protestant denominations in their acceptance of liberal theology and Church authority, that they now have no valid standard of authority.
True Protestantism is founded on the authority of the Bible, the Word of God; Romanism and liberal theology on the word of man.
“Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord” (Jeremiah 17:5).
This article, as the thirteen previous in the series, has been reproduced by the kind permission of the Protestant Alliance and was originally featured in the November/December issue of The Reformer Magazine.
This is the last in this series of useful, instructive articles.
It is hoped by the Protestant Alliance to produce them in a booklet form.
The only way that we as Bible believing Christians can hope to stop the spread of Romanism in our land, is by regularly attending public worship and holding true and steadfast to the Reformation principals and thereby objecting to any changes, ceremonies or practices which savour of or resemble the church of Rome.
More importantly when you come across these deviations from the Reformed faith, make your objection known to the Church Minister and elders. The Anglo-Catholic movement can only move their agenda forward in this land of ours if we who oppose them desert our Churches leaving them with a free hand.
The postal address of The Protestant Alliance is:
THE PROTESTANT ALLIANCE
77 AMPTHILL ROAD, FLITWICK
BEDFORD MK45 1BD