A Roman
Catholic may derive more religious stimulus from the _Spiritual
Exercises_ of Ignatius Loyola than from the _Book of Lamentations_, and
a Protestant from Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ than from the _Second
Epistle of John_; but neither would think of inserting these books in
the Canon. He who finds as much religious inspiration in some modern
poet or essayist as in a book of the Bible, may be correctly reporting
his own experience; but he is confusing the purpose of the Bible if he
suggests the substitution of these later prophets for those of ancient
Israel. The Bible is the spiritually selected record of a particular
Self-disclosure of God in a national history which reached its religious
goal in Jesus Christ.

Romanists and Protestants differ as to how many books constitute the
Canon, the former including the so-called _Apocrypha_--books in the
Greek translation but not in the original Hebrew Bible. And they differ
more fundamentally in the principle underlying the selection of the
books. The Roman Catholic holds that it is the Church which officially
has made the Bible, while the Protestant insists that the books possess
spiritual qualities of their own which gave them their place in the
authoritative volume, a place which the Church merely recognized.
Luther, in his celebrated dispute with Dr. Eck, asserted: "The Church
cannot give more authority or force to a book than it has in itself. A
Council cannot make that be Scripture which in its own nature is not
Scripture." The Council of Trent, answering the Reformers, in 1546,
issued an official decree defining what is Scripture: "The holy,
ecumenical and general Synod of Trent, legitimately convened in the Holy
Ghost ...receives and venerates with an equal piety and reverence all the
books as well of the Old as of the New Testament ...together with the
traditions pertaining both to faith and to morals, as proceeding from
the mouth of Christ, or dictated by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in
the Church Catholic by continuous succession." Then follows a catalogue
of the books, and an anathema on all who shall not receive them "as they
are contained in the old vulgate Latin version."

Over against this the Protestant takes the position that the books of
the Scripture came to be recognized as authoritative exactly as
Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth have been accorded their place in
English literature. It was the inherent merit of _Hamlet_ and _Paradise
Lost_