have endeavored to do, but I did not succeed nor achieve my aim
in all instances. Latin terms are an exceedingly great hindrance to one
who wishes to talk good German." (19, 974.)

In insisting on the principle that a translation must reproduce the
exact thought of a language, that idiomatic utterances of the one
language must be replaced by similar utterances in the other, and that
the genius of both the language from which and the one into which the
translation is made must be observed by the translator, Luther has every
rhetoric and grammar on his side. Those who find fault with him on this
score deserve no better titles than those which he applied to them, all
the more because he knew the true reason of their faultfinding. The
Catholic charges of Bible perversion against Luther flow, not from a
knowledge of good grammar, but from bad theology. Luther was, of course,
fundamentally in error according to the opinion of Catholics by not
making his translation from the approved and authorized Latin Vulgate,
the official Catholic Bible, but from the Greek original.

To return favor for favor, we shall note a few places where Catholics
might bring their own Bible into better harmony with the original text.
In Gen. 3, 15 their translation reads: "She shall crush thy head, and
thou shalt lie in wait for her heel." This rendering has been adopted in
order to enable them to refer this primeval prophecy of the future
Redeemer to Mary. Gen. 4, 13 they have rendered: "My iniquity is greater
than that I may deserve pardon." This is to favor their teaching of
justification on the basis of merit. The rendering "Speak not much" for
"Use not vain repetitions" in Matt. 6, 7 weakens the force of the Lord's
warning. In Rom. 14, 5 the Catholic Bible tells its readers: "Let every
man abound in his own sense," whatever the sense of that direction may
be. What the apostle really means is: "Let every man be fully persuaded
in his own mind." In Gal. 3, 24 the Catholic Bible calls the Law "our
pedagog in Christ"; the correct rendering is: "our schoolmaster to bring
us unto Christ." In the Catholic Bible the following remarkable event
takes place in Luke 16, 22: "The rich man also died: and he was buried
in hell." The pall-bearers, funeral director, and mourners at these
obsequies deserve a double portion of our sympathy. In Acts 2, 42 we are
told that the disciples at Jerusalem were persevering "in the
communication of the breaking of the brea