In insisting on the principle that a translation must reproduce the exact thought of a language, that idiomatic utterances of the one language must be replaced by similar utterances in the other, and that the genius of both the language from which and the one into which the translation is made must be observed by the translator, Luther has every rhetoric and grammar on his side.  Those who find fault with him on this score deserve no better titles than those which he applied to them, all the more because he knew the true reason of their faultfinding.  The Catholic charges of Bible perversion against Luther flow, not from a knowledge of good grammar, but from bad theology.  Luther was, of course, fundamentally in error according to the opinion of Catholics by not making his translation from the approved and authorized Latin Vulgate, the official Catholic Bible, but from the Greek original.

To return favor for favor, we shall note a few places where Catholics might bring their own Bible into better harmony with the original text.  In Gen. 3, 15 their translation reads:  “She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.”  This rendering has been adopted in order to enable them to refer this primeval prophecy of the future Redeemer to Mary.  Gen. 4, 13 they have rendered:  “My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon.”  This is to favor their teaching of justification on the basis of merit.  The rendering “Speak not much” for “Use not vain repetitions” in Matt. 6, 7 weakens the force of the Lord’s warning.  In Rom. 14, 5 the Catholic Bible tells its readers:  “Let every man abound in his own sense,” whatever the sense of that direction may be.  What the apostle really means is:  “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.”  In Gal. 3, 24 the Catholic Bible calls the Law “our pedagog in Christ”; the correct rendering is:  “our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.”  In the Catholic Bible the following remarkable event takes place in Luke 16, 22:  “The rich man also died:  and he was buried in hell.”  The pall-bearers, funeral director, and mourners at these obsequies deserve a double portion of our sympathy.  In Acts 2, 42 we are told that the disciples at Jerusalem were persevering “in the communication of the breaking of the bread.”  The last verse in Galatians, chap. 4, is made to read:  “So then, brethren, we are not the children of the bondwoman, but of the free:  by the freedom wherewith Christ has made us free.”  The next chapter begins:  “Stand fast,” etc.

Luther has expressed opinions of certain books of the Bible which question their divine authorship.  These opinions are being assiduously canvassed by Catholic writers to prove that Luther accepted only such portions of the Bible as suited his purpose, and rejected all the rest as spurious.  He is said to have arrogated to himself the authority to declare any book of the Scriptures inspired or not inspired, and is, therefore, justly regarded as the