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Emmanuel, caution. 
Hey guys, read this! (Emmanuel)
Can the Catholic bible achieved this ? (Eternally Saved)
Pls show no comparison for your insensitiveness, Amen (Emmanuel)
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Dear Emmanuel,
Your facts are wrong. Augustine did say, "I would not believe the Gospel unless moved thereto by the Church." Now, that at first seems very strong and clear. It seems that Augustine's authority is not the bible but Rome. But in another place Augustine also wrote: "I would never have understood Plotinus had not the authority of my neo-Platonic teachers moved me." Do you see the parallel form? What is he saying here? This parallel shows that Augustine is not talking about some absolute, infallible authority in the church, but rather about the ministerial work of the church and about teachers who help students understand. The fact of the matter is that although the Roman Catholic Church introduced Augustine to the Christian faith, his subsequent and ultimate authority is Scripture itself. This is evident for in the same article, he says http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF1-04/npnf1-04-12.htm#P972_494008 Against the Epistles of Manichaeus Chapter 5 - Against the Title of the Epistle of Manichaeus, or No. 6 "But if haply you should succeed in finding in the gospel an incontrovertible testimony to the apostleship of Manichaeus, you will weaken my regard for the authority of the Catholics who bid me not to believe you; and the effect of that will be, that I shall no longer be able to believe the gospel either, for it was through the Catholics that I got my faith in it; and so, whatever you bring from the gospel will no longer have any weight with me. Wherefore, if no clear proof of the apostleship of Manichaeus is found in the gospel, I will believe the Catholics rather than you. But if you read thence some passage clearly in favor of Manichaeus, I will believe neither them nor you: not them, for they lied to me about you; nor you, for you quote to me that Scripture which I had believed on the authority of those liars. But far be it that I should not believe the gospel; for believing it, I find no way of believing you too. For the names of the apostles, as there recorded, do not include the name of Manichaeus". Clearly, the Roman Catholic Church had authority in his eyes only if what they said concurred with the Gospel. The Roman Catholic Church did not have authority above the Scripture, they only introduced the Scripture to Augustine. As Protestants have always affirmed: no creeds, councils, church, denomination, popes, or anyone have spiritual authority, except they have it under the authority of the written Word. The Word overrules everything else. That in fact was the attitude demonstrated by Augustine. Are you sure the Douy-Rheims is the "best" translation? How can it be when it is not even based on the Hebrew n Greek manuscripts primarily? For instance, following the error in the Latin Vulgate, the DR translates Genesis 3:15 like that: "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel". - Genesis 3:15 (Douay Rheims) This is taken from the link you provided. Based on this verse, many statues and paintings of Mary show her crushing a serpent under her foot - a graphic representation of her role as co-redeemer. This imagery is also found in Catholic documents: "Hence, just as Christ, the Mediator between God and man, assumed human nature, blotted the handwriting of the decree that stood against us, and fastened it triumphantly to the cross, so the most holy Virgin, united with him by a most intimate and indissoluble bond, was, with him and through him, eternally at enmity with the evil serpent, and most completely triumphed over him, and thus crushed his head with her immaculate foot". - Ineffabilis Deus(19) Now, surely you know by now that this is a wrong translation. In the Hebrew text, the subject of Genesis 3:15 is masculine, not feminine. Therefore, rather than reading "she shall crush thy head" (Genesis 3:15, Douay Rheims), the verse should be translated "He shall bruise you on the head" (Genesis 3:15, NASB). The verse is prophetically speaking of Christ's victory over Satan, not Mary's. Of course, some Roman Catholic try to explain that since the verse prophetically foreshadow Mary and Jesus, and since the first half of the verse, speaking of the enmity between the serpent and the woman, has been applied to Mary, the second half, speaking of the head crushing and heel striking, should also be applied to Mary. Hence, it is not a mistranslation on the Vulgate's part. Well, wrong translation is wrong translation. While you can apply the passage to say that Mary shared in the victory of Jesus in crushing the serpent, you cannot change the entire meaning of the verse by such a mistranslation. Anyway, the point here is that the DR cannot be the best translation. Christopher
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