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Facts of Faith

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    Rome’s Fight

    Rome was awake to the inevitable result of allowing the common people to read the Bible, and the Vicar of Croydon declared in a speech at St. Paul’s Cross, London: “We must destroy the printing press, or it will destroy us.”- “The Printing Press and the Gospel,” by E. R. Palmer, p. 24. The papal machinery was therefore set in motion for the destruction of the Bible.FAFA 14.5

    “There now began a remarkable contest between the Romish Church and the Bible between the printers and the popes....FAFA 15.1

    “To the Bible the popes at once declared a deathless hostility. To read the Scriptures was in their eyes the grossest of crimes.... The Inquisition was invested with new terrors, and was forced upon France and Holland by papal armies. The Jesuits were everywhere distinguished by their hatred for the Bible. In the Netherlands they led the persecutions of Alva and Philip II; they rejoiced with a dreadful joy when Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent, the fairest cities of the working men, were reduced to pauperism and ruin by the Spanish arms; for the Bible had perished with its defenders....FAFA 15.2

    “To burn Bibles was the favorite employment of zealous Catholics. Wherever they were found the heretical volumes were destroyed by active Inquisitors, and thousands of Bibles and Testaments perished in every part of France” — “Historical Studies,” Eugene Lawrence, pp. 254-257.FAFA 15.3

    In Spain, not only were the common people forbidden to read the Bible, but also university professors were forbidden by the “Supreme Council” of the Inquisition to possess their valuable Bible manuscripts.FAFA 15.4

    “The council, in consequence, decreed that those theologians in the university who had studied the original language, should be obliged, as well as other persons, to give up their Hebrew and Greek Bibles to the commissaries of the holy office, on pain of excommunication.” — “History of the Inquisition of Spain,” D. J. A. Llorente, Secretary of the Inquisition, p. 105. London, 1827.FAFA 15.5

    “In 1490, Torquemada [the Inquisitor-General] caused many Hebrew Bibles and more than six thousand volumes to be burnt in an Auto da fe at Salamanca.” — “Literary Policy of the Church of Rome,” Joseph Mendham, M. A., p. 97. London, 1830.FAFA 15.6

    How many thousands of invaluable manuscripts thus perished in the flames of the Inquisition, eternity alone will reveal. It is exceedingly difficult for a Protestant in our days to fathom the extent of this fear of and enmity against the Bible, manifested by the Roman church. With her it was actually a life or death struggle! A person must read the history of the Inquisition, and examine the Roman Indexes of Forbidden Books, to understand her viewpoint. Inquisitor General Perez del Prado gave expression to her feelings and her bitter lament when he declared in horror `that some individuals had carried their audacity to the execrable extremity of demanding permission to read the Holy Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, without fearing to encounter mortal poison therein.’” — “History of the Inquisition of Spain,” D. Juan Antonio Llorente, p. 111.FAFA 15.7

    The funeral piles were lit all over Europe. Samuel Smiles says of France:FAFA 16.1

    “Bibles and New Testaments were seized wherever found, and burnt; but more Bibles and Testaments seemed to rise, as if by magic, from their ashes. The printers who were convicted of printing Bibles were next seized and burnt. The Bourgeois de Paris [a Roman Catholic paper] gives a detailed account of the human sacrifices offered up to ignorance and intolerance in that city during the six months ending June, 1534, from which it appears that twenty men and one woman were burnt alive.... In the beginning of the following year, the Sorbonne obtained from the king an ordinance, which was promulgated on the 26th of February, 1535, for the suppression of printing! “The Huguenots,” Samuel Smiles, pp. 20, 21, and first footnote.

    “Further attempts continued to be made by Rome to check the progress of printing. In 1599 [1559] Pope Paul IV issued the first Index Expurgalorius, containing a list of the books expressly prohibited by the Church. It included all Bibles printed in modern languages, of which forty-eight editions were enumerated; while sixty-one printers were put under a general ban.” Ibid., p. 23.FAFA 16.2

    “Paul IV, in 1559, put it [Sully’s name] in the first papal Index Expurgatorium. “History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages,” Henry Charles Lea, Vol. III, p. 587.FAFA 16.3

    “The first Roman ‘Index of Prohibited Books’ (Index librorum prohibitorum), published in 1559 under Paul IV, was very severe and was therefore mitigated under that pontiff by decree of the Holy Office of 14 June of the same year. “Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, p. 722, art. “Index.”FAFA 17.1

    Persecution raged more or less all over Europe: “In 1545, the massacre of the Vaudois of Province was perpetrated”; the 24th of August, 1572, the St. Bartholomew Massacre commenced, and continued until between 70,000 and 100,000 innocent and unsuspecting persons were murdered in cold blood for being Protestants. The massacre was secretly planned by the leaders of the Roman church.FAFA 17.2

    “Sully says 70,000 were slain, though other writers estimate the victims at 100,000.” ‘The Huguenots,” Samuel Smiles, pp. 71, 72.FAFA 17.3

    “Catherine de Medicis wrote in triumph to Alva, to Philip 2, and to the Pope.... Rome was thrown into a delirium of joy at the news. The cannon were fired at St. Angelo; Gregory XIII and his cardinals went in procession from sanctuary to sanctuary to give God thanks for the massacre. The subject was ordered to be painted, and a medal was struck, with the Pope’s image on one side, and the destroying angel on the other immolating the Huguenots.”-1d., 71, 72.FAFA 17.4

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