Apology for the true Christian Divinity Author:Robert Barclay Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: for as by the inward testimony of the Spirit we do alone truly know them, so they testify, That the Spirit is that Guide by which the saints are led into all Tru... more »th; therefore, according to the Scriptures, the Spirit is the first and principal leader. Seeing then that we do therefore receive and believe the Scriptures because they proceed from the Spirit, for the very same reason is the Spirit more originally and principally the rule . §. 1. The former part of this proposition, though it needs no apology for itself, yet it is a good apology for us, and will help to sweep away that, among many other calumnies, wherewith we are often loaded, as if we were vilifiers and deniers of the Scriptures; for in that which we affirm of them, it doth not appear at what high rate we value them, accounting them, without all deceit or equivocation, the most excellent writings in the world; to which not only no other writings are to be preferred, but even in divers respects not comparable thereto. For as we freely acknowledge that their authority doth not depend upon the approbation or canons of any church or assembly; so neither can we subject them to the fallen, corrupt, and defiled reason of man: and therein as we do freely agree with the Protestants against the error of the Romanists, so on the other hand, we cannot go the length of such Protestants as make their authority to depend upon anyvirtue or power that is in the writings themselves; but we ascribe all to that Spirit from which they proceeded. The editor submits to the reader the following elucidation, quoted from a pious and an enlightened author: " The Holy Scripture is, in regard to truth, what John the Baptist was to Jesus. We read that John was not the Light, but was sent to bear witness of the Light. This gives us a complet...« less