The arguments of the Papists: First, from the antiquity of the translation.
The arguments of the Papists: First, from the antiquity of the translation.
§ 518. Now let us weigh the arguments with which they try to prove the authentic authority of the Vulgate translation. (I) From the antiquity of this translation. “The Vulgate version has been received in the Church by the long use of many centuries, for the Church has used this one edition for almost a thousand years since the time of Gregory.”
We respond. (1) One must not pass judgment as to what the authentic version of Scripture is on the basis of the usage of the Church but on the basis of the language in which the prophets and apostles wrote. The usage of the Church must be accomodated to Scripture, not Scripture to the usage of the Church. (2) If age produces authentic authority, no version is older than the Hebrew; in fact, the books of the Old Testament were originally written in it. (3) If that version of Scripture is authentic which the Church has used for a thousand years, then the Greek and Chaldaic versions of the Old Testament and the Syriac of the New will also be authentic. (4) The Latin Church, which has used this version, is only part of the Church catholic, for there were many others—the Egyptian, Ethiopian, Arabic, Indian, Persian, and especially Greek—in which this version was not used. (5) Jerome (preface to Joshua) and Augustine (De doctr. Christ., bk. 2, c. 11) teach that there were innumerable Latin versions in the ancient Church. It is not likely that these could have been or were abolished so quickly. That Vulgate translation, therefore, was not used exclusively, but others were used as well. Gregory says, “The Roman Church has used two versions, one of which they call ‘the old’ and the other, ‘the new’ “(Epistle ad Leandrum). (6) From the ecclesiastical writers who lived after Gregory—namely, Bede, Gildas, and others—it is evident that not all the passages of Scripture are quoted in the same way as they are read in that Vulgate version. In Etymolog., bk. 6, c. 5, Isidore says, “It is rightly placed ahead of the others.” Therefore there were also others in use. (7) If that Vulgate version is authentic, then all its words must be authentic. Yet in many places it contains obvious errors and mistakes, as we have shown. (8) The Church in the West did not immediately cease being assembled, even if it followed a version that does not follow its source exactly in all places, for neither is the Church completely immune from all error. The matter itself testifies that after the time of Gregory a great change of doctrine occurred.