Principales resultados del ejercicio

The results of this rising tide of higher criticism were the rejection of the Received Text and the mania for revision. It gave us, among other bizarre versions, the

“Polychrome” and also the “Shorter Bible.” The Polychrome Bible is generally an edition of the separate books of the Scriptures, each book having every page colored many times to represent the different writers.

Any one who will take the pains to secure a copy of the “Shorter Bible” in the New Testament, will recognize that about four thousand of the nearly eight thousand verses in that Scripture have been entirely blotted out. We offer the following quotation from the United Presbyterian of December 22, 1921, as a description of the “Shorter Bible:”

“The preface further informs us that only about one-third of the Old Testament and two-thirds of the New Testament are possessed of this ‘vital interest and practical value.’ The Old Testament ritual and sacrificial system, with their deep lessons and their forward look to the atonement through the death of Christ are gone. As a result of this, the New Testament references to Christ as the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrifices are omitted. Such verses as ‘Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world,’ are gone.

“Whole books of the Old Testament are gone. Some of the richest portions of the books of the prophets are missing. From the New Testament they have omitted 4,000 verses. Other verses are cut in two, and a fragment left us, for which we are duly thankful. The great commission recorded in Matthew; the epistles of Titus, Jude, First and Second John, are entirely omitted, and but twenty-five verses of the second epistle of Timothy remain. The part of the third chapter of Romans which treats of human depravity, being ‘of no practical value to the present age,’ is omitted. Only one verse remains from the fourth chapter. The twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew and other passages upon which the premillenarians base their theory, are missing. All the passages which teach the atonement through the death of Christ are gone.”

The campaigns of nearly three centuries against the Received Text did their work.

The Greek New Testament of the Reformation was dethroned and with it the Versions translated from it, whether English, German, French, or of any other language. It had been predicted that if the Revised Version were not of sufficient merit to be authorized and so displace the King James, confusion and division would be multiplied by a crop of unauthorized and sectarian translations.f183 The Polychrome, the Shorter Bible, and a

www.temcat.com 74 large output of heterogeneous Bibles verify the prediction. No competitor has yet appeared able to create a standard comparable to the text which has held sway for 1800 years in the original tongue, and for 300 years in its English translation, the King James.

CHAPTER 8

HOW THE JESUITS CAPTURED OXFORD UNIVERSITY

BEFORE the English people could go the way of the Continent and be brought to question their great English Bible, the course of their thinking must be changed. Much had to be done to discredit, in their eyes, the Reformation — its history, doctrines, and documents — which they looked upon as a great work of God. This task was accomplished by those who, while working under cover, passed as friends. In what numbers the Jesuits were at hand to bring this about, the following words, from one qualified to know, will reveal:

“Despite all the persecution they (the Jesuits) have met with, they have not abandoned England, where there are a greater number of Jesuits than in Italy; there are Jesuits in all classes of society; in Parliament; among the English clergy; among the Protestant laity, even in the higher stations. I could not comprehend how a Jesuit could be a Protestant priest, or how a Protestant priest could be a Jesuit; but my Confessor silenced my scruples by telling me, omnia munda mundis, and that St. Paul became as a Jew that he might save the Jews; it was no wonder, therefore, if a Jesuit should feign himself a Protestant, for the conversion of Protestants. But pay attention, I entreat you, to my discoveries concerning the nature of the religious movement in England termed Puseyism.

“The English clergy were formerly too much attached to their Articles of Faith to be shaken from them. You might have employed in vain all the machines set in motion by Bossuet and the Jansenists of France to reunite them to the Romish Church; and so the Jesuits of England tried another plan. This was to demonstrate from history and ecclesiastical antiquity the legitimacy of the usages of the English Church, whence, through the exertions of the Jesuits concealed among its clergy, might arise a studious attention to Christian antiquity. This was designed to occupy the clergy in long, laborious, and abstruse investigation, and to alienate them from their Bibles.”f191 (Italics mine.)

So reported Dr. Desanctis, who for many years was a priest at Rome, Professor of Theology, Official Theological Censor of the Inquisition, and who later became a Protestant, as he told of his interview with the Secretary of the French Father Assistant of the Jesuit Order.

Why is it that in 1833, England believed that the Reformation was the work of God, but in 1883 it believed that the Reformation was a rebellion? In 1833, England believed that the Pope was Antichrist; in 1883, that the Pope was the successor of the apostles. And further, in 1833, any clergyman who would have used Mass, confession, holy water, etc., in the Church of England, would have been immediately dismissed, if he would not have undergone violent treatment at the hands of the people. In 1883,

www.temcat.com 75 thousands of Masses, confessions, and other ritualistic practices of Romanism were carried on in services held in the Church of England. The historian Froude says:

“In my first term at the University (Oxford), the controversial fires were beginning to blaze... I had learnt, like other Protestant children, that the Pope was Antichrist, and that Gregory VII had been a special revelation of that being. I was now taught that Gregory VII was a saint. I had been told to honor the Reformers. The Reformation became a great schism, Cranmer a traitor and Latimer a vulgar ranter.

Milton was a name of horror.”f192

The beginning and center of this work was at Oxford University. The movement is known as the Oxford Movement. The movement also involved the revision of the Authorized Version. Kempson indicates the deep background and far-reaching effects of the movement in the following words:

“Whoever, therefore, desires to get really to the bottom of what is commonly called the Catholic Revival in England is involved in a deep and far-reaching study of events: a study which includes not merely events of ecclesiastical history — some of which must be traced back to sources in the dawn of the Middle Ages or even in Apostolic times — but also the movements of secular politics.”f193

In order rightly to understand the immensity of what was done, the position at this time of the Church of England and of the University of Oxford must be understood. By the victory in 1588 of England over the Spanish Armada, England became the champion and defender of Protestantism. She became the impassable wall of defense which confined Catholicism to Europe, and by her possessions committed the continent of North America to a Protestant future. Whatever may be the defects in the doctrines and organization of the Church of England in the eyes of the large dissenting Protestant Churches, nevertheless, at the time when the Oxford Movement began, she was without question the strongest Protestant organization in the world.

It was the Church of England, assisted by many Puritan divines, which gave us the Protestant Bible. The center of the Church of England was Oxford University. Mr.

Palmer claims that half the rising clergymen of England were instructed in this seat of education.f194 This same writer speaks of Oxford as “The great intellectual center of England, famed for its intellectual ascendency among all the churches of the world.”f195 Catholics on the continent of Europe also recognized that Oxford was the heart of the Anglican Church.f196

At the time the Oxford Movement began, a growing tide of Catholic reaction was running in Germany and France. Every turn of events in these two nations profited for the Church of Rome. The strong influence in Germany of the Catholic writer, Mohler, and of Windhorst was carrying that erstwhile Protestant people toward the papal throne. The theories of Mohler on the Development of Doctrine became the basis on which the leaders of the movement toward Rome, in England, built.

At this same time in France, Lamennais, Lacordaire, and Montalembert were electrifying the youth of France with their brilliant and stirring leadership. The voice of Lacordaire was heard by enraptured audiences in the national Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Montalembert, in his seat among the lawmakers of the French Legislature, was exercising

www.temcat.com 76 an influence in favor of Catholic legislation. At the same time, Lamennais, with his pen, was idealizing the doctrines and plans of Rome, in the minds of fervent youth. The Jesuits had been restored in 1814. Was it possible that England could withstand this flood of Catholic advance which was devitalizing Protestantism on the Continent?