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of letters , in the times that followed , especially in the West , was so great that the whole learning of an ecclesiastic , in the middle ages , consisted often of nothing more than that he was able to read . Of course , the Bible was little read by the people , for mo 3 t were unable to read . After the seventh century , when the Latin language had ceased to be commonly spoken in the several countries of Christendom , the reading of the Scriptures in the Latin translation was continued in the churches : the Bible and its contents
came to be always less known among the laity . In the mean time , many erroneous principles and practices arose , which were contrary to the Scriptures , but conducive to the wealth and power of the pope and the clergy . Some , however , of the more discerning and better instructed part of the laity read the Scriptures , saw the still increasing departure from them , and strove against it . Now it began to be the policy of the clergy to deter the people from reading the Bible . Pope Gregory VII . ( Hildebrand ) forbade it in the eleventh century . Innocent III . did the same in the beginning of the
thirteenth century , when many of the people had derived juster views from the reading of the Scriptures , and placed themselves in opposition to the designs of the Papal priesthood . Hence , at the Council of Toulouse , in the year 1229 , on account of the Waldenses , the use of the Bible by the laity , and especially all translations of it into their mother-tongue , were prohibited . Still the number of readers of the Bible , both within and without the Roman Catholic Church , continually increased , and they saw more plainly the abuses which had been multiplied , the degraded state of learning , and the
excessive corruption of the church . At length , in the sixteenth century , Luther opened the way to the general reading of the Scriptures by his German translation , and founded his project of Reformation expressly on the restoration of the free use of the Bible . The prohibition was renewed at the Council of Trent , in the sixteenth century ; but Pope Pius the Fourth , in the index librorum prohibitorum , ordered that it should be subject to the discretion of bishops and confessors . It was again renewed in the seventeenth century by Clement VIII . and Gregory XV ., and a ^ ain in the eighteenth century by Clement XI . But the Catholic Church is wrongly
accused of having received it universally . Some of its divines , especially in the Gallican Church , have always defended the lawfulness , and even the necessity , of reading the Holy Scriptures ; and the doctrine of the Jansenists , and of Quesnell in particular , Lectio Scriptorum Sacrorum est pro omnibus , occasioned the renewal of the prohibition in the bull Unigenitus . Thus it has never been without limitation . Indeed , the contrary has been often maintained by eminent theologians in the Roman Church , though many Jesuits , or ex-Jesuits , have supported the prohibition . ( Vide Hegelmeier ' s Geschichte des Bibelverbots , Ulm , 1783 . )"
The religious world in Germany is divided into two great classes , which are separated by a plain line of distinction . All on one side deny the existence of a positive religion ; these are Rationalists : all on the other side affirm it ; these are Supernaturalists , including Lutherans , Calvimsts , Arminians , Trinitarians , Unitarians , Biblical Christians , Believers in Evangelical or Symbolical Books , Pietists , and Mystics . " A positive religion / 1 says
Knapp , " is divine instruction on religious subject ? , which imparts the knowledge of truths not demonstrable by reason . The doctrine that there is a God , that he is good to man , and all other truths of natural religion , are not positive : but that God has revealed himself to man in Jesus Christ , and that through him , and for his sake , he saves mankind , are positive . This use of the word is derived from the Greek expression k >/ x «{ tiBtvou , for law
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Letter * from Germany . ~ 177
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VOL . V . O
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1831, page 177, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2595/page/33/
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