Book One: On the Sacred and Apocryphal Books
Chapter Two: In the Books called Canonical the Word of God is Contained
At the beginning Moses, the Prophets, Christ himself, John, and the Apostles either themselves confirmed divine dogmas from the Scriptures or they certainly encouraged others to read the Scriptures, and they never referred anyone to the judgment of internal spirit to the neglect of the Scriptures. These testimonies are not adduced by us for the reason that we consider they are made much of by our adversaries, but so that the Scriptures, whose authority our adversaries from time to time misuse against us who rightly venerate them, may not seem to support their opinion.
Moses then in Deuteronomy 17 says: “If you discern that a judgment is difficult and ambiguous for you etc.” and later: “Whatever you do, let them speak who are over the place which the Lord chooses, and let them teach you according to his law.” Here Moses sufficiently plainly teaches that controversies, when they arise among the people of God, are to be judged from the law of the Lord. In the same way too Isaiah exclaims ch.8: “Rather to the law and the testimony.” And Malachi ch.8: “The lips of the priest will keep knowledge, and they will seek the law from his mouth; because he is the Angel of the Lord of hosts.” David also in Psalm 118: “Blessed are they that examine his testimonies.”
But Christ confirms first his mission from the testimony of Scripture, when he brings these words to the fore: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me etc.” Then in Mark 12 he confutes the Sadducees from the divine writings when he says: “Do ye not therefore greatly err, not knowing the Scriptures?” And later: “But about the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses etc.” Further Matthew 22 he silences the Pharisees with another argument besides that one which he fetched from David. And again he throws the same Pharisees onto the Scriptures, not merely onto some internal spirit, when he says John 5: “Examine the Scriptures.”
Indeed John the Baptist already used in evidence of his mission, not the judgment of internal spirit, but the Prophet Isaiah. Because when someone asked him he said, John 1: “I am a voice crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as the Prophet Isaiah said.” Of the Beroenians not without praise is it related in Acts 17 that when they had heard Paul the Apostle they daily examined the Scriptures to see if these things were true. But the Apostles themselves, Peter, Paul, John, James not only frequently use in their individual epistles the testimonies of the law and the Prophets, which it would be too long to review in this place, but even sometimes universally preach the authority of the Scriptures: “We have,” says St. Peter II Peter 1, “a more sure word of prophecy, to which you do well to attend, as to a light shining in a dark place.” And St. Paul II Timothy 3: “From infancy,” he says, “you have known the sacred writings, which are able to instruct you for salvation. All Scripture divinely inspired is useful for teaching, for refutation, for reproof, for educating in justice, so that a man instructed might be perfect for every good work.” Lastly God himself in Joshua ch.1 says: “The volume of this law shall not depart from your mouth, but you will meditate on it day and night.” They fight then with Moses, with the Prophets, with the Apostles, with Christ himself and God the Father and Holy Spirit, who despise the sacred writings and the divine oracles.
Next, the rule of the Catholic faith should be certain and known; for if the rule is not known it will not be a rule for us; if it is not certain it will not even be a rule. Further, the private revelation of spirit, though it be certain in itself, yet cannot in any way be known to us unless it perchance be confirmed by divine testimonies, that is, by true miracles, an extreme poverty of which they especially labor under who in this our age no less boast of their spirit than others do. For who will assure me that the Anabaptist is not lying when he says he is inspired by the spirit? But let it be that he is not lying; in what way will I know that that spirit is the spirit of light and not the spirit of darkness? And since so many in this age glory that they have the Holy Spirit as guide and teacher, and yet they differ among themselves in mind and opinions just as other heretics do among each other, certainly it cannot be that they all think rightly. But as either they are all deceived or, which is altogether necessary, some of them are, who will dare affirm that he is not of the number of those who are deluded by the Spirit of Satan?
But there is nothing more known or more certain than the Sacred Scriptures that are contained in the prophetic and Apostolic writings, so that he must be very foolish who denies that faith is to be placed in them. For that they are very well known is witnessed by the whole Christian world and by the consent of all the nations, among whom these writings have now for many centuries gained always the highest authority; as well as that they are most certain and most true and contain, not human inventions, but divine oracles.
The first witness is the truth of the prophetic predictions, of which Saint Augustine says City of God 12 ch.9: “The faith of Scripture has not undeservedly a marvelous authority in the world, and it has, among other true things it has said, divinely predicted among all nations which ones were going to believe it.” And again ch10: “How much less,” he says, “should those writings, full of fables, be believed which men have wanted to present as full of antiquities against the authority of the most known and most divine books, which authority predicted that the whole world would believe in it, and in which the whole world, as it predicted, has believed. From the true things of the past that it has narrated it shows that the future things it has foretold will with great truth be fulfilled.”
Second, there is witness the incredible and plainly divine agreement and concord among so many men who at diverse places and times and tongues and occasions wrote the sacred volumes, so that they do not so much seem to be many diverse writers as many diverse pens of one writer. Therefore rightly did Theodoret in his preface to the Psalms and Saint Gregory in his preface to Job judge that the tongues and hands of the sacred writers should be called nothing other than the pens of the Holy Spirit.
And Saint Augustine in City of God bk. 18 ch.41, when speaking of this marvelous concord of the Scriptures, says: “As to our authors, in whom the Canon of the sacred writings is fixed and completed, far be it that they differ in any way among themselves. Hence not undeservedly has the fact that God spoke by them or through them, when they wrote, been believed, not by the few people in the schools and the gymnasia, garrulous in their litigious disputes, but by so many and so numerous peoples in the fields and cities, both learned and unlearned. Those writers did, to be sure, have to be few, lest what should be clear in religion be made cheap by their multitude, and yet not so few that their agreement should not be marvelous. For neither could one easily find among the multitude of the philosophers, who have by their literary labor left monuments of their doctrines, any who agree in everything they thought.”
Third there is witness God himself who has sometimes by celestial warning defended this his Scripture from human profanation. When King Ptolemy indeed was marveling why none of the historians or old poets had made mention of the divine books, Demetrius of Phaleron responded, as is reported from Aristaeus by Josephus Antiquities bk.12 ch. 2 and Eusebius Praep. Evang. bk.8 ch.1, that this Scripture is divine and given by God himself, for which reason, if any profane man wished to touch it, they immediately fell back struck by God. And he affirmed that a certain Theopompus, because he wanted to adorn with Greek speech something from the divine volumes, suddenly received a certain trouble of mind divinely sent and, greatly disturbed, was compelled to desist from the work he had begun; but Theodorus, a writer of tragedies, because he decided to put into one of his stories something or other from the divine Scripture, was seized and deprived of lights; and so by the sudden calamity his signal rashness was immediately repressed.
Fourth there is witness the Scripture itself, for if it has true predictions of future things, as the event has afterwards proved, why are its evidences of present things not true? Therefore is true what David said Kings bk.2 ch.23: “The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me, and his word through my tongue.” True what Zachariah said Luke 1: “Blessed be the God of Israel etc., as he spoke through the mouth of the saints, his prophets.” True what Peter said I Peter ch.1: “Holy men of God spoke inspired by the Holy Spirit.” And Paul I Timothy ch.3: “All Scripture is divinely inspired.” True finally what all the Prophets repeatedly say: “Thus saith the Lord.”
Lastly is witness almost an infinite number of divine miracles which have been performed in all ages to prove the dogmas that are contained in the writings.
Wherefore, since the Sacred Scripture is the most certain and most safe rule of believing, he certainly will not be sane who neglects it and commits himself to the judgment of an often fallacious, always uncertain, internal spirit. And rightly does St. Augustine in the prologue to Christian Doctrine admonish Christians with these words: “Beware of such most proud and dangerous temptations, and let us more think that even Paul the Apostle himself, although prostrated by a divine and heavenly voice, was yet sent to a man in order to receive the sacraments and to be joined to the Church; and let us think of the centurion Cornelius who, although an angel announced to him that his prayers were heard and his works of mercy accepted, was yet handed over to Peter to be instructed, through whom he not only received the sacraments but also heard what he should believe, what he should hope, what love.”
Add to this that the providence of God rules and moderates each thing as its nature requires; but the nature of men requires that, since we are endued with soul and body and grasp bodily things more easily than spiritual, we are led to spiritual and celestial things, as by sure steps, through the things that are perceived by the sense of the body. God therefore does not teach everyone through internal inspiration what to believe about him or what he wishes his own to do, but has wished to instruct us through corporeal writings that we may see and read: “From that city, whence we wander,” says Augustine sermon 2 on Psalm 90, “have these writings come to us; these are the Scriptures that exhort us to live well.”
Nor indeed if David, Moses, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, John and a few others, admitted by the fount itself of truth in some way into the band of the Angels, have drunk wisdom of itself, will the rest of men also immediately have no need of divine writings or other teachers. There should indeed be one nature for the foundations, another for the walls, one for mountains, another for hills. Are all Apostles? Are all Prophets? Are all foundations? Are all mountains? And if all are mountains, where are the hills? If all foundations, where is the house? If all Apostles and Prophets, where is the assembly of the peoples, about which is written in Psalm 7: “And the assembly of the peoples will surround thee.” We then (as the Apostle says in Ephesians ch.2) are built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, by whose teaching and writings we are taught; but they who themselves saw and were ministers of the word are sustained and supported on the supreme corner stone itself, Jesus Christ.”
When the sun rises, the heights of the mountains are illumined, and then the rays of light flow down to the hills and the lowest valleys. So according to Psalm 71 the mountains take up peace for the people and the hills justice: “The mountains,” says St. Augustine tract 5 on John, “are high souls, and the hills small souls; but for this reason the mountains receive peace that the hills may receive justice. What is the justice the hills receive? Faith: because the just man lives by faith. But the lesser souls would not receive faith if the greater souls, which are called mountains, were not illumined by wisdom itself, so that they might transmit to little ones what little ones can grasp.” And later: “When we raise our eyes to the Scriptures, because the Scriptures have been delivered through men, we raise our eyes to the mountains whence comes our help.”
Lastly, if in any human republic the laws and the teachings of ancestors were taken away, and that were permitted to each which he judged right and just by his own natural prudence, how great a disturbance of things, how great a confusion would follow? In how short a time would the whole republic perish to its foundations? And yet there is no one who does not understand something of human things, no one who altogether lacks all judgment. What then would happen in the republic which is divine rather than human, and in which many things must necessarily be believed above natural reason, many things done above natural strength, if sacred words divinely inspired were taken out of the way and only an internal spirit were to be waited for and followed? What of the fact that the greatest part of men is made of the uneducated and unskilled, who have never sensed anything to be divinely shown to them, not even in dreams, as to what are they to do? Will they wait for ever? Will they believe nothing in the meantime? Will they perish for all eternity? Or will they attain justice without faith, or beatitude without justice? But they have the arguments of Swinkfeldians and Libertines to confirm their opinion by and keep it, namely so that they should not seem to rave without reason. Let us then examine of what sort these arguments are.
Robert Bellarmine’s: Controversies of the Christian Faith – Volume 1: On the Word of God — HOME