The official Bible of the Roman Church to-day is the Latin Vulgate. This Bible, which is a revision by Jerome and others of many variant Latin texts in use towards the end of the fourth century, has been elevated to the dignity of the inspired text. The original purpose was good: it was to remove the confusion of many conflicting texts and to establish uniformity in quoting the Bible. The errors of the Vulgate are many, but while it was understood that the Vulgate was merely a translation, the errors could be corrected from the original sources. Little, however, was done in this respect before the Reformation, and since then the Roman Church has become rigid and petrified in its adherence to this Latin Bible. In its fourth session (April 8, 1546) the Council of Trent decreed that "of all Latin editions the old and vulgate edition be held as authoritative in public lectures, disputations, sermons, and expositions; and that no one is to dare or presume under any pretext to reject it." "The meaning of this decree," says Hodge, "is a matter of dispute among Romanists themselves. Some of the more modern and liberal of their theologians say that the council simply intended to determine which among several Latin versions was to be used in the service of the Church. They contend that it was not meant to forbid appeal to the original Scriptures, or to place the Vulgate on a par with them in authority. The earlier and stricter Romanists take the ground that the Synod did intend to forbid an appeal to the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, and to make the Vulgate the ultimate authority. The language of the council seems to favor this interpretation." We might add, the practise of Romanists, too. At the debate in Leipzig Eck contended that the Latin Vulgate was inspired by the Holy Ghost. (Koestlin, I, 455.) Whatever knowledge of Scripture the people in the Middle Ages possessed was confined to those who could read Latin. Catholic writers claim this was at that time the universal language of Europe, but they wisely add: "among the educated." One of them says: "Those who could read Latin could read the Bible, and those who could not read Latin could not read anything." Exactly. And now, to prove the wide diffusion of Bible-knowledge in their Church before Luther, these Catholic writers should give us some exact data as to the extent of the Latin scholarship in that age. Fact is, the Latin tongue acted as a lock upon the Scriptures to the common people. Hence arose the desire to have the Bible translated into the vernacular of various European countries. This desire Rome sought to suppress with brutal rigor. The bloody persecutions of the Waldensians in France, which almost resulted in the extirpation of these peaceful mountain people, of the followers of Wyclif in England, whose remains Rome had exhumed after his death and burned, of the Hussites in Bohemia, were all aimed at translations of the Bible into the languages which the common people understood.