Fénelon takes the ground in regard to the use of the Scriptures, that originally the Church permitted such reading without restrictions; that with increasing degeneracy, restraint was found to be necessary; that the necessity became increasingly manifest when the Vaudois, the Albigenses, and the later heretics, Wyclif, Luther, Calvin, and their associates, utilised the Scriptures as the basis of attacks upon the true Faith and the authority of the Church; Fénelon’s conclusion is: _Enfin, il ne faut donner l’écriture qu’ à ceux qui, ne la reçevant que des mains de l’Église, ne veulent y chercher que le sens de l’Église même_. In 1686, an edition of the New Testament in French was printed at Bordeaux. The edition is described in a tract by Bishop Kidder, printed in London in 1690, entitled _Reflections on a French Testament_. This tract was reprinted in 1827 by Doctor H. Cotton in connection with a Memoir of Bishop Kidder. The Bordeaux Testament is described as rare; but five copies are recorded as having been in existence in Great Britain in 1827. The immediate occasion of the production of this special version of the Testament was the revocation, in 1685, of the Edict of Nantes. Strenuous efforts were made after the revocation, by the Church, and by the State acting in co-operation with the Church, for the recall to the fold of the various groups of Protestants who still remained in the kingdom. The publication, under the authority of the State, of the volume in question has been referred by Catholic writers (including among others Mr. Butler in his _Book of the Roman Catholic Church_[6]) as a contradiction to the charge that the Church was averse to the dissemination of the Scriptures. Mr. Butler reminds his readers, on the authority of Bausset in his _Life of Bossuet_ that, under the orders of Louis XIV, no less than fifty thousand copies of the French translation of the New Testament were, “at the recommendation of Bossuet, distributed among the converted Protestants.” Bausset refers to this version as being the work of Père Amelotte, and says that with the Testament were distributed copies of a translated missal. Mendham points out that among the several peculiarities specified by Kidder in the Bordeaux version, the more noteworthy have to do with references of a special character to the Mass, to Purgatory, and to the Roman Faith, which have been made to find place in the text of the Testament. Among the examples cited are the following: Acts xiii, 2, given in the King James version “As they ministered to the Lord,” is given in the French version _Comme ils offraient au Seigneur leurs sacrifices de la Messe_, or “They rendered unto the Lord the sacrifice of the Mass.” 1 Cor. ii, 15, where the Apostle writes they shall be saved as “by fire,” this version has _par le feu de Purgatoire_, “by the fire of Purgatory.”