To this Luther replies: "My voice, the vehicle of my words, does not
cease to be my voice, because it is ignorantly or maliciously
misunderstood." Yea! (might Bullinger have rejoined) the instance were
applicable and the argument valid, if we were previously assured that
all and every part of the Old and New Testament is the voice of the
divine Word. But, except by the Spirit, whence are we to ascertain this?
Not from the books themselves; for not one of them makes the pretension
for itself, and the two or three texts, which seem to assert it, refer
only to the Law and the Prophets, and no where enumerate the books that
were given by inspiration: and how obscure the history of the formation
of the Canon, and how great the difference of opinion respecting its
different parts, what scholar is ignorant?
Chap. XXIX. p. 349.
'Patres, quamquam saepe errant, tamen venerandi propter testimonium
fidei.'
Although I learn from all this chapter, that Luther was no great
Patrician, (indeed he was better employed), yet I am nearly, if not
wholly of his mind respecting the works of the Fathers. Those which
appear to me of any great value are valuable chiefly for those articles
of Christian Faith which are, as it were, 'ante Christum' JESUM, namely,
the Trinity, and the primal Incarnation spoken of by John i, 10. But in
the main I should perhaps go even farther than Luther; for I cannot
conceive any thing more likely than that a young man of strong and
active intellect, who has no fears, or suffers no fears of worldly
prudence to cry, Halt! to him in his career of consequential logic, and
who has been 'innutritus et juratus' in the Grotio-Paleyan scheme of
Christian evidence, and who has been taught by the men and books, which
he has been bred up to regard as authority, to consider all inward
experiences as fanatical delusions;--I say, I can scarcely conceive such
a young man to make a serious study of the Fathers of the first four or
five centuries without becoming either a Romanist or a Deist.
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