The Vulgate is a Translation, and, in decreeing a Translation, the truth is also witnessed, that the Church ought to put with maternal prudence the Scriptures into the hands of her children by means of a translation, authorised by her, into their vernacular tongue, whatever that tongue may be. When the Vulgate translation was made, Latin was the œcumenical language, the mother tongue, as it were, of the civilized world; and many Latin translations were, previously to the Vulgate, in ecclesiastical use throughout all the Roman provinces, witnessing to the operation of this truth. "Moreover, most nations under heaven did shortly after their conversion (see the Preface of the English Translators of the Scriptures), hear Christ speaking unto them in their mother tongue, not by the voice of their minister only, but also by the written word translated.” "If any doubt hereof, he may be satisfied by examples enough, if enough will serve the turn. First, St. Hierome* saith, Multarum gentium linguis Scriptura ante translata docet falsa esse quæ addita sunt, &c.; that is, The Scripture being translated before in the languages of many nations, doth show that those things that were added (by Lucian or Hesychius) are false. So St. Hierome, in that place. The same Hieromet elsewhere affirmeth that he, the time was, had set forth the translation of the Seventy, suæ linguæ hominibus; that is, for his countrymen of Dalmatia. Which words not only Erasmus doth understand to purport, that St. Hierome translated the Scripture into the Dalmatian tongue, but St. Hieron. Præf. in 4 Evang. + St. Hieron. Sophronio. also Sixtus Senensis,* and Alphonsus a Castro† (that we speak of no more), men not to be excepted against by them of Rome, do ingenuously confess as much. So St. Chrysostome,‡ that lived in St. Hierome's time, giveth evidence with him. The doctrine of St. John (saith he) did not in such sort (as the philosopher's did) vanish away; but the Syrians, Egyptians, Indians, Persians, Ethiopians, and infinite other nations, being barbarous people, translated it into their (mother) tongue, and have learned to be (true) philosophers, he meaneth Christians. To this may be added Theodoret,§ as next unto him both for antiquity and for learning. His words be these, Every country that is under the sun is full of these words (of the Apostles and Prophets); and the Hebrew tongue (he meaneth the Scriptures in the Hebrew tongue) is turned not only into the language of the Grecians, but also of the Romans, and Egyptians, and Persians, and Indians, and Armenians, and Scythians, and Sauromatians, and briefly into all the languages that any nation useth. So he. In like manner Ulpilas is reported by Paulus Diaconus || and Isidore, and before them by Sozomen,** to have translated the Scriptures into the Gothic tongue; John Bishop of Sevil, by Vasseus,†† to have turned them into Arabic about the year of our Lord 717; Beda, by Cistertiensis, to have turned a great *Six. Sen. lib. iv. † Alphon. a Cast. lib. ii. c. 23. St. Chrysost. in Johan. cap. i. hom. 1. Isid. in Chron. Goth. ++ Vasseus in Chro. Hisp. || P. Diacon. lib. xii. **Sozom. lib. vi. c. 57. part of them into Saxon;* Efnard, by Trithemius, to have abridged the French Psalter (as Beda had done the Hebrew), about the year 800; King Alured, by the said Cistertiensis, to have turned the Psalter into Saxon; Methodius, by Aventinus† (printed at Ingolstad), to have turned the Scriptures into Sclavonian; Valdo,‡ Bishop of Frising, by Beatus Rhenanus,§ to have caused, about that time, the Gospels to be translated into Dutch rhyme, yet extant in the library of Corbinian; Valdus, by divers, to have turned them himself, or to have gotten them turned, into French, about the year 1160; Charles, the fifth of that name, surnamed The Wise, to have caused them to be turned into French about 200 years after Valdus's time, of which translation there may be many copies yet extant, as witnesseth Beroaldus.|| Much about that time, even in our King Richard the Second's days, John Trevisa translated them into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen with divers, translated, as it is very probable, in that age. So the Syrian translation of the New Testament is in most learned men's libraries, of Widminstadius's setting forth; and the Psalter in Arabic is with many, of Augustinus Nebiensis's setting forth. So Postel affirmeth, that in his travel he saw the Gospels in the Ethiopian tongue. And Ambrose Thesius allegeth the Psalter of the Indians, which he testifieth to have been set forth by Potken in Syrian characters." * Polydor Virg. Hist. Angl. testatur idem de Aluredo nostro. † Aventin. lib. iv. § B. Rhenan. Rerum German. lib. ii. Circa ann. 900. In asserting the inexpressible preciousness of the Scriptures to every Christian in his own mother's tongue, the truth should not be forgotten, that it is his spiritual mother the Church, who is made the medium of the blessing. Holy Writ has been in her custody, and her first-born sons were, by the Holy Ghost, the authors of the New Testament. She, who has catechised her children from their earliest years in the Faith once delivered to the saints;-she, who has ever called upon them to realise this Faith in their lives and practice,-she it is who gives them, as from the hands of Christ Himself, this divine witness of that Faith, this knowledge of the certainty of those things in which they have been catechised, this inspired description how the Holy Spirit bears witness with the spirits of the faithful that they are the children of God. The Church, keeping and guarding the sacred text, by God's blessing on the gifts and learning of her pastors and teachers, calls, moreover, on all her children to use Berean industry in establishing their catechism. In the Gospels she spreads before them the mystery of godliness,* up to the very Ascension of God manifest in the flesh, in detail. In the Acts of the Apostles, she opens the page of Ecclesiastical History and bids her children read how the Holy Spirit records His own descent into the members of Christ by a missive procession into men, thus revealing His eternal procession co-ordinately, as the Incarnation reveals the eternal generation of the Son; and having come soon makes. known the Fatherhood of God over all the race of man, * Ευσεβείας. apostolically proclaiming and communicating Christ as the Light to lighten the Gentiles as well as the glory of His people Israel. Here too, by translating these Acts of the Apostles of Christ, the Church bids her children read another witness of her Incarnate Head in the union of doctrine with polity, of grace with order. In her vernacular versions of the Apostolic Epistles she would have them see how the objective grace of God, which is held forth archetypically and potentially in the Gospels, is here diffused and developed for every possible estate of Christian subjectiveness. The commentaries of ancients and moderns on these Epistles clearly show how many treasures of wisdom and knowledge are yet unappropriated and unrealized even by those, who are considered as pillars in the Temple of God. And as the very same filthiness of the flesh and spirit contending against the salvation of Christ, detected and condemned in these Epistles, has since recurred, and still recurs in the Church, so the expositions of Christ and His high and heavenly calling, which the Epistles contain, have been and will be development enough for attaining unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, even unto the end. And, therefore, when the Church translates the Apocalypse, which traces * Eph. iv. 13. The "fulness" in this verse is the complement, or what is added to Christ the Head, in order to make up the whole Mystical Body of Christ. The Church is this fulness or complement; i. 23. Attention to this will explain the true theory of development. The Head of the Mystical Christ has been developed, and His development is the law of development to the body and its members. When that law is spiritually obeyed and its standard realized, then the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, the perfect manhood, is attained. |