h is not indorsed by
popes and councils. No matter how plain the Scriptures seem to be, on
certain disputed points only the authority of the Church can enlighten
and instruct us. We distrust reason,--that is, what you call
reason,--for reason can twist anything, and pervert it; but what the
Church says, is true,--its collective intelligence is our supreme law
[thus putting papal dogmas above reason, above the literal and plain
declarations of Scripture]. Moreover, since the Scriptures are to be
interpreted only by priests, it is not a safe book for the people. We,
the priests, will keep it out of their hands. They will get notions from
it fatal to our authority; they will become fanatics; they will, in
their conceit, defy us."

Then Luther rose, more powerful, more eloquent, more majestic than
before; he rose superior to himself. "What," said he, "keep the light of
life from the people; take away their guide to heaven; keep them in
ignorance of what is most precious and most exalting; deprive them of
the blessed consolations which sustain the soul in trial and in death;
deny the most palpable truths, because your dignitaries put on them a
construction to bolster up their power! What an abomination! what
treachery to heaven! what peril to the souls of men! Besides, your
authorities differ: Augustine takes different ground from Pelagius;
Bernard from Abelard; Thomas Aquinas from Dun Scotus. Have not your
grand councils given contradictory decisions? Whom shall we believe?
Yea, the popes themselves, your infallible guides,--have they not at
different times rendered different decisions? What would Gregory I. say
to the verdicts of Gregory VII.?

"No, the Scriptures are the legacy of the early Church to universal
humanity; they are the equal and treasured inheritance of all nations
and tribes and kindreds upon the face of the earth, and will be till the
day of judgment. It was intended that they should be diffused, and that
every one should read them, and interpret them each for himself; for he
has a soul to save, and he dare not intrust such a precious thing as his
soul into the keeping of selfish and ambitious priests. Take away the
Bible from a peasant, or a woman, or any layman, and cannot the priest,
armed with the terrors and the frauds of the Middle Ages, shut up his
soul in a gloomy dungeon, as noisome and funereal as your Mediaeval
crypts? And will you, ye boasted intellectual guides of the people,
extinguish reas