were apt to be able to read the Latin.


[1] Hoare, Evolution of the English Bible, p. 39.


These centuries added to the conviction of
many that the Bible ought not to become too
common, that it should not be read by everybody,
that it required a certain amount of learning
to make it safe reading. They came to feel
that it is as important to have an authoritative
interpretation of the Bible as to have the Bible
itself. When the movement began to make it
speak the new English tongue, it provoked the
most violent opposition. Latin had been good
enough for a millennium; why cheapen the Bible
by a translation? There had grown up a feeling
that Jerome himself had been inspired. He had
been canonized, and half the references to him
in that time speak of him as the inspired translator.
Criticism of his version was counted as
impious and profane as criticisms of the original
text could possibly have been. It is one of the
ironies of history that the version for which
Jerome had to fight, and which was counted a
piece of impiety itself, actually became the
ground on which men stood when they fought
against another version, counting anything else
but this very version an impious intrusion!