***So why then did the Catholic Church reject and forbid the use of protestant “bibles” such as the one published by John Wycliff? It was not because they were in English or another vernacular. It was not because they were being made available to the laity. It was because they were corrupt versions of the Bible. They were bad translations. And were often being used to spread false doctrine. It’s that simple.***
The Protestant bibles came from the Greek translation by Eurasmus a Catholic. this is the same Eurasmus who withstood Luther.
From this web site..
http://av1611.com/kjbp/articles/sorenson-ch10-1.html
Critics of Erasmus have been quick to point out that he dedicated his first edition of his Greek New Testament to Pope Leo X. However, there is more to that than meets the eye. The long established Catholic position was that the Latin Vulgate was the official church Bible. There was a hostility toward anything that threatened that primacy. Erasmus knew that and he knew the opposition his Greek text would receive. Therefore, without the pope even knowing it, he dedicated it to him and at the same time had his friend in Rome, Bombasius, obtain formal approval of his publication because it had been dedicated to the pope. Thus, when the Catholic establishment in central Europe began to vehemently attack his work, Erasmus produced the approval of the pope. Erasmus was not a separatist, but he was shrewd.
From the Translators to the Readers, 1611 KJV preface...
The Unwillingness of Our Chief Adversaries, that the Scriptures Should Be Divulged in the Mother Tongue, etc.
Now the Church of Rome would seem at the length to bear a motherly affection towards her children, and to allow them the Scriptures in their mother tongue: but indeed it is a gift, not deserving to be called a gift, an unprofitable gift: they must first get a licence in writing before they may use them, and to get that, they must approve themselves to their Confessor, that is, to be such as are, if not frozen in the dregs, yet soured with the leaven of their superstition.
Howbeit, it seemed too much to Clement the Eighth that there should be any Licence granted to have them in the vulgar tongue, and therefore he overruleth and frustrateth the grant of Pius the Fourth.
So much are they afraid of the light of the Scripture, (Lucifugae Scripturarum, as Tertulian speaketh) that they will not trust the people with it, no not as it is set forth by their own sworn men, no not with the Licence of their own Bishops and Inquisitors.
Yea, so unwilling they are to communicate the Scriptures to the people’s understanding in any sort, that they are not ashamed to confess, that we forced them to translate it into English against their wills.
This seemeth to argue a bad cause, or a bad conscience, or both. Sure we are, that it is not he that hath good gold, that is afraid to bring it to the touchstone, but he that hath the counterfeit; neither is it the true man that shunneth the light, but the malefactor, lest his deeds should be reproved [John 3:20]: neither is it the plain-dealing Merchant that is unwilling to have the weights, or the meteyard brought in place, but he that useth deceit. But we will let them alone for this fault, and return to translation.
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Was their translation good before? Why do they now mend it? Was it not good? Why then was it obtruded to {forced upon} the people? Yea, why did the Catholics (meaning Popish Romanists) always go in jeopardy, for refusing to go to hear it? Nay, if it must be translated into English, Catholics are fittest to do it. They have learning, and they know when a thing is well, they can manum de tabulâ.
§ 13 [An answer to the imputations of our adversaries.]
• 1 Now to the latter we answer, that we do not deny, nay, we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the Word of God, nay, is the Word of God.
• 2 As the King’s Speech which he uttered in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Latin, is still the King’s Speech, though it be not interpreted by every translator with the like grace, nor peradventure so fitly for phrase, nor so expressly for sense, everywhere.
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• 15 Surely, as the Apostle reasoneth to the Hebrews, [Heb.7:11, & 8:7] that if the former Law and Testament had been sufficient, there had been no need of the latter: so we may say, that if the old vulgar had been at all points allowable, to small purpose had labour and charges been undergone about framing of a new.
• 16 If they say, it was one Pope’s private opinion, and that he consulted only himself; then we are able to go further with them, and to aver, that more of their chief men of all sorts, even their own Trent champions, Paiva and Vega, and their own inquisitors, Hieronymus ab Oleastro, and their own bishop Isodorus Clarius, and their own cardinal Thomas à Vio Caietan, do either make new translations themselves, or follow new ones of other men’s making, or note the vulgar interpreter for halting, none of them fear to dissent from him, nor yet to except against him.
• 17 And call they this an uniform tenor of text and judgement about the text, so many of their worthies disclaiming the now received conceit?
• 18 Nay, we will yet come nearer the quick: doth not their Paris edition differ from the Lovaine, and Hentenius’s from them both, and yet all of them allowed by authority?
• 19 Nay, doth not Sixtus Quintus [Sixtus V. præfat. fixa Bibliis.] confess that certain Catholics (he meaneth certain of his own side) were in such a humour of translating the Scriptures into Latin, that Satan taking occasion by them, though they thought of no such matter, did strive what he could, out of so uncertain and manifold a variety of translations, so to mingle all things, that nothing might seem to be left certain and firm in them, etc.?
• 20 Nay, further, did not the same Sixtus ordain by an inviolable decree, and that with the counsel and consent of his cardinals, that the Latin edition of the Old and New Testament, which the Council of Trent would have to be authentic, is the same without controversy which he then set forth, being diligently corrected and printed in the printing-house of Vatican? Thus Sixtus in his preface before his Bible.
• 21 And yet Clement the Eighth his immediate successor, publisheth another edition of the Bible, containing in it infinite differences from that of Sixtus, (and many of them weighty and material) and yet this must be authentic by all means.
Wycliffe’s teaching came to Bohemia through Anna, wife of the English king Richard II. A Bohemian princess, her presence in England induced students from the University of Prague to study at Oxford where they were influenced by Wycliffe’s writings. Jerome of Prague, one of Wycliffe’s greatest supporters in Bohemia, is frequently credited with disseminating the controversial ideas in Bohemia.
In the first decade of the 15th century, Jan Huss, a reformist Bohemian priest, began to preach the ideas of Wycliffe as they related to church wealth and adherence to scripture. Huss did not accept Wycliffe’s views on the sacraments, particularly his rejection of transubstantiation. As medieval scholars Tierney and Painter comment, “…Huss was a preacher and reformer rather than a theologian and scholar.”
Huss is most often identified with Martin Luther through his opposition to the selling of ecclesiastical indulgences. His attack on the practice reached a height in 1412, resulting in his condemnation and excommunication. Although given a “safe conduct” to the Council of Constance in 1415 by the Holy Roman Emperor-elect Sigismund, he was burned at the stake during the conference.
The “Hussites,” though suppressed, would eventually grow into the Moravian Church, a Pietist group of Protestant evangelical believers most well known for migrating to the English colonies of North America. These “Moravian Christians” established enclaves in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, notably at Old Salem in Winston-Salem.