WHEN AHAB, the king of Israel, had determined to march against the Syrian city of Rainoth-Gilead to battle, he sent for the prophets or priests of Baal, the government or established clergy of the period, to give him their advice on the subject., When these obsequious functionaries had all strongly recommended the step on which they perceived their master was already bent, and had given him assurance of entire success, JEHOSHAPHAT, the king of Judah, who happened to be present (which, by the way, he ought not to have been in such company), asked if there was no other prophet —no prophet of the LORD—of whom inquiry might be made. AHAB replied that (there, was a prophet of the LORD, one MICAIAH the son of IMLAH, but added, " I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil ! "
This passage of Scripture history recurred most forcibly to our recollection on perusing a Pamphlet entitled, On the Use and Abuse of the Sacred Scriptures, recently published by the Rev. Mr. ULLATHORNE, the Roman Catholic Vicar for this territory. The evident object and design of the pamphlet is to reprobate and discourage the use of the sacred Scriptures by the unlearned, that is, by the laity; and in order to accomplish this object, which has always appeared one of primary importance to the Roman Catholic clergy since the era of the Reformation, the reverend gentleman gives us sundry instances of what we cannot help characterizing, in his own language, as amounting almost to actual abuse of the Holy Scriptures. For, according to the reverend pamphleteer, Those holy men of God, who were inspired, by the Holy Ghost to write the sacred Scriptures for our learning, have accomplished their task in so imperfect a manner that it is next to impossible for any man of ordinary understanding to comprehend even a tithe of their meaning, without having previously received a college education. Notwithstanding the inspiration of GOD, under which they acted when they committed his Divine Word to writing for our instruction, the sacred writers have not even attained to the lowest quality of style—intelligibility. From being long accustomed to talk Hebrew, nobody but a priest, who of course must be supposed possessed of a portion of the Romish attribute of infallibility, can hope to understand them when they attempt to talk Greek ; and the consequence is, that the trump of GOD which is designed in their hands to arouse the nations with this loud and universal call, Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the LORD hath spoken, must be laid aside as emitting an uncertain sound, and the little keyed bugle of the Church of Rome substituted in its place.
Now, there is something extremely suspicious in all this. It indicates a latent conviction: that the plain testimony of Scripture is against the Roman Catholic Church, and that, if that testimony were suffered to be emitted freely in the open court of the world, it would carry conviction of the unscriptural character and pretensions of that church to many a heart. In short, the dignitaries of the Romish Church have had the long experience of three centuries to induce them to adopt similar language and similar procedure, in regard to the general dissemination of the Holy Scriptures, with those of AHAB, the king of Israel, in regard to the son of IMLAH : " We hate the circulation of the Sacred Scriptures," they may well say, " because they do not prophesy good concerning us, but evil; and we will therefore order them to be shut up in the prison of the Latin Vulgate Version, where they will be almost inaccessible to the laity."
If a wife receives a letter from her husband at a distance, and after having read it herself immediately assembles her children and domestics and reads it in their hearing, and then hands it to one of them and after wards to another and desires them to read it over and over again, we can immediately perceive that this is a well-regulated and harmonious household, in which the confidence of the husband is tenderly reciprocated in the affection, of the wife. And if it should so happen that one of the younger members of this well-ordered family should come to his mother, telling her there is a passage in his father's letter that he does not fully comprehend, the mother will perhaps tell him to read it over carefully again; and if on a second or even a third trial he should still fail to understand it, she will either explain it herself, if she can, or tell him he will understand it all in due time as he grows older and wiser; reminding him at the same time, however, that he under stands enough of it at present to convince him that he has the kindest and the best of fathers, and to teach him how to demean himself in every particular like a dutiful and affectionate child. Such is the manner in which the Protestant Church—the Church of the Reformation— deals with the Holy Scriptures, those letters which she has received for the benefit of her children from her head and husband, the LORD JESUS CHRIST, who has himself gone to a far country, to receive a kingdom, and to return.
If, on the contrary, the wife locks up her husband's letter in her escritoire, after having secretly perused it herself; if she prohibits her children from either touching it or looking at it without her express permission; nay, if in order to discourage them from any attempt of the kind, she tells them that: their father's letter is not intended for their perusal, that, indeed, he has got so awkward a way of expressing himself that his letters are absolutely unintelligible even to his own children without her own notes and comments, and that it matters very little, after all, as to their present comfort or future welfare, whether they ever read them or not; what conclusion are we warranted to draw respecting the condition of such a family ? Why, we are surely warranted to conclude that there must be some misunderstanding between the husband and the wife; that the latter has been playing false during the absence of the former; that she is either entirely estranged from the children of her own bosom, or else concerned to alienate their affections from their own father; in short, that she has altogether forsaken her husband, and given herself to another. But such is just the manner in which the Roman Catholic Church has dealt with the holy scriptures, those letters which she has received for the benefit of her children from her absent husband, the Lord Jesus CHRIST; such is the manner in which the Roman Catholic Church has dealt with the Holy Scriptures, ever since the famous Council of Trent — an assemblage of half-educated Italian priests—determined in the plenitude of its ignorance and its folly, that the Latin Vulgate version of the Holy Scriptures ( probably the only one that three-fourths of them understood), was actually superior to the Hebrew and Greek originals of which it was the mere translation of a humble presbyter. . . .
The Colonist 12 March 1835, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article31716299
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