Encyclical letter

“ And as the material images of the Bible serve to accommodate the wisdom of God to the capacity of his creatures, so have they often been the cause of those convulsions in the church, which seemed even to threaten her existence. "The letter" has often killed, when unaccompanied in the mind with the "spirit which giveth life." We cannot, therefore, find in the figure before us anything which so completely accords with its origin and design, as the outward letter of the Word of God—the clouds of the Christian heaven. ”

“ This question was quite urgent in the days when people felt obliged to
cherish the belief that every letter in Holy Scripture was dictated by
the Holy Spirit. In those days it had to be answered in the affirmative
at any cost. ”

“ For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life " (2 Cor. iii. 6) , which is often quoted by some as an excuse for a disregard of the literal sense, or even for a destructive handling of the letter of Scripture. But the Apostle plainly uses the term "letter" for the law the letter " written and graven in stones " ; and, my dear friends, this " letter " this wonderful revelation of God's absolute holiness and of the requirements of His holy government is meant to kill us, and must kill us, before the Spirit can come and give us life. " The Lord killeth and maketh alive ”

“ It must not be thought that in the Concordance these extracts are printed straight off, as they read here. If that were the case, it would be open to objection that something like a new Gospel history was being compiled; but in every case, without exception, wherever words are introduced from another Evangelist, a space is left, a fresh line commenced, and the distinguishing letter placed p. ”

“ While we have here a law which, as to the letter, is confessedly abrogated, and which is supposed by the most to be utterly removed from any present-day use for practical instruction, it is now evident that, annulled as to the letter, it is yet, as to the spirit and intention of it, in full force and vital consequence to holiness of life in all ages. ”

“ It is promulgated not by an inaccessible God, but by the Divine Love manifested in manhood. The hard demand of the letter is closely connected with the promise of the Spirit. We are told that many of the precepts in the sermon were anticipated by Pagan and Jewish writers. But this we might have expected, since all men are rational and moral through fellowship with the Word, who is also the Reason of God. Christ is the light which in conscience and reason lightens every man throughout the history of the race. ”

“ Conscience bow him to the earth; Affection keep silence when the priest uplifts the Bible. Man is subordinate to the apocryphal, ambiguous, imperfect, and often erroneous Scripture of the Word; the Word itself, as it comes straightway from the fountain of Truth, through Reason, Conscience, Affection, and the Soul, he must not have. It takes the Bible for God's statute-book; combines old Hebrew notions into a code of ethics; takes figures for fact; settles questions in Morals and Religion by texts of Scripture! It can justify anything out of the Bible. ”

“ Encyclical the Holy Father recognizes the fact that there was a universal movement among Christians in favor of the belief in question, so that the complete acknowledgment of it appeared to be sufficiently prepared both by the liturgy and the formal requisitions of numerous bishops, no less than by the studies of the most learned theologians. ”

“ It was only through this zeal for Christianity, as represented by the Bible, which Protestantism called forth, that the printed letter acquired the high and universal value which it has possessed since the Reformation: it became the almost indispensable means of salvation; and without being able to read, a man could no longer, properly speaking, be a Christian, or be tolerated in any Christian and Protestant State. ”

“ What diligent research on the part of scholarship has effected among critical students, the recent revision of the Bible has accomplished among the people. The old-time reverence for the letter of the law, or what is commonly known as verbal inspiration, is disappearing as mist before the sunshine, owing, in this latter case, to the people becoming acquainted for the first time with the fact that there are passages in the Bible confessed by the most orthodox scholars to be spurious. ”

“ Who sifts for us the speeches of Job, and enables us to treasure up as divine truth what he utters in one verse, while we reject the next as Satanic ravings? Who gives the preacher authority and accuracy of aim to pounce on a sound text in Ecclesiastes, while wisdom and folly toss and roll over one another in confusingly rapid and inextricable contortions? ”

“ For the theologians themselves—particularly the Protestants—always insist on the very letter of the text. The little words "this is" were sufficient in the quibble between Luther and Calvin to cut the Protestantic party in two halves, each wishing to roast the other in hell. Yes, the theologians build doctrines not only on words but on forms of words, discriminating between the meaning of the same words when used in this form or the other. In a text where words are so important, it is ridiculous to say that many thousand variations are of no importance. ”

“ My dear friend, where is it written in the Word of God that it is not the will of God that all should be saved, but that, irrespective of their sin, He has ordained some to damnation only from His mere counsel, purpose, and will, so that they cannot be saved? Never in all eternity, try as they may, will they prove this proposition from God's revealed Word. For nowhere do the Holy Scriptures speak thus. Yet from sheer foolhardiness they dare employ, contrary to Scripture, such blasphemous doctrine and speech and spread it in all Christendom. ”

“ From Pope Pius 4th, we have the following cautionary rule—That since it is manifest from experience that if the Bible be indiscriminately permitted in the vulgar tongue, more injury than benefit will result through the rashness of men, the use of Catholic versions shall be granted by the voice of the priest or confessor to those alone who it is understood will not be hurt by the reading of them, but will be advanced in faith and piety. ”

“ For those, however, who reject the divine authority of the Church, the holy Scriptures can no longer be authentic and inspired writings— they are for them no longer the word of God; for they have no one who can tell them, with divine certainty, what books are, and what are not, divinely inspired; they have no one who, in the name of God, can command them to believe in the divine inspiration of the writers of those books. ”

“ The only qualification prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer for confirmation by the bishop, is ability to repeat the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Catechism. Of repentance towards God and faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ there is not a word. Here, then, we have a generation of young persons on whom Episcopal hands are laid, and who are taught to believe that, in consequence of this act, they have received an influx of spiritual grace, implanting new, and invigorating old spiritual principles, and raising them at once to the stature of Christian manhood. ”

“ In short, we hold firmly and steadfastly to our beloved Bible, when the one holds to Calvin, the other to Zwingli, a third to the Heidelberg Catechism, a fourth to the Confession of the Synod of Dort, a fifth to the Westminster Catechism, a sixth to the Common-prayer Book, a seventh to the Solemn League and Covenant, and the eighth to the darkened and depraved reason per se, the ninth to reason under the name of Holy Spirit, and the tenth to the devil himself in the form of an angel of light. ”

“ The Holy Father enumerates also in this Encyclical the principal grounds of faith, and exhorts all bishops to oppose with all their zeal and learning those who, alleging progress as their motive, perversely endeavor to destroy religion by subjecting it to every man's individual judgment. ”

“ I know that you are Catholics, that you have the Apostles' Creed by heart, that you believe in one God in Three Persons, in the Incarnation and Death of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and in the two eternities before us; but neither you nor I know what all this implies. Our knowledge is very imperfect: we are but babes in Christ, lisping and stammering the Divine alphabet—children, wetting our feet in the waves which dash on the shore of the boundless ocean of truth. ”

“ In the higher sense of the word inspiration, the human agent becomes a mere instrument to convey a message, [495] which he himself may possibly not understand at all. The meaning then lies wholly in the mind of God; and it is to be sought out by the divinely appointed interpreter. Hence is apparent the reasonableness, when they are taken together, of the two elements which make up the Catholic theory of Scripture—the inspiration of the written word, and the commission of the church to interpret. ”

“ Those who, as Protestants, do not recognize any other source of divine revelation than the written word are, of course, obliged to occupy themselves wholly and entirely with its study, whilst Catholics look upon that same written word, not with less reverence, but with less consciousness of having to rely upon it as the only symbol and exponent of their faith. ”

“ Nowhere else would an intelligible Bible be a newer book, or a sermon kindle stranger fires. Nowhere else would the pious champions of the Catholic faith be compelled to say so much that was evil of those who should have been their pastors. ”

“ Some one will say, that what has been stated is contradictory to what the Apostle understands as meant by the Psalmist with reference to the preaching of the gospel, where he says; “Their sound is gone out into every land, and their words unto the ends of the world.” For the Apostle, speaking of the conversion of the gentiles, says thus: “How shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? or how shall they hear without a preacher? ”

“ The bishops and priests, however, when they subscribe to the opinion that the Bible contains all things necessary for salvation, do not pledge themselves to the belief that every sentence, part, division, book, or arrangement of the Canonical Scriptures is, and must of necessity be, true. ”

“ In a word, without the Fourth Gospel, Christendom might (it would seem) have failed for ever to appreciate the true nature of its Redeemer.
I cannot indeed repress some regret that this most marvellously endowed minister and prophet of Christ should have been allowed to select a poetic and even illusive form in order to publish his divine truths. Hitherto I have been able with pleasure and satisfaction to see the illusive integument being gradually separated from the inner truth, as in astronomy and in the history of the Old Testament. ”

“ But behind these limitations, which characterize the greater part of the Old Testament, the claim of these Psalms still remains a necessary part of the claim of the Christian soul. We must not only recognise the reality of Divine judgments in time and eternity, bodily and spiritual; we must not only acquiesce in them because they are God's; we must go on to claim of God the manifestation of His just judgment, so that holiness and joy, sin and failure, shall be seen to coincide. ”

“ John, and any man who endeavored to make a fifth gospel would make a gospel of his own and not of any Evangelist, because he would not know the sense, meaning, and coherence of the texts so as to make that gospel an inspired book. ”

“ We, too, are ready to bear in silence personal insults, except one - that of having misrepresented Catholic doctrine in any of our works. Even from our childhood the study of our religion has been our greatest pleasure; we have always loved it too much to misrepresent any truth whatsoever. We have taken unspeakable pains to make it plain and attractive to all classes of society, even to the little ones. ”

“ When controversy then happens, for the right understanding of any place or sentence of scripture, or for the reformation of any abuse within the kirk of God, we ought not so much to look what men before us have said or done, as unto that which the Holy Ghost uniformly speaks within the body of the scriptures, and unto that which Christ Jesus himself did, and commanded to be done. ”

“ If we construe the words, 'The light which lighteneth every man was coming into the world,' we destroy the order of the Apostle's discourse, and we go near to make him contradict himself. He declares that the Word was in the world, and that the world knew Him not. The coming into it, in the sense of being made flesh, is reserved for the 14th verse. My great object in this Sermon has been to assert this order, and to show how much we mistake the purpose of the Evangelist when we substitute another of our own. ”

“ Whatever changes have crept into the text of the Bible, through inadvertence of copyists or defective translations into other languages, it is a settled fact among Catholic divines that they do not affect the moral and dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church. ”

“ In a plain, weighty, nervous style, rising at times to rugged eloquence, he defends the Bible as the sole source of religious knowledge, and the Apostles' Creed as containing all that is necessary to salvation. ”