which he holds from no intermediary, and that it does not extend over
all churches and every single one of them, over all pastors and every
single one of them, over all the faithful and every single one of them,
--let him be accursed!" Canon IV: "With the approval of the Sacred
Council we teach and declare it to be a dogma revealed from heaven that
the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks _ex cathedra,_ that is, when, in
accordance with his supreme apostolic authority, be discharges his
office as Pastor and Teacher of all Christians, and defines a doctrine
relating to the faith or morals which is to be embraced by the entire
Church, he is, by divine assistance promised to him in the blessed
Peter, vested with that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer
desired His Church to be endowed in defining the doctrine of faith and
morals; and that for this reason such definitions of the Roman Pontiff
are in their very nature, not, however, by reason of the consent of the
Church, unchangeable. If--which God may avert!--any one should presume
to contradict this definition of ours,--let him be accursed!" Amid
flashes of lightning and peals of thunder this document was read to a
council whose membership had shrunk during seven months of deliberation
from 767 to 547 attendants,--277 qualified members had never put in an
appearance,--and of these all but two had been cowed into abject
submission. When one recalls scenes like these, and remembers that
Catholic teaching on justification attacks the very heart of
Christianity, anything that Luther has said about the Popes appears
mild. Such heaven-storming and God-defying arrogance deserves to be
dragged through the mire--with apologies to the mire.

21. Luther the Translator of the Bible.

A violent attack upon Luther by Catholic writers is caused by the
admiration which Protestants manifest for Luther because he translated
the Bible into German. Catholics, of course, cannot deny that Luther did
translate the Bible, and that his translation is still a cherished
treasure of Protestants; but in order to belittle this achievement of
Luther, which inflicted incalculable damage on Rome, they talk about
Luther's unfitness for the work of Bible-translation and about the
unwarranted liberties Luther took with the Bible.

These writers claim that Luther was, in the first place, morally unfit
to undertake the translation of the Bible. To show to what desperate
means Luther's Catholic critics w