Book One: On the Sacred and Apocryphal Books

Chapter One: Is Scripture the Word of God?

In my resolve to dispute of the sacred books, this question first offers itself: is the Prophetic and Apostolic Scripture to be received as the word of God, or is that only to be held for the word of God which the Holy Spirit speaks to each privately in his heart? Which question, otherwise unworthy of treatment among Christian theologians, has been brought forth for us at the present time in part by the ravings of Schwenckfeld and the Libertines. Gaspar Schwenckfeld (as is reported by Frederick Staphilus in his book on the agreement among the disciples of Luther and by Petrus Palladius in his book on the heresies of the present age) repulses the written word as the letter that killeth, and bids us to be content with the internal spirit alone. About the Libertines, who arose from their founders Coppinus and Quintinus, John Calvin writes in this way in his instructions against the Libertines ch.9: “We have stated already,” he says, “that they were accustomed from the beginning openly to laugh if anyone appealed to the Scriptures, and that they did not hide the fact they held the Scriptures for fables. In the meantime nevertheless they did not cease, if there was ever occasion, to use them in any sense of their own to which they were able to twist them. Not that they put faith in that sense, but only to perturb the ignorant and so to trouble them that they could at length draw them to themselves. If any passage was objected against them, they would reply that we are not at all beholden to the letter but that we should follow the spirit that vivifies. Indeed that pig Quintinus branded some of the Apostles in a mocking poem, in his own speech of Picardy, calling Paul a broken vessel, John a foolish youth, Peter a denier of God, Matthew a usurer.” So Calvin.

Further, Martin Luther and John Calvin, and all the many followers and disciples of them that there are, do not fear, by a most impudent lie, to ascribe this very error of Schwenckfeld and the Libertines to the Roman Pontiff and to the whole Catholic Church. The words of Luther in his book on the Councils and the Church near the end are as follows: “The Pope has on this matter filled almost the whole world with an enormous mass of commentaries and books, and has changed the name of sin and justice into pure snares of conscience, rules, exactions, divine and human rights, articles of faith; so that he should deserve again to have his decretals consigned to the flames; for the Church could easily do without such a book, which has inflicted horrible and irreparable damage on a great part of the human race, has buried the Sacred Scripture in dust, and almost totally destroyed Christian doctrine.” So the words of Luther, to which like words are found in his book against the King of England and his book on the false state of the Clergy and elsewhere. Calvin’s words at the beginning of his book or instruction against the Anabaptists are as follows: “For we do not, in the manner of Papists, say that the sacrosanct Scriptures must be let alone so that we may rest on the authority of men, for we consider this shunning to be an execrable blasphemy.” Wherefore, so that we may in brief refute the error of the former and the lie of the latter, this point will have to be established first: that the Prophetical and Apostolical books according to the mind of the Catholic Church, made clear both long ago in the Third Council of Carthage ch.47 and recently in the Council of Trent sess.4, are the true word of God and the certain and stable rule of faith. Therefore we will prove it with the arguments the follow.

Robert Bellarmine’s: Controversies of the Christian Faith – Volume 1: On the Word of God — HOME