- Augustine: "I
am not bound by the authority of [Cyprian’s] epistle because I do not hold the
writings of Cyprian as canonical, and I accept whatever in them agrees with the
authority of the divine Scriptures with his approval, but what does not agree I
reject with his permission."
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- Augustine: "I
have learned to give this reverence and honour to those books of Scripture alone
which are now called canonical, as firmly to believe that no one of their
authors erred in writing anything ... but I so read the others, that however
excellent in purity of doctrine, I do not therefore take a thing to be true
because they thought so; but because they can persuade me, either through those
canonical authors, or probable reason, that it does not differ from the truth.
Nor do I think that you, my brother, are of a different opinion. I say further,
I do not suppose that you wish your books to be read as if they were the
writings of the prophets or apostles, which beyond a doubt are free from any
error."
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- Francis Turretin: "The
orthodox (although they hold the fathers in great estimation and think them very
useful to a knowledge of the history of the ancient church, and our opinion on
cardinal doctrines may agree with them) yet deny that their authority, whether
as individuals or taken together, can be called authoritative in matters of
faith and the interpretation of the Scriptures, so that by their judgment we
must stand or fall. Their authority is only ecclesiastical and subordinate to
the Scriptures and of no weight except so far as they agree with them" (Institutes
of Elenctic Theology, vol. 1, p. 163).
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- B. B. Warfield: "This
church-doctrine of inspiration differs from the theories that would fain
supplant it, in that it is not the invention nor the property of an individual,
but the settled faith of the universal church of God; in that it is not the
growth of yesterday, but the assured persuasion of the people of God from the
first planting of the church until today; in that it is not a protean shape,
varying its affirmations to fit every new change in the ever-shifting thought of
men, but from the beginning has been the church’s constant and abiding
conviction as to the divinity of the Scriptures committed to her keeping" (Works,
vol. 1, p. 52).
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- John William Burgon: "...
the Bible is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth upon the Throne!
Every book of it, every chapter of it, every verse of it, every word of it,
every syllable of it (where are we to stop?) every letter of it, is the direct
utterance of the Most High! ... Well spake the HOLY GHOST by the mouth of the
many blessed men who wrote it. The Bible is none other than the Word of God: not
some part of it more, some part of it less; but all alike the utterance of Him
who sitteth upon the Throne, absolute, faultless, unerring, supreme."
