Henry M. Baird · 68 of 379

CHAPTER I · Ignorance of the Holy Scriptures.

As to acquaintance with the contents of the Holy Scriptures, either in the original or in translation, there was next to none among the professed teachers of science and religion. If the statements of the celebrated scholar and printer, Robert Étienne, or Stephens, seem almost incredible, they nevertheless come from a witness of unimpeachable veracity. Referring to the period of his boyhood or early youth—he was born in 1503—Étienne sketched the biblical attainments of the doctors of the Sorbonne after this fashion: "In those times, as I can affirm with truth, when I asked them in what part of the New Testament some matter was written, they used to answer that they had read it in Saint Jerome or in the Decretals, but that they did not know what the New Testament was, not being aware that it was customary to print it after the Old. What I am going to state will appear almost a prodigy, and yet there is nothing more true nor better proven: Not long since, a member of their college used daily to say, 'I am amazed that these young people keep bringing up the New Testament to us. I was more than fifty years old before I knew anything about the New Testament!'"