are they in Protestant churches? Bible carriers, readers for wages of the divine book, and who, the reading finished, must close their lips, under pain of hearing even their wives and children exclaim: Be silent! who has given you the right to explain the Scriptures to us? It would be truly singular to see these persons exalt themselves into oracles, and substitute their ideas of a day for the teachings of a church accredited by eighteen centuries of existence, and by the submission of eight or ten thousand millions of Christians!

If the generality of men have need of skilful interpreters to enable them to understand the Scriptures, is it not plain that Jesus Christ must have established them, and that Catholicism must then come in, by full right, with its bishops and its priests? But let us return to our catechumen.

See him alone with his Bible, condemned to read it from one end to the other, to read it again, to meditate upon it, and compare it with itself as often as may be necessary to prevent any of the thirty-four thousand verses from escaping his examination: if he omits one, who could guarantee to him that the key of the true Christian system was not to be found in that?

A judge in the first and last appeal of the most important and complicated causes, a frightful responsibility rests upon him. How can he feel any assurance of the equity of his decision, if a conscientious study of the various parts of the vast process does not bring them all before his mind, does not enable him to appreciate them all at their just value, before he pronounces the sentence which will bring him to the happy abode prepared from the beginning for those who have known and accomplished the will of their Heavenly Father, or take him down to the eternal abyss destined for those who have broken the divine law!

Will our separated brethren allow me to ask them this question: Who among you can pretend to have read with

attention-I will not say examined-the whole Bible? You believe you are Christians, because you have glanced at some of its books; but, how do you know that so many pages, which are unknown to you, may contain nothing essential to Christianity?

CHAPTER XV.

FOURTHI DIFFICULTY: EVERY PROTESTANT MUST ASSURE HIMSELF THAT HE HAS READ THE WHOLE BIBLE.

It is not enough to say, I have read all the Bible; we must be able to add, I am certain of having comprehended it sufficiently well. Is this an easy or common thing? What does Luther say on this subject?

"How great and difficult a thing is it to understand the Scriptures! Twenty years' labor are required to understand the Georgies of Virgil; twenty years passed in the management of affairs to have a clear comprehension of the Epistles of Cicero; a hundred years with the prophets Elias, Elijah, John the Baptist, Christ, and his apostles, to have a glimpse into the Scriptures."*

Can you, advocates of Bible religion, accuse me of extravagance when I demonstrated to you before, the obligation you were under to bury yourself thirty or forty years in the dust of libraries and universities, when the father of the Reformation condemns you to frequent, for a hundred years, the schools of masters not now to be found, in order to obtain a glimpse into the meaning of the Scriptures!

Audin, Vie de Luther, tom. ii. p. 520. Colloq. mens. fol. 4, 290. M. Michelet repeats the same words, with some variation, as written by Luther, at Eisleben, two days before his death. (See Memoires de Luther, liv. v. ch. 7.)

I acknowledge that this may be some of the table-talk which poured from the lips of the evangelist, whenever the fumes of beer or of wine made the torch of the apostolic spirit flicker in his brain; yet, it is evident to all who have read the Scriptures, that nothing is more difficult than their interpretation.

I will not quote the words of the holy writers, nor those of the fathers of the Church, who have made the most progress in the study of sacred literature. All agree concerning the mysterious and incalculable depth of the holy books; all unite in saying that the hand of man will reach the stars suspended in the vault of heaven, before his mind can enter into the depths of the divine word.

I will say nothing of the high antiquity of the Scriptures; nothing of the vast variety of their subjects; nothing of the great distance between their authors, not so much on account of the years which separate us from them, as their customs, turn of mind, extremely figurative style, and the genius of their language; nothing of the immensity of the subject which they embrace-God, man, the universe; which considerations would be sufficient to manifest, however little, yet enough to enable the blind to see that the Bible is and must be the most difficult book to understand, and that the comprehension of the Roman laws, so laborious even to our most skilful jurists, is play in comparison to the interpretation of it.

I will oppose only two incontrovertible facts to the innumerable quotations with which we are deafened, to prove to us the assumed clearness of the Scriptures, and the facility with which they reveal themselves to those who are rightminded and desirous of the truth. One of these has been evident to all ages for three centuries, and the other is biblical.

1st. Since the commencement of the Reformation, there is no text of Scripture upon the meaning of which the generality of Protestants have been able constantly to agree. It is cer

tain, then, that there is no passage which the generality of Protestants have understood in its true sense. It is a manifest proof that all, or almost all, misunderstand the Bible, since all explain it differently. They must, then, agree on one of these two things,-either that the Bible is very obscure, or that they themselves are not very clear-sighted.

2dly. In rectitude of mind, sanctity of life, and desire to know the truth; in one word, as to everything which constitutes intellectual and moral aptitude to comprehend the divine word, the Apostles were, without doubt, as gifted as most of the reformers. Who of the latter could say to Jesus Christ: Behold, we have left all things, and followed thee.*

The Apostles had, still more, the immense advantage of seeing the divine Master, of hearing the language in which he preached, of interrogating him at will, to receive from his sacred lips the divine, animated, and living word. Yet, according to their avowal, they comprehended nothing even of what he told them most clearly; it was hid from them;† and after his resurrection, he was obliged to give them that understanding of the Scriptures that they had been unable to acquire by three years of assiduous attention to his teachings.

Now that every Protestant flatters himself that he comprehends the word, and the whole word of Jesus Christ, no longer spoken, animated, and explained, by the gesture, look, and accent of him who uttered it; but dead, buried in a strange tongue, and become the subject of interminable discussions

* Matth. xix. 27.

† Et ipsi nihil horum intellexerunt, et erat verbum istud absconditum ab eis. (Luke xviii. 34.) And of what had he spoken to them? of his consubstantiality with the Father? No, but of his passion, of his resurrection, and in terms the most intelligible. (Ib. 32, 33.)

Tunc aperuit illis sensum ut intelligerent Scripturas. (Ib. 24, 45.) It is evident from the following verses that he referred only to the sense of the prophecies relative to his death and resurrection.

among the most learned interpreters, how can such a pretention be designated, how can the religious system be designated which establishes it as a principle!

CHAPTER XVI.

CAN THE PROTESTANT PRINCIPLE PRODUCE CHRISTIANS?

In order to answer this question, it will only be necessary to repeat, in a few words, what we have before demonstrated. No Protestant, faithful to the fundamental principle of the Reformation, can pretend to be a Christian before he has acquired, by his individual efforts, a firm conviction on five points.

1st. That the Bible is a divine book, and that it comes into his hands free from every important error which could have crept into it, through the evil intention or malice of its translators, copyists, or printers.

2d. That the Bible contains all that is necessary for faith and practice.

3d. That for the understanding of this book, it is the express command of Jesus Christ that every one should rely on his own judgment.

4th. That he has meditated and compared the thirty thousand and more verses of the Bible sufficiently to have possessed himself of their meaning.

5th. That he has omitted, in his profession of faith, no essential article of doctrine; that his system of morality includes all the precepts of rigorous obligation; that he understands all the sacraments, the dispositions they demand, the ministry clothed with the power to dispense them; and that, in a word, he knows the essential rites of worship.