The people of the Philippines, their religious progress and preparation for spiritual leadership in the Far East,

160 THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES

the Scriptures was hunted down and punished like a thief
or a murderer. Unfortunately there is much of the ancient
vicious spirit of inquisition in many places yet. Bishop
Homer Stuntz tells of a padre who in a fit of rage snatched
a Bible from a poor woman "as she stood over the dying
form of her husband. He tore it to shreds, saying that the
cholera, of which her husband was soon to be a victim, had
visited the city as a just punishment of an offended deity
because so vile a book had been permitted to come there,
and that not only would this dying man be lost for his sin
in aiding its introduction into the city, but that she and all her
family would surely follow him.' To such a pass had religion
come under the Spanish Church." Roman Catholic friars
collected and made bonfires of Protestant Bibles in at least
three distinct places in the year of our Lord I922. But such
fanaticism is now the exception rather than the rule. We
have come upon a new day.
Why were the friars so much in fear of the Scriptures?
For several reasons:
I. The Bible is so at variance with Roman Catholic practice that it arouses questionings on every page. What the
Romanists demand of their followers is unquestioning faith.
2. The despotic control of the friars rested on the fact that
they were the sole dispensers of knowledge regarding God.
They did not desire people to know the Bible for the same
reason that they wished to keep people ignorant of the Spanish
language-they would permit nothing to interfere with the
absoluteness of their power.
3. The friars found it necessary to resort to all sorts of
casuistry to justify their immorality. Often they told Filipino women that it would be an honor to have children by
priests. Immorality and unfair advantage of superstitious
fear were found in every province. The Bible would have
exposed their hypocrisy to any careful reader.
4. They knew, too, that the Bible had been the leading
factor in producing the Protestantism of Europe. The friars
had never grown beyond the stage of the Spanish priesthood
Homer C. Stuntz-in American Bible Society Report i905, p. 208.