Chapter 8 The credibility of Scripture

(follows from previous post)

 

We need our assurance of the truth of Scripture to come from an authority higher than our own judgement; nonetheless, there are proofs to its truth and trustworthiness:

(1) from its own majesty

“It is not surpassed by the eloquence of heathen writers.”

“Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato, Aristotle, or any other of that class: you will, I admit, feel wonderfully allured, pleased, moved, enchanted; but turn from them to the reading of the sacred volume, and whether you will or not, it will so affect you, so pierce your heart, so work its way into your very marrow, that, in comparison of the impression so produced, that of orators and philosophers will almost disappear; making it manifest that in the sacred volume there is a truth divine, a something which makes it immeasurably superior to all the gifts and graces attainable by man.”

 

(2) from the Old Testament

Moses’ writings, as an example, are reliable in their antiquity, authorship, historicity, and, in particular, their divine source – proved by their honesty, accounts of miracles, detail, and predictions later fulfilled.

 

(3) from the New Testament

Written humbly, yet majestically, by changed men.  

“Let all those acute censors, whose highest pleasure it is to banish a reverential regard of Scripture from their own and other men’s hearts, come forward; let them read the Gospel of John, and, willing or unwilling, they will find a thousand sentences which will at least arouse them from their sloth; nay, which will burn into their consciences as with a hot iron, and check their derision.”

 

(4) from the history of the Church

God’s people have continued to obey it; no-one has overcome it.  

“Notwithstanding of the many extraordinary attempts which Satan and the whole world have made to oppress and overthrow it, or completely efface it from the memory of men, it has flourished like the palm-tree and continued invincible.”

Its authority is “sealed with the blood of so many witnesses, especially when it is considered that in bearing testimony to the faith, they met death not with fanatical enthusiasm (as erring spirits are sometimes wont to do), but with a firm and constant, yet sober godly zeal.”