dispute among Romanists themselves. Some of the more modern and liberal
of their theologians say that the council simply intended to determine
which among several Latin versions was to be used in the service of the
Church. They contend that it was not meant to forbid appeal to the
original Scriptures, or to place the Vulgate on a par with them in
authority. The earlier and stricter Romanists take the ground that the
Synod did intend to forbid an appeal to the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures,
and to make the Vulgate the ultimate authority. The language of the
council seems to favor this interpretation." We might add, the practise
of Romanists, too. At the debate in Leipzig Eck contended that the Latin
Vulgate was inspired by the Holy Ghost. (Koestlin, I, 455.)

Whatever knowledge of Scripture the people in the Middle Ages possessed
was confined to those who could read Latin. Catholic writers claim this
was at that time the universal language of Europe, but they wisely add:
"among the educated." One of them says: "Those who could read Latin
could read the Bible, and those who could not read Latin could not read
anything." Exactly. And now, to prove the wide diffusion of
Bible-knowledge in their Church before Luther, these Catholic writers
should give us some exact data as to the extent of the Latin scholarship
in that age. Fact is, the Latin tongue acted as a lock upon the
Scriptures to the common people. Hence arose the desire to have the
Bible translated into the vernacular of various European countries.

This desire Rome sought to suppress with brutal rigor. The bloody
persecutions of the Waldensians in France, which almost resulted in the
extirpation of these peaceful mountain people, of the followers of
Wyclif in England, whose remains Rome had exhumed after his death and
burned, of the Hussites in Bohemia, were all aimed at translations of
the Bible into the languages which the common people understood.