Interesting quote concerning the Vulgate

Thanks for sharing that great quote. Many devout Catholics still to this day practice Vulgate-text Onlyism and/or defend a Douay-Rheims Onlyistic position.

 

The preface to the 1582 Roman Catholic Rheims N. T. stated: "It [the Latin Vulgate] is truer than the vulgar Greek text itself. It is not only better than all other Latin translations, but than the Greek text itself, in those places where they disagree." The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation noted that "the Vatican librarian, Agostino Stevco, furnished extensive arguments in 1529 for the superiority of the Vulgate to both Hebrew and Greek texts" (Vol. I, p. 164). Letis cited where Paolo Sarpi, who wrote a history of the Council of Trent, noted that "some at Trent put forth the same argument as Augustine, claiming that 'the same Holy Ghost, who did dictate the holy books, hath dictated also that translation which ought to be accepted by the Church of Rome'" (Ecclesiastical Text, p. 162).

Eugene Rice wrote: "It was a further common view of apologists for the Vulgate that a special providence of the Holy Spirit had acted directly on the translator to guarantee his trustworthiness" (Saint Jerome, p. 181). Rice cited that Melanchthon noted that to accept the judgment of the Council of Trent's 1546 decree on the Vulgate "we would have to agree that 'the Vulgate has been revealed to us by the Holy Spirit" (p. 186). D'Aubigne noted that the Roman Catholic priests claimed that Erasmus "sets aside a work [the Latin Vulgate] authorized by the consent of ages and inspired by the Holy Ghost" (History of the Reformation, V, p. 155).

 

Many KJV-only advocates seem to be unwilling to discuss the similarities between some of the arguments for the Latin Vulgate-only view and some of the arguments for the KJV-only view.

 

In the preface to the 1582 Rheims New Testament, the first reason given for its use of the Latin Vulgate was that "it is most ancient." Gregory Martin, one of the Roman Catholic translators of the Rheims, asked Protestants: "Will you be tried by the vulgar ancient Latin bible, only used in all the west church above a thousand years?" (Fulke, A Defense, pp. 77-78). In his 1688 book, Thomas Ward asserted: “That the Vulgate of the Latin is the most true and authentic copy has been the judgment of God’s Church for above those 1300 years” (Errata, p. vi). Thomas A. Nelson claimed that “the Latin Vulgate Bible was used universally in the Catholic Church (Latin Rite) for over 1500 years” (Which Bible, p. 97). Nelson asserted: “it comes down to this: trusting St. Jerome and the Holy Spirit--St. Jerome because he was Greek-speaking, a genius, a Saint …and the Holy Spirit because He allowed this translation to stand from 409 to 1611” (p. 58). Nelson maintained that “we need to defer to St. Jerome and to trust in God’s providence that the Greek text he translated from was correct and that he translated it correctly” (p. 57).

Along with using this argument concerning the Latin Vulgate, Nelson also used it concerning the Douay-Rheims. Nelson wrote: “for 330 years (1610-1940), English-speaking Catholics had no other English Catholic Bible than the Douay-Rheims, and therefore, if this version is not accurate, then all the many millions of Catholics who used it since 1610--as of this writing a time span now of 390 years--have been deceived in their study of Scripture” (Which Bible, p. xvii).