The Supremacy Of The Holy Scriptures

by W. BUNTING, Edinburgh | Category: The Reformation | Mar 1964

"Sola Scriptura." "The Scriptures alone." This was the claim of the Reformers. Before the time of Luther, the Bible, though not expressly forbidden, was practically a sealed book. The Church of Rome has placed tradition, decrees of Council, and ex cathedra pronouncements by the Pope on the same authoritative level as Holy Writ. History records the violent opposition of that Church to the spread of the Bible amongst the peoples of the world. John Huss was burned at the stake for asserting that the Word of God was superior to all ecclesiastical decrees.

We must never forget that it was the Roman Catholic Church which burned William Tyndale at the stake for daring to give us the Bible in our English tongue. It was the same Church which dug up the bones of John Wycliffe, forty-four years after his death, burned them and cast them into the river Swift. His only crime had been that he had translated the Bible into English and thus had rendered it more acceptable and more intelligible to the common people than when untranslated it had been to the priests.

Shall we ever forget the famous words of Latimer when he and Ridley were burned at the stake for adhering to the Word of God?

"Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man;

We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out."

In Scotland, when copies of Tyndale's New Testament were smuggled in ships into Leith, St. Andrews, Montrose and Aberdeen, it was a danger to hold a copy. The priests persecuted all whom they found in possession of a copy. The readers were called "New Testamentares" as a label of shame, but what an honoured title it was! The massacre in France on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572, when it is estimated that at least 100,000 Huguenots were put to death for their adherence to the Word of God, was the most infamous atrocity ever perpetrated by a people professing to be Christians. The powers of the Inquisition in Italy and Spain brutally extinguished the light of the Reformation. Pope Paul IV guided the action of the Inquisition in Italy and suppressed all Protestant books.

The Reformers contended that the only divine rule of faith and life is the Holy Scriptures, not the writings of the Fathers, the laws of the Church, or the traditions of men. The Roman Catholic Church has not changed in its attitude towards the Word of God and it still exhibits the same hostility as was manifested in the sixteenth century. All their efforts have failed to prevent the spread of the Scriptures -

"Neither 'modern thought' nor ancient flame

Can shake its truths - it still remains the same,

Firm as a rock, amid the seething waves."

(To be continued, D.V.).

W. BUNTING, Edinburgh | Mar 1964
The Reformation