Talk, nor the authenticity of this particular remark of Luther about his
stumbling upon the Bible by accident. But it is certainly germane to our
subject to strip the incident of the dramatic features with which
Catholic writers claim that most Protestants still surround the event.
Did Luther say, and did Mathesius report, that up to the year 1505 he
had not known of the Bible? Not at all. He merely stated that up to that
time he had not seen _a complete copy of the Bible_. Luther himself has
told scores of times that when a schoolboy at Mansfeld, and later at
Magdeburg and Eisenach where he studied, he had heard portions of the
Gospels and Epistles read during the regular service at church. Some
passages he had learned by heart. Luther's guests would have laughed at
him if he had claimed such a "discovery" of the Bible as Catholic
writers--and some of their Protestant authorities--think that Mathesius
has claimed for him and modern Protestants still credit him with.

What Luther did relate we are prepared to show was not, and could not
be, an unusual occurrence in those days. "Even in the University of
Paris, which was considered the mother and queen of all the rest, not a
man could be found, when Luther arose, competent to dispute with him out
of the Scriptures. This was not strange. Many of the doctors of theology
in those times had never read the Bible. Carolostadt expressly tells us
this was the case with himself. Whenever one freely read the Bible, he
was cried out against, as one making innovations, as a heretic, and
exposing Christianity to great danger by making the New Testament known.
Many of the monks regarded the Bible as a book which abounded in
numerous error." (Mosheim, III, 15.) The spiritual atmosphere in which
Luther and all Christians of his time were brought up was unfavorable to
real Bible-study.

But before we exhibit the true attitude of Rome toward the Bible, it