s with a chapter "Of the Holy Scriptures," which
affirms in this wise:

"The light of nature and the works of creation and Providence .... are
not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of His will, which is
necessary to salvation.... The authority of the Holy Scripture....
dependeth.... wholly upon God, the Author thereof; and therefore it is
to be received, because it is the Word of God....

"....and the entire perfection thereof are arguments whereby it doth
abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God, and establish our
full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine
authority thereof.

"The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own
glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down
in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from
Scripture, unto which nothing at any time is to be added by new
revelations of the Spirit.

"Being immediately inspired by God, and by His singular care and
providence kept pure in all ages.... in all controversies of religion
the Church is finally to appeal unto them."

The notion which the learned divines set forth so elaborately at
Westminster, art has expressed in forms much better "understanded of the
people." Mediaeval illuminations picture the evangelists copying their
gospels from heavenly books which angels hold open above them.

A book let down out of the skies, immaculate, infallible, oracular--this
is the traditional view of the Bible.

Let me lay before you some of the many reasons why this theory of the
Bible is not to be received by us.

I.

_This theory has no sufficient sanction by the Church._

The Catholic or OEcumenical Creeds make no affirmation whatever concerning
the Bible. This theory is found alone, in formal official statement, in
the creeds of minor authority, the utterances of councils of particular
churches; as, for example, in the Tridentine Decrees and the Protestant
Confessions of Faith. There is no unanimity of statement among these
several Confessions. Some of the Protestant Confessions of the Reformation
era state this theory moderately. Some of them hold it implicitly, without
exact definition. One at least is wholly silent upon the subject. The
later creeds of Protestantism vary even more than the Reformation symbols.
Such important Churches as the Church of England, our own Protestant
Episco