Their refusal to surrender the scriptures was an offense that the Papacy could not tolerate. The Papacy was determined to exterminate the heretics from the face of the Earth. The heretics greatest offense, was that they refused to worship God according to the will of the Pope. For this crime, the heretics suffered every humiliation, insult and torture that man could event: ( Fox's Book Of Martyrs)
(Rev.) Dr. Cahill declared that "he would rather the Catholic should read the worst books of immorality than the Protestant Bible-that forgery of God's Word, that slander of Christ." - (Roman Catholic Tablet, December 17, 1853, p. 804).
"Do you allow your flock to read the Bible at all?" said a writer in the Contemporary Review to a friend of his, a parish priest. "No, sir, I do not; you forget that I am a physician, not a poisoner of souls." -Contemporary Review April, 1894, p. 576.
"The doctrines of the Catholic Church are entirely independent of Holy Scripture." Familiar Explanation of Catholic Doctrine, Rev. M. Muller, p.151.
The decree set forth in the year 1229 A.D. by the Council of Valencia... places Bible on The Index of Forbidden Books. The doctrine withholds "it is forbidden for laymen (common man) to read the Old and New Testaments. - We forbid them most severely to have the above books in the popular vernacular." "The lords of the districts shall carefully seek out the heretics in dwellings, hovels, and forests, and even their underground retreats shall be entirely wiped out." Council Tolosanum, Pope Gregory IX, Anno. Chr. 1229
The church Council of Tarragona ruled that: "No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after the promulgation of this decree, so they may be burned." D. Lortsch, Histoire de la Bible en France, 1910, p.14.
"Socialism, Communism, clandestine societies, Bible societies... pests of this sort must be destroyed by all means." The encyclical Quanta Cura Issued by Pope Pius IX, December 6, 1866
"The Bible does not pretend to be a formulary of belief, as in a creed or catechism. There is nowhere in the New Testament a clear, methodical statement of the teaching of Christ" -Question Box, p. 66
"The very nature of the Bible ought to prove to any thinking man the impossibility of its being the one safe method to find out what the Savior taught." Ibid., p. 67
...It was well for Luther that he did not come into the world until a century after the immortal invention of Guttenberg. A hundred years earlier his idea of directing two hundred and fifty million men to read the Bible would have been received with shouts of laughter, and would inevitably have caused his removal from the pulpit of Wittenburg to a hospital for the insane." -The Faith of Our Fathers, p. 69; see also The Faith of Millions, p. 152
"Again it has ever been practically impossible for men, generally, to find out Christ from the Bible only." -Question Box, p. 70
"...The Bible nowhere implies that it is the only source of faith." -Ibid., p. 77
"The Scriptures indeed is a divine book but it is a dead letter, which has to be explained, and cannot exercise the action which the preacher can obtain." -Our Priesthood, p. 155
"...A dead and speechless book." -Question Box, p. 67
"The simple fact is that the Bible, like all dead letters, calls for a living interpreter." -The Faith of Millions, p. 155
"The Bible was not intended to be a textbook of Christian religion." -Catholic Facts, p. 50
See more:
http://www.remnantofgod.org/beastword.htm
