§ 1. The adversaries have long accused us gravely; but in the year 1617 writers as frivolous as they were abusive poured out upon the Catholics the venom of all preceding times. The principal accusation was that the written law of God had been rejected by us, interpolated, corrupted, and oppressed by a bad translation, interpretation, and additions of traditions. Although I answered concerning this matter in the Conclusion of the Jubilees, the necessity of many nevertheless requires a repeated answer here also.
I shall take my beginning from that in which they especially glory: the word of God, Scripture. They say that it is contemned by us and that our faith is overturned by it.
I do not remember that there is anyone among the Jubilarians who does not accuse us of that crime. The Heidelberg Academic Jubilee, page 24, has the following:
“8. The principle of the faith which is believed, ultimately terminating Christian faith, is divine Scripture, comprehended in the books of the prophets and apostles, and indeed Scripture alone.
“9. For all Scripture is divinely inspired and useful for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction which is in justice, so that the man of God may be perfect, perfectly instructed for every good work.
“10. The Roman papacy long ago shook, and today continues to shake, this principle of the faith which is believed, not in one manner but variously.
“11. It teaches that nothing of divinity inheres in the sacred Scriptures except as much as Scripture receives from the Church.
“12. Nor does it hold the Scriptures as authentic except by the authority of the Church.
“13. Indeed, it does not believe God except on account of the Church.
“14. It suspends the divine authority of the Scriptures upon the judgment of the pope, because that authority resides in the pope as in the head of the whole Church.
“15. And because the pope alone, or with the prelates, is the Church, therefore the pope and prelates, if they believe the Scriptures, believe them on account of themselves; they wish the laity to believe the Scriptures on account of the pope and prelates.
“16. Thus the faith of pope, prelates, and laity concerning the Scriptures stands upon human testimony—that is, upon sand—and is nothing.
“17. It charges the Scriptures with such obscurity in matters which pertain to faith, worship, and morals that they can be understood by no one except from the interpretation of the pope.
“18. It makes the pope the supreme judge of all questions concerning faith, in whom our faith must ultimately come to rest, even in those matters which the evangelicals dispute with the pope.
“19. It accuses the Scriptures of imperfection, because they suffice neither for cultivating faith and piety nor for attaining salvation unless they are supplemented by traditions.
“20. Hence it calls its traditions the unwritten word of God, equally certain, infallible, canonical, necessary for salvation, and to be received with equal affection of piety and reverence as the written word of God.
“21. It blasphemes Scripture as a waxen nose, ambiguous, a dead letter, written in ink, made of paper, which needed the consensus of the Church for confirmation, like a sheath receiving any sword whatever—of steel, lead, wood, or bronze.”
Our Maximilian Sandaeus discussed these matters truly and learnedly in the Secular Thesis. More crudely, but more abusively, Jacob Martini, the dialectician of Wittenberg, treated the same matter in posted theses. Erhard Lauterbach, Sermon 2, says that the Romans neither read the Bible nor grammar, and that he believes no pontiff read through the Bible in his whole life. He says that Leo X, when Bembo brought forward a sentence from the Bible, said: “Why, Bembo, do you allege that fable to me?” And to Sadoleto, when he was writing commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans: “Omit those trifles; such follies do not become a serious man.” At these things Polycarp exclaims thus: “O you condemned Italian scoundrels, are your politics more serious than the word of God? Hear the most learned Leo and Bembo: if they esteemed Scripture as nothing, how would the unlearned esteem it?” Nearly all bishops, cardinals, and monks were of flour of this kind. Polycarp Leyser nevertheless writes that the Bible was not altogether lost, but hidden under a bench.
Christoph Schleupner, general superintendent and court stentor, when he wished to delight his people with pleasantries, made Catholic theology fivefold: canonical, scholastic, monastic, Interimistic, and Jesuitical, pages 8–11, Sermon 1. But he does this with such ignorance that he appears never to have seen any books of Catholics. I have named a few; all are engaged in the same cause, all labor to persuade the people that we contemn Scripture while they venerate and follow it, and therefore that we are governed by human law alone while they are governed by divine law. They especially call into odium our esteem for canons, councils, and pontiffs, as though we set those decrees before sacred Scripture. But let us explain the whole case.
§ 2. First, this is the common opinion and faith of Catholics: the sacred writings possess such depth, wisdom, and perfection that no writings of human beings can or ought to be equaled with them. For the law is the Creator’s.
Second, all hold by the same faith that sacred Scripture possesses infallible authority, divine truth mixed with no error, and the norm directing all things.
Third, whatever in the writings and sayings of others conflicts with even one sentence or one apex of the sacred writings is false.
Fourth, any Christian ought to die a thousand times rather than judge or say that even one saying of Scripture is false, or affirm that it can be false.
Fifth, whoever teaches or thinks the contrary concerning Scripture is not a Catholic; we say to him, Anathema, Maranatha. Therefore an injury, and indeed an extraordinary one, is inflicted upon us when we are accused of contemning Scripture, we who are prepared to pour out all our blood for its whole body and for each individual apex, as indeed we teach that it must be poured out. For it can happen that some Catholic experiences a spirit ready but flesh weak, desires to go to death and prison, but grows afraid at the voice of a maidservant and denies the Lord in his word. There is therefore no cause why they should depart from us in this respect,
much less traduce us as violators of sacred Scripture and make two states from one.
Nor is this my judgment alone, but that of the whole Catholic world. The Council of Trent, session 5, chapter 1, seriously commands the prelates to take care that Scripture is diligently expounded, and affirms that this was cared for by synods and pontiffs. “The same sacred and holy synod, adhering to and embracing the pious constitutions of the supreme pontiffs and approved councils, and adding to them, lest that heavenly treasure of the sacred books which the Holy Spirit delivered to human beings with the greatest liberality should lie neglected, has established and decreed,” and so forth—namely, that it be expounded in cathedral churches, monasteries, convents of regulars, and public academies. Nor was this done for the first time then; examples of synods and supreme pontiffs preceded it.
And certainly there are many testimonies that Pope Leo held Scripture in the highest esteem, especially his constitution given at the Lateran Council in 1516, on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of January, where he not only cites Scripture and esteems it greatly, but also establishes excellent laws for its interpreters. Therefore what is invented about his having spoken into the ears of Bembo and Sadoleto was drawn from the same quiver from which myriads of calumnies came forth.
§ 3. We therefore follow Scripture as law, nor do we judge that it has been shown for a century that we have departed from its smallest particle. The sole reason, therefore, why the innovators departed from us is that they themselves utterly contemn the Scriptures which they cite and hurl about to the overturning of stomach and brain. I have already shown frequently that the matter stands thus. Weigh the matter: you will understand that they depart from the law of God.
For first, if among so many hundreds of those who departed from the Church there is one who rightly followed Scripture with an unerring footprint, let him be named, and I shall prove that the rest followed neither Scripture nor the Spirit of God, but their own sense, and set it before the truth of Scripture.
Second, when their leaders are pressed by Scripture, they turn to accusing it. When Vorstius had said that there were certain errors in Scripture, he defended his cause against the eternal truth of God by the authority of Calvin and Junius. I cited the passage elsewhere, but no one has answered me hitherto, and even now the importunity of the calumniators compels me to set forth the same things. “Finally, that especially is objected concerning the apostles and other writers of the New Testament: that they are said to have been able to err in slight matters or suffer a lapse of memory, and so forth. But does Calvin not have the same or similar things, when he writes not obscurely that the same writers of the New Testament sometimes hand down certain superfluous things, omit other things of great importance, disturb the order of time in a history, or cite certain things from the Old Testament less suitably, and so forth? In place of many examples let there be that one passage on 1 John 2:14, where he expressly says that those repetitions of the Apostle are superfluous, namely in these words, ‘I write to you, children,’ and so forth.
“But, to omit Calvin here, what seems to be the case concerning Francis Junius, who in his Commonplaces, recently printed here, book 1, chapter 19, does not fear to affirm that the writers of the New Testament sometimes knowingly and deliberately wrote certain things contrary to the truth of history? For he writes openly thus on pages 61 and 62: that they sometimes conceded something out of charity to a received error and, on account of public opinion, deviated from the truth of history, and even inserted certain things contrary to truth into the sacred text, and so forth. He confirms this by the particular example of Saint Luke, who, contrary to the truth of Mosaic history, placed the name Cainan in the genealogy of Christ, evidently so as not to offend those who had grown accustomed to the Greek version of the Old Testament, in which that name stood, and so forth.
“But if this assertion of Francis Junius can be excused—concerning which I now do not wish to deliver my opinion—why could not at least another similar hesitation or concession be excused? Certainly it is more serious knowingly and deliberately to write something contrary to the truth of history than to admit a σφάλμα μνημονικόν, a lapse of memory, in a slight matter. And again, it is something greater to assert the former certainly concerning someone than to grant the latter to an adversary by way of concession. But let these things now suffice. More examples of this kind from our doctors can be brought forward on another occasion, when there is need, at least so that it may appear that those suffer from great partiality who liberally excuse the same or similar sayings in one person which in another they traduce as heretical and impious.”
Calvin certainly, on Joshua 24:32, accuses Stephen in Acts 7:15 as if he had named Abraham for Jacob; nevertheless, among them the error indicated by Calvin remains. And in the Harmony on Matthew 20:26 he denies that the saying “Many are called, few are chosen” fits or is relevant; but it was Christ’s saying. If, therefore, one error is admitted into Scripture, all its credibility totters, for lying Scripture is not believed, and thus the foundation of all laws is weakened.
§ 4. Luther is no gentler in this respect; for he opposes Scripture to God, on Galatians 3, volume 5, folio 345: “I would prefer to hold in honor and believe Christ alone rather than be moved by all the passages which they could produce against the doctrine of faith for establishing the justice of works. Therefore one must answer them simply thus: here is Christ; there are the testimonies of Scripture concerning law and works. But Christ is Lord of Scripture and of all works.” And a little later: “I pay no heed to passages of Scripture, even if you produce six hundred for the justice of works against the justice of faith and cry out that Scripture is fighting against me. I possess the author and Lord of Scripture, on whose side I prefer to stand rather than believe you.” And after a few intervening words: “You urge the servant—that is, Scripture—and not the whole of it or its better part, but only some passages concerning works. I leave this servant to you. I urge the Lord, who is king of Scripture.”
If, therefore, they object to errors in Scripture, how do they object to us contempt for it? These things were derived from the most impure fountains of the Ebionites, Cerdonians, Gnostics, Marcionites, Tatianists, Severians, Elcesaites, Manichaeans, Bogomils, and Albigensians, and flowed into the most poisonous lake of the Antinomians and Libertines as into a sewer. They labor to make the world lawless.
§ 5. Third, they held the worst opinions concerning those who left the sacred writings to us and who are commended in them. Scripture depicts Abraham for us as the father of the faithful, justified by faith and pleasing to God; Calvin charges both him and his wife Sarah, contrary to the divine oracles, as guilty of the gravest crimes. In his commentary on Genesis 16:3, he accuses Abraham of excessive facility and Sarah of haste. He says that Abraham’s faith was shaken and that there was a middle pretext between fornication and marriage, cloaked with an honorable name. He says that they sinned in the manner or rationale of acting, not in substance, because they sought offspring outside God’s legitimate ordinance. But that manner altogether removed the substance of faith. For, if we believe Calvin, they sought the blessing through adulteries and procuring; for he affirms that Abraham acted thus lest he be deprived of the blessing. But it is certainly shameful to commit adultery in order to obtain a blessing. Concerning Sarah he says: “Since she knew that in the seed of Abraham there were to be blessed
all nations, it is not wonderful if she was unwilling to be deprived of the honor of partnership, lest, cut away from the blessed body like a putrid member, she also be made a stranger to the promised salvation.” If these things are true, Sarah and Abraham were unbelievers. For to believe that she would be cut away from the blessed body unless she established a brothel in her own house, or that she would be a stranger to salvation unless she were her husband’s procuress and the one who brought forward her maidservant, is to be an unbeliever. Nor is he gentler toward Moses on Exodus 2:12 and 4:10 and Deuteronomy 34:10. He says that Moses contemned divine obedience, wished as it were to compel God to break off the work, and possessed a mind forgetful of all things. He treats David, Elijah, Daniel, and others in the same manner. Therefore it is not we who contemn Scripture and its authors, but those who accuse us of that matter. They therefore affirm that the divine law was most shamefully violated by the prophets.
§ 6. Nor is the accusation just, nor is there a legitimate cause for departing from us because we number among the sacred books Judith, Tobit, the Book of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, chapters 13 and 14 of Daniel, the Song of the Three Boys added to Daniel 3, the books of Maccabees, and the things which follow Esther 3:10. The first reason is manifest. Neither the Lutherans nor the Calvinists condemn their patriarchs because they removed from the canon certain books which they now judge true and legitimate books of Scripture. Therefore they ought not to be more inequitable toward us, even if contrary to their opinion we admit certain books into the canon.
Luther in the prologue to this Epistle, Brenz in the Wittenberg Confession, Chemnitz in the examination of session 4 of the Council of Trent, and the Magdeburg writers in chapter 1 reject the Epistle of James; yet the Calvinists do not flee the Lutherans on that account. They also reject the Epistle of Jude, doubt concerning 2 Peter and 3 John, and Luther and the leading Calvinists expunged the Apocalypse from the canon. Graser, in the hypothesis of the royal plague, acknowledges that because of its difficulty the Apocalypse was not received by his teachers. Later Calvinists received it; therefore it will be possible that at some time they will also receive into the canon these books which they now refuse to bear.
If, therefore, Zwingli and others diminished the Apocalypse at its head without crime and this is forgiven them by their successors, they ought not to be such inequitable judges toward us as to interpret our facility so gravely because we admit the books which the ancient Church judged canonical. The second reason is even more evident: we possess great cause to receive those books into the canon, or, to speak more properly, not rashly to expunge those received long ago. For although certain persons formerly doubted, nevertheless most admitted them; those who received them into the canon were both more numerous and more learned. Bellarmine proves this in book 1, chapters 7 and following of On the Word, as does Nicholas Serarius in the prefaces to the commentaries which he wrote upon most of those books.
The authority of Beza adds force to this argument among his own people. For after, against Erasmus and his own teachers, he had restored the Apocalypse to the canon, he answers thus to the argument of those who said that it did not appear to the most learned to be a canonical book because in it there was nothing of apostolic gravity: “Whoever at last those most learned men were, they deserve great reproach because they dared to assail with abuse a book which would certainly be very short if one removed from it the things transcribed word for word from the prophets. Basil, Gregory, Cyril, Epiphanius, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus, as Arethas testifies, acted far otherwise. They not only thought this book written by a holy man, as Dionysius of Alexandria did, but also openly claimed it for John the Apostle. They certainly would never have done this if they had observed no traces of apostolic gravity in it. Which shall we hold as the more learned: those whose singular piety and highest erudition are attested by very many monuments of their own, or rather those whose very names do not appear, while their arguments sufficiently indicate how deservedly they are called most learned?”
He speaks well indeed, but there are many more: Dionysius the Areopagite, Justin, Tertullian, Hilary, Athanasius, Origen, Cyprian, Damasus, Ambrose, Eusebius, Chrysostom, Jerome—who himself also thinks thus in the letter to Dardanus and affirms that this is the opinion of all the Latins—Augustine, Isidore, Gelasius, Innocent, Theophilus of Antioch in Eusebius, book 4, chapter 23, Apollonius in the same author, book 5, chapter 17, and Pamphilus. Next there are the Councils of Florence, Rome under Gelasius, Trent, Ancyra, Third Carthage, Fourth Toledo, and Second Nicaea. If we use for the books which we receive an argument similar to the one Beza uses against his own people in favor of the Apocalypse, I do not see why on that account we should be condemned as impious toward Scripture, when the ancient Church is under the same condemnation. Beza wishes thus concerning Erasmus: “And would that he had preferred to profit under these teachers rather than, relying upon confidence in himself, to make a name for himself.”
If Beza himself had followed this, he would neither have fallen into so many heresies nor now be opposed by all the Lutherans and the more moderate Calvinists. Now, if I cannot obtain peace or bring the adversaries to agree with antiquity, I demand only latitude and moderation: let them not calumniate us as betrayers of the divine utterances because, with so many and such firm arguments and with the consensus of the most learned and holy, we defend the canon. In that for which we deserve praise, let them grant pardon. Luther rejected many books—the Epistles of James and Jude and the Apocalypse—yet the Lutherans worship him. After he had very frequently asserted that he knew more certainly than certainty itself that the word of God stood on his side and that his doctrine was the doctrine of Christ, he denied the word of God, for he erased part of it from the canon. What do the Lutherans do here? They were ashamed of the error of Luther, Brenz, and Chemnitz, for in certain books they rubbed out those statements of Luther concerning the Apocalypse. Therefore Hunnius denies that he found any such thing in Luther. But our Gretser showed it to him, for the Nuremberg Bible of the year of the Lord 1527 has those words in its preface. I beseech you, do not employ such open προσωποληψία, partiality, that you first corrupt the writings of Luther rejecting the Apocalypse, then veil his error with a lie and deny that he wrote what you yourselves deleted from him, while you devote us to every curse because with the ancient Church, councils, and Fathers we retain certain books which displease you. Behold, it is still in question who keep the law.
§ 7. But if we weigh your arguments in the balance, we shall find them lighter than a feather. In this year 1618 John Sharp published at Geneva a theological course. His companions, in order to make him insane instead of foolish, call him Hercules returned to life. Gathering his errors into a bundle, he attacks the truth thus on page 11:
“All the canonical books of the Old Testament were written by prophets. But none of these books was written by a prophet. Therefore they are not canonical books.” The proposition is proved from
2 Peter 1:19–21; Romans 1:2 and 16:26; Luke 1:70, 16:30, and 4:27; Ephesians 2:20; Hebrews 11; and the same can be proved by induction. But the assumption is confirmed by three arguments:
“1. By the confession of all the Jews, Malachi was the last prophet. Between him and John the Baptist no prophet intervened. But these books were written after Malachi, as is evident from the books of Ecclesiasticus and Maccabees. Therefore they were not written by a prophet.
“2. All books composed by prophets were written in the language which the prophets used—that is, Hebrew or Chaldean, then the vernacular and common language. But these books were written not in it, but in a foreign and unknown language, as the Fathers affirm, the matter itself proves, and the pontificians concede for the greatest part. Therefore, and so forth.
“3. If these books had been written by prophets, then Christ and the apostles would have used them as witnesses of their doctrine—for all prophetic Scriptures testify concerning Christ, and Christ and the apostles used them. But neither Christ nor the apostles used the testimony of these books. Therefore they were not written by prophets.
“II. The Church receives all the canonical books of the Old Testament. But it does not receive these books. Therefore they are not canonical. The proposition is proved: if that Church had rejected some part of canonical Scripture, it would have been guilty of the greatest crime in this, and Christ and the apostles would have reproved it under this name. For if Christ reproved them in Matthew 5 because they interpreted the Scriptures badly, he would have reproved them much more if they had rejected part of Scripture as noncanonical. But he did not reprove them for this cause. Next, in Romans 3:2 they are called τὰ λόγια τοῦ θεοῦ, that is, the sacred Scriptures entrusted to the Jews. But Justin, Address to the Greeks; Augustine, book 1 of On the Harmony of the Evangelists and Letters 3 and 59, testify that the Jews diligently preserved the entire ancient canon. Finally, if the books were then canonical and were not received by the ancient Church, it follows that many canonical books were not received by the whole Church. But it is most absurd that the whole Church—in which were prophets and priests and afterward Christ himself and the apostles—rejected the will of God. Therefore. The assumption is proved by the consensus of all the Fathers and even of the pontificians themselves, and it will appear afterward. Therefore.
“III. A book is known to be canonical in only two ways: 1. By the testimony of some prophet or apostle. 2. Or by the testimony of those who lived at the time when that book was published, to whom it could be certainly established whether it was published by a prophet or apostle or not. But by neither of these ways do we know that the disputed books are canonical. Not by the first, because there are now no prophets or apostles. Not by the other, because so far is anyone from being able to testify that a prophet or apostle published or received these books that not even in the time of Jerome, by his own testimony, were they received into the canon. But if the apostles had received and acknowledged these books, as Bellarmine wishes in book 1, chapter 10 of On the Word of God, the ancients would have used the testimony of these books as they did the others. But they did not use them; therefore these books are not to be acknowledged as canonical.”
§ 8. Let us therefore examine these arguments by which the greater part of the Christian world is condemned. I do not labor greatly over the major premise; it is certain that the name “prophet” is not accepted in the same manner. Let us examine the proof of the minor, for it truly contains many errors and much ignorance—but bold ignorance, which opposes itself to the word of God and casts out the law of God.
Malachi was almost contemporary with Haggai and Zechariah, who prophesied about the twentieth year according to a probable chronology. Malachi followed them after a short interval. Sharp denies that there was a prophet throughout that entire period of more than four hundred years, until John.
Yet this conflicts with the Gospel, for Zechariah, the father of the Baptist, was a prophet, Luke 1:67; as was the elder Simeon, Luke 2:27; and in verse 36 Anna the prophetess, daughter of Phanuel, who was already at least eighty years old. Next, during the time of the Maccabees, when there were so many distinguished martyrs, who would doubt that there were also prophets? For although there was no ordinary office at the time when Judas died, 1 Maccabees 9:27, nevertheless afterward prophets were not lacking, who, just as they prophesied, could also write books. Nor is it an obstacle that they appointed Simon leader until a faithful prophet should arise, 1 Maccabees 14:41 and book 1, chapter 4:46. They awaited a prophet, but the one whom Moses foretold in Deuteronomy 18: “The Lord will raise up a prophet from your nation, like me.” Since, therefore, there were prophets who expounded the law, exhorted to martyrdoms, and consoled persons in the bitterest persecution, there were also prophets suitable for writing books. For why could God not give infallible authority to them also?
For although those who foretell future things are prophets in the most proper sense, prophecy is nevertheless also properly attributed to others who reveal hidden things. Thus the Samaritan woman, because Christ had disclosed to her the deeds of her own life, calls him a prophet; and this is a very customary account of prophecy in the Scriptures.
Second, workers of miracles are also accustomed to be reckoned under the name of prophets, for almost all the prophets were distinguished by miracles: Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Elijah, Elisha, and others. For the divinity procured authority for his servants through wonderful works; accordingly, since those who performed miracles were also endowed with the spirit of prophecy, it came to pass that τὸ θαυματουργεῖν, working miracles, was called “to prophesy.” Thus Ecclesiasticus 48:14: “Elijah’s body prophesied.” Καὶ ἐν κοιμήσει ἐπροφήτευσε τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ. And chapter 49:18, concerning Joseph: “And his bones were visited, and after death they prophesied,” although that latter part is lacking in most Greek copies.
Saint Jerome on 1 Corinthians 14: “Prophets are those who explain the obscure things of the prophets and who exhort human beings, as he says elsewhere: ‘For he who prophesies speaks to human beings for edification, exhortation, and consolations.’”
Third, they extend the word “prophesying” even more broadly, so that those are said to prophesy who, by admonishing, reproving, teaching, and consoling, call persons away from vices, lead them to the pursuit of virtue, interpret the Scriptures, and expound questions of Christian doctrine. For this was the office of the prophets, by performing which they are intermediaries of the divine will. Thus in Exodus 4 and 7 Aaron is the prophet of Moses; thus in 1 Corinthians 14:5 the Apostle admonishes Christians to take greater care that they prophesy.
Fourth, those who, inspired by the Holy Spirit, sing psalms to God are sometimes called prophets. In 1 Chronicles 25:1–3 they are said to prophesy with lyres, psalteries, and cymbals; to prophesy with a lyre while standing above and praising the Lord. Although in verse 1 the Seventy read ἀποφθεγγομένους, “those uttering forth,” for nebî’îm, nevertheless in verse 3 they use the verb προφητεύεσθαι. Some wish this to mean “to sing prophecies”; but they sang the psalms which we possess. Now this is rightly called prophesying. In this signification
they accept 1 Kings 10:7, where there is a band of prophets and Saul among the prophets. This signifies not singing God’s praises in any manner whatsoever, but by a singular impulse; for it is not to be denied that many were accustomed to sing God’s praises concerning whom there was nevertheless no such wonder, nor is it to be denied that many were accustomed to sing God’s praises concerning whom there was nevertheless no such wonder, nor is it to be denied that among these were some who were called prophets properly and in the first manner.
Fifth, “to prophesy” is taken in a bad sense, so that it is the same as to be agitated by a fanatical spirit in the manner of demoniacs. Thus 1 Kings 18:10: “But on the following day an evil spirit of the Lord invaded Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of his house.” For because the seers of the gentiles, with foaming mouth and savage heart, agitated by madness, drove the nations mad with tortuous oracles, it came to pass that for them to rage was to prophesy, when the seers reveled in the cave. For in a most dissimilar thing there is a certain similarity: just as the holy prophets were driven by a good spirit so that their deeds and sayings were composed according to his will, so the false prophets were dreadfully agitated by an evil spirit so that they did all their things at the spirits’ command. Thus Scripture calls the unformed cries, gestures, leaps, incisions, and little wounds made by the prophets of Baal—the whole action of their impious ceremonies—“to prophesy,” 3 Kings 18:29: “But after midday had passed, and while they were prophesying, the time came at which the sacrifice is customarily offered.” Nor is this wonderful or new, since the name “prophet” is frequently attributed to false prophets and impostors, as in Jeremiah 6:13; 26:7, 8, and 11; 27:7; 28:1; and 29:1; Zechariah 13:2; Ezekiel 22:25, in which place the Seventy rendered ἀφηγούμενοι, “leaders,” whereas in the previously cited passages they rendered ψευδοπροφῆται, “false prophets.” We treat of prophets properly so called and deny that there was none during so great an interval.
To the second argument I answer: first, that certain of those books were written by prophets in the Hebrew or Chaldean language. Let Nicholas Serarius be heard concerning this matter, prologue 3 on Tobit: “In Letter 100, which is to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, Saint Jerome relates that this book was written in the Chaldean language. There exists today a Greek version of the same book and two Hebrew versions, one of which, received from Constantinopolitans, this Germany of ours published more than forty years ago. Thus I greatly wonder what ignorance or impudence entered that Briton, enemy of the most learned Bellarmine—or rather of Catholic doctrine—the Calvinist Whitaker, when within this very decade he wrote, ‘Tobit is read only in Greek and Latin.’ For this is condemned as false even by other heretics themselves: Fagius, Münster, Vatablus—or rather Bedwell—of the Geneva edition, and Drusius. Indeed, a Syriac version is also found in certain libraries, as the most learned Andreas Masius relates concerning his own library in the dedicatory letter on Joshua to King Philip.”
Jerome himself translated Judith from Chaldean, as Letter 3 testifies. Mordecai was the primary author of Esther. Concerning Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and Maccabees, I judge that the first two were written in Hebrew and afterward translated into Greek; they certainly could have existed in the time of the prophets. The author of Maccabees, as it seems to me, wrote in the vernacular language—that is, Greek—in which most Jews living in the kingdom of the Greeks were skilled. For we readily gather that more Jews were ignorant of Hebrew than of Greek from the fact that they changed their ancestral Hebrew into Syriac, and next from the fact that Josephus, learned among the Jews, was ignorant of that language. Finally, there were colonies of Jews throughout all Asia and Greece; therefore the Greek language was not unknown to the Jews after the Maccabean wars. Otherwise, by that argument the entire New Covenant would be overturned, for it is certain that it was written in Greek. But the Hebrew language was no less foreign while a Latin prince ruled than while a Greek prince ruled. Certainly it is established that the Greek language was commonly known everywhere even to the Jerusalemites, both from many other things and from the fact that Acts 22:2 says: “But when they heard that he was speaking to them in the Hebrew language, they kept the greater silence.” They therefore thought that he would deliver his address in Greek. Both they would have awaited this in vain after making silence and Paul would have attempted it in vain, unless the raging crowd had also understood Greek.
The third proof can stir up disturbances and overturn many other books. For Christ and the apostles did not use the authority of all the books of the Old Testament. They did not mention Obadiah and Zephaniah, while from others only a few things occur here and there in their writings, so that, if we rest upon this argument, we must erase two prophets from the canon. Behold with what arguments ancient truth is attacked by the Jubilarian Hercules.
Sharp’s second argument is much weaker, column 12: “The ancient Church of the Old Testament did not receive these books and nevertheless was not reproved by the apostles, although rejecting any part of canonical Scripture is the greatest crime. Finally, the whole Church would not have received all the canonical books, which is most absurd.”
I answer that what he pronounces concerning the Church applies to the Lutheran and Calvinist church. By Sharp’s testimony, the Lutheran church is guilty of the greatest crime because it rejects part of canonical Scripture, and the first Zwinglian church is guilty of no lesser crime, since it exterminated the Apocalypse. As concerns the ancient Church: although they were not in the first canon of the Hebrews, nevertheless the Church of Christ receives them, as Saint Isidore and Augustine, book 18, chapter 26 of The City of God, admonish. They were not in the first canon of the Jews; they were relegated to the second and were not accepted by everyone; afterward, nevertheless, they were judged canonical by the Christian Church. For it can happen that a book is doubtful for some time and is afterward held as canonical, as was said concerning the Apocalypse in the Calvinist assembly.
The third argument: it is established neither by the testimony of an apostle or prophet nor by that of anyone who lived at the time when they were written that they are canonical; therefore they are in no manner canonical.
I answer that we possess testimonies of Hebrews who had them in the second canon. The first canon was made in Ezra’s time; they could not be in it because they were later. They were afterward in the other, as it is permissible to gather from Josephus, book 2 of Against Apion. For he cites those words of Ecclesiasticus 42:14, κρείσσων πονηρία ἀνδρὸς, ἢ ἀγαθοποιὸς γυνή—“Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good”—in this manner: γυνὴ δὲ χείρων, φησὶν, ἀνδρός, εἰς τὰ πάντα, καὶ ἡ πονηρία αὐτῆς ὑπὲρ ἀγαθοποιὸν γυναικός—“A woman, he says, is worse than a man in all things, and her wickedness surpasses the good-doing of a woman.” But the book from which he cites these things he calls νόμον, law, so that it plainly appears that he refers Ecclesiasticus to the law. Junilius Firmus says that the books of Maccabees possessed the same authority among the Jews as Chronicles, Job, and Ezra; why, therefore, should they not hold the same place among us? But if testimony is needed, what sort do you possess concerning the Apocalypse? You will say that you possess many, but not those of everyone; we too affirm the same concerning these books. Concerning the difficulties
which they object from individual parts, I refrain from answering, because they have been explained sufficiently and more than sufficiently by the interpreters, and otherwise all books could be attacked by the same reasoning.
§ 9. “In only TWO ways,” says Sharp, “is a book known to be canonical: first, by the testimony of some prophet or apostle; second, by the testimony of those who lived at the time when it was published, to whom it could be established whether it was published by a prophet or apostle or not.” He denies that it can be known in the first manner, because there are now no prophets or apostles.
I deny that the Calvinists can know it in the second manner, because the testimony of any other person whatsoever, although he lived at that time, is human testimony, as they always boast; but faith cannot rest upon human testimony. For by this argument they attack the authority of the Church. If they truly do so, they no longer possess any Scripture which they believe, for there is now no apostle or prophet, as the British Alcides, Sharp, acknowledges, and the testimony of all others, even of the whole Church, is fallible and uncertain. By arguing thus, therefore, they bring it about that while they praise Scripture, they at the same time abolish it.