Even from the very dawn of the Reformation, the pernicious influence of free examination gave a deadly blow to the canon of Scripture. Luther was the foremost. Everything in Holy Writ that conflicted with his doctrines of wholly imputative justification, of free-will, and the sacraments was boldly consigned among the apocryphal books. The canon of Scripture, thus at the option of individuals, no longer had any stability. Individual caprice led to the admission or rejection of books that had been regarded as inspired from all antiquity. The authenticity of the Scriptures was not only questioned, but also their legitimate meaning. Luther denied the doctrinal authority of the church, and was obliged to make the Bible the ground of faith; that is, the Bible interpreted according to the particular notions of each believer. In reality, Luther wished to subject his followers to his own interpretation. Like rebels of every age, he arrogated an authority he refused to legitimate power. But logic has its inevitable laws. The Lutheran theory claimed absolute independence. It made all Christians, even the most ignorant, even those the farthest from the knowledge of the truth, judges of the real signification of the Scriptures. It promised each believer the interior illumination of the Holy Spirit in ascertaining the true meaning of the sacred text beneath all its obscurities. But, as the divine Spirit is not pledged to fulfil the promises of the Reformer, each Protestant interprets the Bible according to his own views, and the various sects sprung from the Reform have, in the name of the Scriptures, maintained the most contradictory opinions. Besides the change in the canon, and the false interpretation of the holy books, there was another abuse—that of unfaithful translations. Protestantism rejected the authority of the church, therefore it would not receive her version of the Scriptures. It had no regard for the Vulgate. The innovators, with Luther at their head, undertook new translations. In their boldness, they did not shrink from attempting to surpass the work of S. Jerome. They were not well versed in the knowledge of the original idioms; they had access to but few manuscripts; the copies they had were not the choicest; and yet they imagined they could excel the great doctor who spent so large a part of his life in Palestine, absorbed in the profound study of the ancient languages; who took pains to collate the best manuscripts, and was aided by the ancient rabbis the most versed in the knowledge of Hebrew antiquities and in the languages of the East. Every day a new translation appeared, which, under the pretext of adapting God’s own Word to the common mind, diffused heretical novelties by means of insidious falsifications.