By JOHN CALVIN.
The Reformers had to contend with the same false, and wicked opposition to the Word of God as we have in the 20th century. It is what saith the “Church,” and not what saith the Lord. The “Church” is extolled above the Word of God, and the “Church” is to be the first and final arbiter of what we are to believe and what to reject. This is the very teaching of the Declaratory Act of the Free Church, and the Church of England, as well as the Church of Rome. “The Church” is to be judge of God’s Word, and must sit in judgment on the faith of the people of God. The Prelatic and Episcopal Bishops who met recently at Lambeth made many plausible references to the Bible and “the Word of God,” but, the “Church” must be the interpreter of the truth of God. The eternal God, the Holy Spirit is only called in to “help” the Arminian scholarly divines, but if His Words do not suit the “Modern Theologian,” it must be “a wrong translation” or perhaps an “interpolation,” or must be read and understood in the light of more recent “scientific conclusions” and modern scholarship! This nauseous hypocrisy in the name of “Science, Art, and Scholarship” must end in everlasting death! Those of us who humbly and sincerely believe in the Eternal Person of the Holy Spirit have no difficulty whatever in believing that He, (the ever blessed God,) took infinite care of the Scriptures from the days of Moses, to the “Amen” of John in the book of Revelation. Let blessed Calvin speak, and let us hear what the good man had to say about the men who wickedly try to distort the Word of God?—(Rev. James MacLeod) Vol I. of the “Institutes of the Christian Religion,” Page 90.
“A most pernicious error has very generally prevailed; viz; that Scripture is of importance only insofar as conceded to it by the suffrage of the Church; as if the eternal and inviolable truth of God could depend on the will of man. With great insult to the Holy Spirit, it is asked, Who can assure us that the Scriptures proceeded from God; who guarantee that they come down safe and unimpaired to our times; who persuade us that this book is to be received with reverence, and that one expunged from the list, did not the Church regulate all these things with certainty? On the determination of the Church, therefore, it is said, depend both the reverence which is due to Scripture, and the books which are to be admitted into the Canon! Thus profane men, seeking, under the pretext of the CHURCH, to introduce unbridled tyranny, care not what absurdities they entangle themselves and others in provided they extort from the simple this one acknowledgment, viz; that there is nothing which the Church cannot do. But what is to become of miserable consciences in quest of some solid assurance of eternal life, if all the promises with regard to it have no better support than man’s judgment? On being told so, will they cease to doubt and tremble? On the other hand, to what jeers of the wicked is our faith subjected—into how great suspicion is it brought with all, if believed to have only a precarious authority lent to it by the good will of men? These ravings are admirably refuted by a single expression of an apostle. Paul testifies that the Church is “built on the foundation of the apostles, and prophets,” (Eph. ii:20). If the doctrine of the apostles and prophets is the foundation of the Church, the former must have had its certainty before the latter began to exist. Nor is there any room for the cavil, that though the Church derives her first beginning from thence, it still remains doubtful what writings are to be attributed to the apostles and prophets until her (“The Church”) judgment is interposed. For if the Christian Church was founded at first on the writings of the prophets, and the preachings of the apostles, that doctrine, wheresoever it may be found, was certainly ascertained and sanctioned antecedently to the Church, since, but for this, the Church herself never could have existed. (The French adds, ‘Comme le fondement va devant l’edifice;’—as the foundation goes before the house). Nothing then can be more absurd than the fiction, that the power of judging Scripture is in the Church, and that on her nod its certainty depends. When the Church receives it, and gives it the stamp of her authority, she does not make that authentic which was otherwise doubtful or controverted, but, acknowledging it as the truth of God, she, as in duty bound, shows her reverence by an unhesitating assent.
As to the question, “How shall we be persuaded that it came from God without recurring to a degree of the Church?” It is just the same as if it were asked, “How shall we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter?” Scripture bears upon the face of it as clear evidence of its truth, as white, and black do of their colour, sweet and bitter of their taste.” Page 93—”If then we would consult our consciences, and save them from being driven about in a whirl of uncertainty, from wavering, and even stumbling at the smallest obstacle, our conviction of the truth of Scripture must be derived from a higher source than human conjectures, judgments, or reasons; namely, the secret testimony of the Spirit.” Page 95: “Let it therefore be held as fixed, that those who are inwardly taught by the Holy Spirit acquiesce implicitly in Scripture; that Scripture carrying its own evidence along with it, designs not to submit to proofs and arguments but owes the full conviction with which we ought to receive it to the testimony of the Spirit. Enlightened by Him, we no longer believe, either on our own judgment or that of others, that the Scriptures are from God; but, in a way superior to human judgment, feel perfectly assured—as much so as if we beheld the divine image visibly impressed on it—that it came to us, by the instrumentality of men, from the very mouth of God. We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which to rest our judgment, but we subject our intellect and judgment to it as too transcendent for us to estimate. “Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am He.” Isa. xliii:10.