Inspiration Includes the Words, Not Simply the Thoughs

“The prophets and the apostles,” some say, “were, no doubt, inspired when they wrote their sacred books, in so far as respected their thoughts; but we must believe, that, beyond this, they were left to themselves as respects their language; so that in this written revelation the ideas are God's, and the expressions those of a man...the Divine Spirit is considered to have presented the holy truths they announce to the view of the evangelists and the prophets, leaving them no more to do than simply to express them; and this mode of conceiving of what they did,” it is added, “at once accounts for the striking differences of style which their writings exhibit.”

We reply:—

1. That this system is directly contrary to Scripture testimony. The Bible declares itself to be written, “not with the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." It calls itself 'the word of God," "the words of God,' 'the voice of God,' 'the oracles of God,' 'the lively oracles of God," "the holy letters of God," "the scripture of God." A scripture, or writing, is made up of letters and words, and not of invisible thoughts only: but, we are told, "all SCRIPTURE is given by inspiration of God." What is WRITTEN, therefore, is inspired of God (θεόπνευστος); and that which is inspired of God is ALL SCRIPTURE - it is all that is written (πᾶσα γραφὴ ).
2. While this system is contradictory to the Bible, it is also most irrational. The ideas of our fellow-men embody themselves in words; and it is there only that you can seize them. Souls are revealed to us only in the flesh. You do not learn their character; you know nothing of their desires or their experiences; you do not even suspect their existence; and betwixt you and them there are no ties, until they have become clothed with bodies, and have received organs, so that they can manifest themselves to you. My most intimate friend is known to me only by the language of his voice and his gestures. If he had no power of employing these, in vain might he remain for twenty years at my side: he would be to me as if he were not.
3. This theory of a divine revelation, in which you would have the inspiration of the thoughts without the inspiration of the language, is so inevitably irrational that it cannot be sincere, and proves false even to those who propose it; for, without their suspecting it, it makes them come much further down in their arguments than their first position seems at a first glance to indicate. Listen to them. Though the words are those of man, say they, the thoughts are those of God. And how will they prove this to you? Alas! once more, by attributing to this Scripture from God, contradictions, mistakes, proofs of ignorance! Is it then the words alone that they attack? and are not these alleged errors much more in the ideas than in the words? So true it is that we cannot separate the one from the other, and that a revelation of God's thoughts ever demands a revelation of God's words also.
4. This theory is not only anti-biblical, irrational, and mischievous; further, it is taken up arbitrarily, and amounts at best to a gratuitous hypothesis.
5. Besides, it is very useless; for it resolves no difficulty. You find it difficult, say you, to conceive how the Holy Ghost could have given the words in Holy Scripture; but can you tell us any better how he gave the thoughts? Will it be more easy for you, for example, to explain how God suggested to Moses the knowledge of the different acts of the creation, or to St. John that of all the scenes of the last day, than to conceive how he made them write the narrative of these things in the language of the Hebrews, or in that of the Greeks?
6. But we have much more to say than this. That which in this theory ought above all to strike every attentive mind, is its extreme inconsistency, seeing that those even who hold it most strenuously, are forced withal to admit that, in its greatest part, the Scripture behooved to be inspired to the men of God EVEN IN ITS WORDS.
7. We have said, that the question relates to the BOOK, and not to the WRITERS. You believe that God gave them the thoughts always, and not always the words; but the Scripture tells us, on the contrary, that God has given them always the words, and not always the thoughts. As for their thoughts, while they were in the act of writing, God might inspire them with ideas more or less lively, more or less pure, more or less elevated: that interests my charity alone, but has no bearing on my faith. The SCRIPTURE—the Scripture which they have transmitted to me, perhaps without themselves seizing its meaning, at least without ever entirely comprehending it, this is what concerns me. Paul might have been mistaken in his thoughts, when, on appearing before the council of the priests, and not recognizing God's high-priest, he ventured to say to him, “God shall strike thee, thou whited wall!" This is of little consequence, however, provided I know that Peter might have been mistaken in his thoughts when, refusing to believe that God could send him among the heathen, he did not perceive and acknowledge that “in every nation, they who turn to God are accepted of him." He might have been still more grievously mistaken when, at Antioch, he compelled Paul to withstand him to the face, because he was to be blamed, and because he walked not uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel. But how does this concern me, after all, I repeat, at least as respects my faith? For the question is, not how I can know at what moments, or in what measure, Paul, John, Mark, James, or Peter, were inspired in their thoughts, or sanctified in their conduct: what, above all, interests me, is to know that all the sacred pages were divinely inspired; that their written words were the words of God; and that, in giving these to us, they spoke, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, (οὐκ ἐν διδακτοῖς ἀνθρωπίνης σοφίας λόγοις); that then it is NOT THEY that speak, but the Holy Ghost;" in a word, that “God hath spoken BY THE mouth of his prophets since the world began.“ The sacred writers were sometimes inspired; but the Holy Scriptures were so ALWAYS. Accordingly, the times, the measures, the degrees, the alternations of the inspiration of the men of God, are not for us an object of faith; but that which is an object of faith, is that the Scripture is divinely inspired, and that that which is divinely inspired is the whole Scripture. “Not one jot or tittle of it shall pass away.” There is doubtless an inspiration of thoughts, as there is an inspiration of words; but the first makes the CHRISTIAN, while it is the second that makes the PROPHET.
   
   From Theopneustia, by Louis Gaussen

Inspiration of Scripture and its Relation to Translations

It is some times said to us, You assert that the inspiration of the Scriptures extended to the very words of the original text; but wherefore all this verbal exactness of the Holy Word, seeing that, after all, the greater number of Christians can make use of such versions only as are more or less inexact? Thus, then, the privilege of such an inspiration is lost to the Church of modern times; for you will not venture to say that any translation is inspired. This is a difficulty which, on account of its insignificance, we felt at first averse to noticing; but we cannot avoid doing so, being assured that it has obtained some currency among us, and some credit also. Our first remark on this objection must be, that it is not one at all. It does not bear against the fact of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures; it only contests the advantages of that inspiration…

We proceed, then, to show how even this assertion, when reduced to these last terms, rests on no good foundation. The divine word which the Bible reveals to us, passes through four successive forms before reaching us in a translation. First, it was from all eternity in the mind of God. Next, it was passed by Him into the mind of man. In the third place, under the operation of the Holy Ghost, and by a mysterious process, it passed from the prophets' thoughts, into the types and symbols of an articulate language; it took shape in words. Finally, after having undergone this first translation, alike important and inexplicable, men have reproduced and counter-chalked it, by a new translation, in passing it from one human language into another human language. Of these four operations, the three first are divine; the fourth alone is human and fallible. Shall it be said, that because the last is human, the divinity of the three former should be a matter of indifference to us? Mark, however, that between the third and the fourth— I mean to say, between the first translation of the thought by the sensible signs of a human language, and the second translation of the words by other words—the difference is enormous. Between the doubts that may cleave to us respecting the exactness of the versions, and those with which we should be racked with respect to the correctness of the original text (if not inspired even in its language) the distance is infinite. It is said; of what consequence is it to me that the third operation is effected by the Spirit of God, if the last be accomplished only by the spirit of man? In other words, what avails it to me that the primitive language be inspired, if the translated version be not so? But people forget, in speaking thus, that we are infinitely more assured of the exactness of the translators, than we could be of that of the original text, in the case of all the expressions not being given by God.

Of this, however, we may become perfectly convinced, by attending to the five following considerations: 

1. The operation by which the sacred writers express with words the mind of the Holy Ghost, is, we have said, itself a rendering not of words by other words, but of divine thoughts by sensible symbols. Now this first translation is an infinitely nicer matter, more mysterious and more liable to error (if God puts not his hand to it) than the operation can be afterwards by which we should render a Greek word of that primitive text, by its equivalent in another tongue. In order to a man's expressing exactly the thought of God, it is necessary, if he be not guided in his language from above, that he have thoroughly comprehended it in its just measure, and in the whole extent and depth of its meaning. But this is by no means necessary in the case of a mere translation. The divine thought being already incarnated, as it were, in the language of the sacred text, what remains to be done in translation is no longer the giving of it a body, but only the changing of its dress, making it say in French what it had already said in Greek, and modestly substituting for each of its words an equivalent word. Such an operation is comparatively very inferior, very immaterial, without mystery, and infinitely less subject to error than the preceding. It even requires so little spirituality, that it may be performed to perfection by a trustworthy pagan who should possess in perfection a knowledge of both languages. The version of an accomplished rationalist; who desires to be no more than a translator, I could better trust than that of an orthodox person and a saint, who should paraphrase the text, and undertake to present it to me more complete or more clear in his French than he found it in the Greek or in the Hebrew of the original…

2. A second character by which we perceive how different these two operations must be, and by which the making of our versions will be seen to be infinitely less subject to the chances of error than the original text (assuming that to be uninspired), is, that while the work required by our translations is done by a great many men of every tongue and country, capable of devoting their whole time and care to it -- by men who have from age to age controlled and checked each other, and who have mutually instructed and perfected each other—the original text, on the contrary, behooved to be written at a given moment, and by a single man with that man there was none but his God to put him right if he made a mistake, and to supply him with better expressions if he had chosen imperfect ones. If God, therefore, did not do this, no one could have done it. And if that man gave a bad rendering of the mind of the Holy Ghost, he had not, like our translators, friends to warn, predecessors to guide, successors to correct, nor months, years, and ages in which to review and consummate his work. It was done by one man, and done once for all. This consideration, then, further shows how much more necessary the intervention of the Holy Ghost was to the sacred authors than to their translators.

3. A third consideration, which ought also to lead us to the same conclusion, is, that while all the translators of the Scriptures were literate and laborious persons, and versed in the study of language, the sacred authors, on the contrary, were, for the most part, ignorant men, without literary cultivation, without the habit of writing their own tongue, and liable, from that very circumstance, if they expressed fallibly the divine revelation, to give us an infallible thought in a faulty way.

4. A fourth very powerful consideration, which will make one feel still more sensibly the immense difference existing between the sacred writers and their translators, is, that whereas the thought from God passed like a flash of lightning before the soul of the prophet; whereas this thought could nowhere be found again upon earth, except in the rapid expression which was then given to it by the sacred writer; whereas, if he have expressed it ill, you know not where to go in search of its prototype in order to recover the thought meant to be conveyed by God in its purity; whereas, if he have made a mistake, his blunder is forever irreparable; it must last longer than heaven and earth, it has blemished the eternal book remedilessly, and nobody on earth can correct it;—it is quite otherwise with translators. These, on the contrary, have always the divine text at hand, so as to be corrected and re-corrected, according to the eternal type, until they have become an exact counter-part of it. The inspired word leaves us not; we need not to go in search of it to the third heaven; it is still upon the earth, just as God himself first dictated it to us. You may thus devote ages to its study, in order that the human process of our translation may be subjected to its immutable truth. You can now, after the lapse of a hundred and thirty years, correct Osterwald and Martin, by means of a closer comparison of them with their infallible standard; after the lapse of three hundred and seventeen years, you can correct the work of Luther; after that, of fourteen hundred and forty years, that of St Jerome. God's phraseology is still before us, with which to confront our modern versions, as dictated by God himself, in Hebrew or in Greek, on the day of its being revealed; and, with our dictionaries in your hand, you may, age after age, return to the examination of the infallible expression which it has been his good pleasure to give to the divine thought, until you become assured that the language of the modern ones has truly received the counter impression, and given you the most faithful facsimile of it for your own use. Say no more then, What avails it to me, that the one is divine since the other is human? If you would have a bust of Napoleon, would you say to the sculptor, What avails it to me that your model has been moulded at St Helena on the very face of Bonaparte, seeing that, after all, your copy cannot have been so?

5. In fine, what further distinguishes the first expression which the mind of God has received in the individual words of the sacred book, from its new expression in one of our translations, is that, if you assume the words of the one to be as little inspired as those of the other, nevertheless, the range of conjectures which you might make on their possible faults would be, as respects the original text, a space without bounds and ever enlarging itself; while that same range, as respects the translations, is a very limited space, which is constantly diminishing the longer you remain in it.

If some friend, returning from the East Indies, where your father has, at a great distance from you, breathed his last, were to bring you from him a last letter, written with his own hand, or dictated by him, word for word, in Bengalee, would that letter’s being entirely from him be a matter of indifference to you, because you are not acquainted with the Bengalee language, and can read it only in a translation? Don't you know that you can cause translations of it to be multiplied, until they leave you no more doubt of the original meaning than if you had been a Hindoo? Will you not allow, that after each of these new translations your uncertainties will be always growing less and less, until they cease to be appreciable, as is the case in arithmetic with those fractionary and convergent progressions, the last terms of which are equivalent to zero; while, on the contrary, if the letter were not from your father himself, but from some stranger, who says he has only reproduced his thoughts, then you would find no limits to possible suppositions; and your uncertainties, transported into spheres new and boundless, would go on increasing the more you allowed your mind to dwell upon them; as is the case in arithmetic with those ascending progressions, the last terms of which represent infinitude. It is the same with the Bible. If I believe that God has dictated the whole of it, my uncertainties with respect to its translations are confined within a very narrow range; and even in this range, in proportion as it is re-translated, the limits of doubt are constantly drawn in more closely. But if left to think, on the contrary, that God has not entirely dictated it, and that human infirmity may have had its share in it, where shall I stop in assuming that there may be errors? I know not. The apostles were ignorant—shall I say, they were illiterate—they were Jews; they had popular prejudices; they judaized; they platonized; etc., I know not where to stop. I will begin like Locke, and end like Strauss. I will first deny the personality of Satan, as a rabbinical prejudice; I will end with denying that of Jesus Christ, as another prejudice. Between these two terms, in consequence, moreover, of the ignorance, on many points, to which the apostles were subject, I will proceed, as so many others have done, to admit, in spite of the letter of the Bible, and with the Bible in my hand, that there is no corruption in men, no personality in the Holy Ghost, no divinity in Jesus Christ, no expiation in his blood, no resurrection of the body in the grave, no eternity in future punishments, no anger in God, no devil, no miracle, no damned souls, no hell. St Paul was orthodox, shall I say? as others have done; but be misunderstood his Master. Whereas, on the contrary, if all have been dictated by God in the original, and even to the smallest expression, ‘to the least iota and tittle,’ who is the translator that could seduce me, by his labours, into any one of these negations, and make even the least of these truths disappear from my Bible?

Accordingly, who now can fail to perceive the enormous distance interposed by all these considerations between those two texts (that of the Bible and that of the translations), as respects the importance of verbal inspiration? Between the passing of the thoughts of God into human words, and the simple turning of these words into other words, the distance is as wide as from heaven to earth. God was required for the one; man sufficed for the other. Let it no longer be said, then, What would it avail to us that we have verbal inspiration in the one case, if we have not that inspiration in the other case? For between these two terms, which some would put on an equality, the difference is almost infinite.

Louis Gaussen, Theopneustia, Chapter 4

The Early Church's Doctrine of Inspiration

1. The ancient Church, with one unanimous voice, teaches that all the canonical writings of the Old and New Testaments ARE GIVEN BY THE HOLY SPIRIT of God; and it is on this sole foundation (and independently of the fragmentary information that human imperfection may acquire from them) that the Church founded her faith on the perfection of the Scriptures.
2. The ancient Church, following out this first principle, no less firmly maintains the INFALLIBILITY of the Scriptures as their sufficiency and their plenitude. She attributes to their sacred authors not only axiopistia, to wit, a fully deserved credibility, but also autopistia, to wit, a right to be believed, independently of their circumstances or of their personal qualities, and on account of the infallible and celestial authority which caused them to speak.
3. The ancient Church, viewing the whole Scripture as an utterance, on the part of God, addressed to man, and dictated by the Holy Ghost, has ever maintained that there is NOTHING ERRONEOUS, nothing useless, no thing superfluous there; and that in this divine work, as in that of creation, one may always recognise, amid the richest plenty, the greatest and the wisest economy. Every word there will be found to have its object, its point of view, its sphere of efficacy. It is in vigorously establishing and defending both these characters of the Scriptures, that the ancient Church has shown the elevated and profound idea she entertained of their divine inspiration.
4. The ancient Church has always maintained that the doctrine of holy Scripture is the SAME THROUGHOUT, and that the Spirit of the Lord gives utterance in every part of it to one and the same testimony. She vigorously opposed that science, falsely so called (1 Tim. vi. 20), which even in the first ages of her history, had taken a regular shape in the doctrines of the Gnostics, and which, daring to impute imperfection to the Old Testament, made it appear that there were contradictions between one apostle and another apostle, where there were really none.
5. The ancient Church thought that inspiration ought chiefly to be viewed, it is true, as a passive state, but as a state in which the human faculties, FAR FROM BEING EXTINGUISHED or set aside by the action of the Holy Ghost, were exalted by his virtue, and filled with his light. She has often compared the soul of the prophets and of the apostles to 'a stringed instrument, which the Holy Ghost put in motion, in order to draw out of it the divine harmonies of life.' -—(Athenagoras) 'What they had to do, was simply to submit themselves to the powerful action of the Holy Ghost, so that, touched by his celestial influence, the harp, though human, might reveal to us the knowledge of the mysteries of heaven.'— (Justin Martyr) But, in their view, this harp, entirely passive as it was as respects the action of God, was the heart of a man, the soul of a man, the under standing of a man, renewed by the Holy Ghost, and filled with divine life.
6. The ancient Church, while it maintained that there was this continued action on the part of the Holy Ghost in the composition of the Scriptures, strenuously repelled the false notions which certain doctors, particularly among the Montanists, sought to propagate respecting the activity of the Spirit of God, and the passiveness of the spirit of man in divine inspiration; as if the prophet, ceasing to have the mastery of his senses, had been in the state which the pagans attributed to their sibyls. While the Cataphrygians held that an inspired man, under the powerful influence of the divine virtue, loses his senses, the ancient Church maintained, on the contrary, that the prophet DOES NOT SPEAK IN A STATE OF ECSTASY and that one may distinguish by this trait false prophets from the true. This was the doctrine held by Origen against Celsus (lib. vii. c. 4); as also of Miltiades, of Tertullian, of Epiphanius, of Chrysostom, of Basil, and of Jerome, against the Montanists.
7. The ancient Church in her endeavours, by means of OTHER DEFINITIONS, which we shall not indicate here, to give greater clearness to the idea of divine inspiration, and to disentangle it from the difficulties with which it was sometimes obscured, still further showed how much she cherished this doctrine.
8. The ancient Church thought that if the name of action on the part of God is to be applied to inspiration, it must be understood to extend to WORDS as well as to things.
9. The ancient Church. by her constant MODE on QUOTING the Scriptures, in order to the establishment and defence of her doctrines; by her manner, too, of EXPOUNDING and COMMENTING on them; and, in fine, by the use which she recommends all Christians, with out exception, to make of them as a privilege and a duty; the ancient Church, by these three habitual practices, shows, still more strongly, if it be possible, than she could have done by direct declarations, how profoundly attached she was to the doctrine of a verbal inspiration.

And it is not only by her exposition of the Word that the ancient Church shows us to what point she held the entire inspiration of the Scriptures, as an in controvertible axiom; she will show you this still more strongly, if you will follow her while she is engaged IN RECONCILING THE apparent CONTRADICTIONS sometimes presented by the Gospel narratives. After having made an essay of some explanation, she does not insist upon it; but hastens to conclude, that whatever be its validity, there necessarily exists some method of reconciling those passages, and that the difficulty is only apparent, because the cause of that difficulty lies in our ignorance, and not in Scripture. “Whether it be so, or otherwise (she says with Julius Africanus), it matters not, the Gospel remains entirely true! This is her invariable conclusion as to the perfect solubility of all the difficulties that one can present to her in the Word of God.

10. The ancient Church was so strongly attached to the doctrine of the personality of the Holy Spirit, and of his sovereign action in the composition of the whole Scriptures, that she made no difficulty in admitting at one and the same time the greatest VARIETY and the GREATEST LIBERTY in the phenomena, in the occasions, in the persons, in the characters, and in all the external circumstances, under the concurrence of which that work of God was accomplished. At the same time that she owned with St Paul, that in all the operations of this Spirit, it is one and the self-same Spirit that divideth to every man severally as he will (1 Cor. xii. 11), she equally admitted that in the work of divine inspiration, the divine causation was exercised amid a large amount of liberty, as respects human manifestations. And be it carefully remarked, that you will nowhere find, in the ancient Church, a certain class of doctors adopting one of these points of view (that of the divine causation and sovereignty), and another class of doctors attaching themselves exclusively to an other (that of human personality, and of the diversity of the writer's occasions, afl'ections, intelligence, style. and other circumstances). “If this were so," says Rudelbach, “one might justly accuse us of having ourselves forced the solution of the problem, instead of faithfully exhibiting the views of the ancient Church." But no; on the contrary, you will often see one and the same author exhibit, at once and without scruple, both of these points of view: the action of God and the personality of man. This is what we see, for example, abundantly in Jerome, who, even when speaking of the specialties of the sacred writers, never abandons the idea of a word introduced by God into their minds. This we farther remark in Irenæus, who, while he insists more than any one else on the action of God in the inspiration of the Scriptures, is the first of the fathers of the Church that relates in detail the personal circumstances of the Evangelists. This is what you will find again in St Augustine; this is what you will see even in the father of Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius of Caesarea, who gives so many details on the four authors of the Gospels, and who, nevertheless, professes the most rigorous principles on the plenary inspiration of the Canonical Scriptures.
11. The ancient Church shows us more completely still, by two other traits, the idea she had formed of divine inspiration, by the care she took, on the one hand, TO FIX THE RELATIONS which the doctrine of divine inspiration bore to the doctrine of the gifts of grace; and, on the other, To EXHIBIT THE PROOFS of inspiration.

In fine, although the ancient Church presents this spontaneous and universal agreement in the doctrine of inspiration, we must not imagine that this great phenomenon is attached, as some have been fain to say, to some particular system of theology, or may he explained by that system. No more must we regard this wonderful agreement as the germ of a theory that was to establish it, at a later period in the Church. No. The very assertions of an opposite opinion which, from time to time, made themselves heard on the part of the heretics of the first centuries, and the NATURE OF THE REPLIES that were put forth by the ancient Church, clearly demonstrate, on the contrary, that this doctrine was deeply rooted in the Church’s conscience. Every time that the fathers, in defending any truth by passages from Scripture, succeeded so far as to drive their adversaries into the impossibility of defending themselves, otherwise than by denying the full inspiration of the divine testimonies, the Church thought the question was decided. The adversary was tried; he had no more to say for himself; he denied the Scripture to be the Word of God! What more remained to be done, but to compel him to look his own ill-favoured argument in the face, and to say to him, See what you have come to ! as one would bid a man who has disfigured himself, look at himself in a glass? And this the fathers did.

Such are facts of the case; such is the voice of the Church.

Louis Gaussen, Theopneustia, Chapter 3

Reformation Month: Louis Gaussen on the Papacy

In honor of Reformation Month, as I have done in the past, I will be posting various pieces related to the Reformers' view of Rome. This selection comes from Louis Gaussen's Geneva and Rome: Rome Papal as Portrayed by Prophecy and History. 

In this selection, Gaussen is commenting on the Papacy having just read Daniel 7:1-14. 

He writes:

Thirteen or fourteen characters described in it portray the Popedom entirely. I will endeavour to show you, that on looking at each of these features, it is impossible not to exclaim, "It is the Pope!” and also that there is nothing now existing under heaven, nor has existed through all the history of past ages, to which it is possible to apply these descriptions of holy writ, except the Pope, and to no other than the Pope! 

Its first character consists in the nature of this power predicted in the little born. Evidently, according to this prophecy it must be a royal priest, a king, for it is written "there came up amongst them a little horn." And "another king shall rise after them." A king-priest, — for it is written that “he shall be diverse from the other kings;” and all that follows is to show us in what consists the difference, politically as well as religiously. What does he do? He blasphemes, he persecutes the saints, he pretends he has the power of changing the times and the laws. As king, he is weak and insignificant; as king-priest, he is powerful and haughty; he has power to oppress the saints for ages, — “he utters great words” — he rules the world. Now, with regard to this first feature, where shall we find under heaven a king-priest if not at Rome, or perhaps amidst the mountains of upper Asia, in the great Lama? Where shall we find in history a king-priest who has attempted to change the times and the laws, who has reigned with power, and who has made a secular war on the people of the saints? 

The second feature consists in the geographical situation of this power. Where are we to look for the little horn? Where is the seat of Rome? Where is her territory, her patrimony, or the possessions of the Church? Where are we to find the theatre of her evil doings? 

What can be clearer than this prophecy? It is given to lead us straight to the monarchy of Rome and make you place the Holy See in Rome, the possessions of the Church in Italy, and the theatre of this baneful potentate in the vast empire of the ten Latin kingdoms. You know well with what particular care St. John shows us that it is Rome, the city of the seven hills, the Queen City, the Babylon of the latter times. You know also that the Roman Catholics, as well as ourselves, all acknowledge that the Babylon of St. John can be no other than Rome. If, then, this power is a lauded power, this territory, according to Daniel, is a Roman state; if it is a church, this church, according to Daniel, is a Roman church; if it is a pontiff, this pontiff, according to Daniel, is a Roman pontiff; and if it is a great apostasy, this apostasy extends, according to Daniel, between the Rhine, the Danube, the countries forming the Grecian empire, the Adriatic, Mount Atlas, and the great Ocean; that is to say, in all the territory of the 'fourth beast. In other words, we must seek for it in France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Savoy, Italy, Bavaria, Austria, and a part of Hungary. 

The third feature of this power is its origin and its increase. How does it first appear in the world? Slowly, little by little, a gradual growth, like the budding horn on the forehead of a young bull. You must remark that the ten first horns, or the ten kingdoms established by the Goths in the Roman Empire, appeared before the eyes of the prophet at their full growth, but it is not so with the eleventh horn; that appears to him after the others, silently, and without any noise, as a horn that is growing. Ask now, any historian, if it is not the exact description of the beginning of the papal tyranny, and if it did not become menacing, noisy, and terrible, without its being possible for them to say in what year it began! 

The fourth feature is the chronology of this apostasy; I mean the time of its beginning and that of its end. According to Daniel, when was it to begin? This fact is very striking. In his vision, the time should be immediately after the divisions of the Latin empire into the ten Gothic kingdoms; and this divided state was to last till the coming of Jesus Christ! Now I ask, is it possible to explain this clear and positive prophecy if the Popedom is excluded? I ask if all the historians of the Popes have not described their power as rising out of the ruins of the Roman Empire, about the sixth or seventh century, and taking its growth in the midst of those ten kingdoms which were built up from those ruins, in the days of Clovis, Justinian and Belisarius! Shew me in the whole worlds and above all in the Roman Empire and in Rome, a king-priest who began to reign twelve hundred years ago, and who still reigns in our days, and will reign till the last coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ. 

The fifth feature denotes the territory belonging to this power, and this too is marvelous. "Three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots, before the little horn/' and these horns St. John shows us as "having each his crown." Take now the map of Italy, and look for the dominions of the Pope, and see of how many of the ten first kingdoms the pontifical territory occupies the site at this day. You will see that it has supplanted these three: the Herules, the Ostrogoths, and the Lombards! And go to Rome itself, and see the pontiff on the banks of the Tiber in all his sovereign pomp, trampling underfoot the ashes of Romulus in the Basilica of St. Peter's, or in his own palace of the Vatican. You will see on his brow that Babylonish tiara, surmounted by the three crowns of the three horns "plucked up by the roots before him," those of Odoacer, of Theodoric, and of Alboin; he, the only king in the universe, who wears this prophetic head-dress. Show me another prince on the face of the earth who binds three crowns upon his forehead! He is also a king-priest, he is in Rome, he has grown as a horn grows, he began to reign in. the sixth or seventh century, and he reigns still! It is written, "Three of the first horns were plucked up before him, and he shall subdue three kings.'' 

The sixth character is extraordinary penetration, most accomplished cleverness, incomparable policy, and continual vigilance. Remark how this characteristic feature is admirably described in the symbols of the vision! From whence could proceed, according to Daniel, that influence exercised by the little horn, which ruled the whole Roman empire, and stirred up the world for so many centuries, while, coming forth as it did after the ten others, it was likewise the smallest? Listen! “It had eyes like the eyes of a man,'' says Daniel; these eyes contain the secret of its power. A horn with eyes! What a singular idea! Yet how admirable when we understand the sense! For twelve hundred years what has given Rome her power in this superhuman penetration, this worldly cleverness, of which these eyes are the emblem? It is the vigilance which she exercises over all the world by means of her priests, by her monkish orders, by her nuncios, by the Jesuits, by her apostolic prefects, and, above all, by her confessionals; it is this piercing eye, ever open and which never slumbers; it is this consummate knowledge of human frailty which the confessional has taught her for eight hundred years; it is her wiles, her perfect cunnings those "depths of Satan, as they speak” as St. John has said. 

The seventh feature is her deceitfulness, her falsehoods. Her pretended miracles are astonishing features, and unparalleled in history. I might have included them in the last feature; but St. Paul has described this particular so well in his second epistle to the Thessalonians, where he says of the man of sin, that his “coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceiveableness of unrighteousness," that I have thought it right to give it a place alone. And here it would be necessary to bring forward those false traditions, those false books, those false visions, those false relics, those miraculous medals, those false cures, those false acts, and above all those false decretals, that astonishing lie, which has never had its equal in the world in boldness or in success, for it has deceived all Europe for five hundred years, and alone, in itself, rendered the gigantic usurpations of the Popes possible. 

The eighth feature consists in his more than royal pomp. Daniel tells us, in the twentieth verse, that though this horn was the smallest, yet his "look was more stout than his fellows." Certainly the pomp of Charlemagne, of Charles the Fifth, of Louis the Fourteenth, or of Bonaparte, was very great; hut not to he compared with that of the Roman Pontiff. Nothing less could satisfy him than that the greatest kings should hold his stirrup, wait on him at table— what shall I say? Should prostrate themselves before him and kiss his feet, and he has even gone so far as to place his proud foot upon their prostrate neck! Go and contemplate him in the Vatican as I have done; you will see the painting which represents the emperor Henry the Fourth, stripped before Gregory the Seventh, placed in the royal saloon, through which the ambassadors of all the powers of Europe pass; and in another the heroic and powerful emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, on his knees before Pope Alexander the Third, in the public square of Venice, the Pope's foot is on his shoulder, his scepter thrown upon the ground, and underneath these words; “Fredericus supplex adorat, fidem et obedientiam pollicitus.” One must see this king-priest in his palaces and basilica, to have a just idea of what his pomp is, and to comprehend the full sense of Daniel's words. ''His look is more stout than his fellows.” Where is the king of the west who is carried on men's shoulder? and surrounded by peacock's feathers? Incense is burnt before him as to an idol; he is knelt to on both knees, his slipper is kissed on his foot, and he is adored! “Venite, adoremus,” exclaim the cardinals when they go to him. The present Pope sold in Rome this year, amongst the many medals which are annually struck to record in bronze the glories of his reign, one on which is inscribed, above the likeness of Adrian the Sixth, crowned by his cardinals, these words, '' Quem creant adorant.” How often, whilst I beheld him in the midst of his pomp, has not the words of the Holy Spirit sounded in my ears, “He as God sitteth in the temple of God, calling himself God!" 

The ninth feature is his language, his great words. The little horn “had a mouth that spake very great things,'' said Daniel; and it would seem that nothing in the whole vision so forcibly struck the prophet as the violence, the hatred, and the pride of its language. More than once he expresses his astonishment at it. “I beheld because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake. Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast, even of that mouth which spake very great things;” and certainly this one feature is sufficient to characterize the Pontiff of Rome. What would the least among the students of history in one of our colleges, answer if asked to point out the power which through the nine hundred years of the middle ages, and the four hundred years of modern history, has never ceased to fill the world with the noise of his mighty words, his menacing words, his proud words, his commanding words, his words of cursing and his words of fire, who ordered all people under his authority to undertake distant expeditions and exterminating wars? Will not the student instantly hasten to reply, the Pope, and the Pope alone! And sure it is then that the Pope is unparalleled in the history of men. For twelve hundred years the earth has heard these mighty words, these menacing and anathematizing words: he himself styles them his thunderbolts. Gregory the Sixteenth, now on his throne, when speaking of them in his book on "the triumphs of the Church," borrowing the language of Jove, says that "he thunders." Words of command and violence! he excommunicates kings, he condemns them, he de poses them, he curses them. Words of hatred and bloodthirstiness! For two centuries he hurled the nations of the west all over the east by his crusades; later he destroyed the Christian Grecian Empire; in twenty-seven years, by the means of crusades of Christians against Christians, he effected the extermination of the south of France. Proud words! All historians, whether Christian or infidel, are agreed that the Roman Pontiff was never equaled on earth in proud and haughty words. Daniel therefore had good reason to say, “I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake.'' 

The tenth feature of his character is the continuation of this language. According to Daniel, it is to endure till the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven, and you see, gentlemen, that it does still endure. And who would have believed, without witnessing it, that in Europe, after so much civilization, and after the coming of the glorious Reformation, after twelve hundred years of scandalous conduct, a king-priest could continue the same language from Rome in the midst of the nations? But our God is omnipotent! 

The eleventh feature is his blasphemies. Daniel says, “He shall speak great words against the Most High;" and is there anything more blasphemous than the high pretensions and titles of the Roman Pontiff? He styles himself, “Holy Father!" the name by which Jesus addresses His Father! "The very holy Father! the Husband of the Church! the Head of the universal Church! (the incommunicable name of the only Son of God!) His Holiness! God's Vicar upon earth — God's Vicegerent — God upon earth! Deus in terra, sanctissimus Pater, sua sanctitas!" He declares himself infallible; he puts his decrees above even those of the word of God, and assumes the power of releasing man from fulfilling the commandments of his Creator! He maintains that he only makes priests, and they only in their turn can create their God in a morsel of bread, by the means of three Latin words, and give Him to be eaten by the people! And he can forgive sins committed against the Lord of Lords, and open at will the gates of heaven to whom he chooses! Are these blasphemies enough to be proclaimed openly by a worm of the earth? And has there ever existed under the heavens a power which in this particular resembled the Pope? Will you find in any country his counterpart in all the history of the folly and the pride of man? What shall we say, when we reflect— and no one can deny it— that the priests capable of this excess of presumption were, as to the generality of them, for many generations, the scandal of the universe, by their luxury, their licentiousness, and their cruelty. 

The twelfth feature consists in his murderous hatred and persecution of real Christians. Daniel says, ''I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them;" and he adds, “he shall wear out the saints of the Most High.” Alas! here also the voice of history does but echo the lamentable cry of the prophet. Every one of its pages, down to the last century, when alluding to the Popes, bears witness to their unrelenting pursuit of those who were firm in living according to the Word of God, and of their slaughter in the name of the holy Church! Words would be wanting to describe all that the Popedom has shown forth of this appalling feature for centuries. Who can relate all the tragedies that have been acted for six hundred years in the dungeons and at the auto da fé of the holy Inquisition, that wonderful tribunal whose acts during that period were directed and legalized by the bulls of the court of Rome? All other earthly powers have made men perish by thousands, for the foot of man is swift to shed blood, but the Pontiff of Rome has killed the saints. His decrees curse and condemn to the stake those who may be surprised in reading the Bible in the vulgar tongue! Let it be remarked here that it is no contradiction of the accusation to bring forward the proofs of cruelty committed antecedently for the sake of religion. The cruelties so committed are now condemned and abhorred in every existing communion; but they cannot be so condemned in the communion of the Pope, for they not only form a part of his history, but a part of his doctrine! The duty of executing heretics is inscribed amongst the infallible and irrevocable decrees of his general councils, in the same manner as those of the mass and purgatory; and when Luther dared to declare "that it was contrary to the Holy Spirit to bum men convicted of error,” the court of Rome, in its Bull Exsurgus, inserted this sentence in the number of the forty-one propositions by which it condemned Luther, and ordered, under severe penalties, that he should be seized (personaliter) and sent to the Pope. 

The thirteenth feature is his most audacious heresies; and this one is almost the most striking amongst them, and unlike any other. Daniel says of the little horn, “And he shall be diverse from the first, and think to change times and laws;" and this is precisely the extraordinary infringement which the Pope has committed in the law of his God. He has aspired to the power of changing its sovereignty, its sanctions, its use, its contents, its morality, and its doctrines. I have said its sovereignty; and has he not, the only man on earth, proclaimed himself infallible, and dared to place his decrees, and his traditions, on a level and even above the Scriptures P I said its sanction; and has not he alone of all the earth pretended to forgive those sins which the law of God condemns, and dispense with those duties which that law enjoins? I said its use; and has not he alone on the earth for six hundred and fourteen years, from the Council of Thoulouse in 1229, forbidden the people of God to read the Holy Scriptures? Nothing of the kind was ever known before in all Christendom. The Eastern churches, corrupt as they are, have treated the Scriptures in their councils with the greatest respect; the Pope is the only priest who has ever dared publicly to forbid men to read the word of Him who is his Judge and his God. I said he has changed their contents; for he alone on the earth has dared, in his council of Trent, to add the works of man to the oracles of the Old Testament: the Book of the Maccabees, for instance, acknowledged as uninspired in the days of our Saviour. I said its morality; and to believe me you have only to read those promulgated by the Jesuits, the directions given this year to the confessors of Fribourg, Grenoble, Strasbourg, and all through the popedom; look at the three hundred and twenty-six works of the Society of Jesus, which were condemned in the last century by the tribunals of all European nations as encouraging every crime, and which the parliament of Paris burnt, in 1762, by the hands of the common executioner. All these abominations have been recognized, recommended, and sanctioned by the Roman Pontiff by his solemn re-establishment of the Society of Jesus, in 1814, in the beatification, by Pius VII., of the Jesuit Liguori, the great promoter of the immoralities of Probabilism; by his recent canonization by the reigning Pope, who has thus canonized those detestable maxims, vainly branded two hundred years ago by Pascal, and vainly also burnt by the hang man of Paris, eighty years ago, which treated of "Mental Reservation," of "Probability," and of “Philosophical Sin." I said in its doctrines, when he promulgated by his own full authority heresies the most strikingly opposite to the Word of God, on the worship of images, the dominion of priests, their voluntary celibacy, on auricular confession, on secular priesthood, and on the sacrifice offered in the mass; on the invocation of the dead, on the use of an unintelligible language in all worship, on the adoration of Mary, on relics, on purgatory, on the universal bishopric of the Pope— but, above all, when he exactly professes the four doctrines which St. Paul has signalized as the marks of the Man of Sin: first, lying miracles; secondly, the worship of demigods, or the dead deified, who were worshipped by the Greeks and Romans under the name of demons; thirdly, the doctrine of ecclesiastical celibacy ; and fourthly, the interdiction of meats. These are the words of St, Paul, “Now the Spirit speaketh plainly,” (and it did also in Daniel), “that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.'' 

The fourteenth, and last feature, is the exact period of his persecutions of the people of God. Daniel and St. John both declare, several times, that it will be “until a time and times, and the dividing of time,” or one thousand two hundred and sixty prophetical days, which is understood to be, for many good reasons, as many years. Who could have believed beforehand, that a king-priest, so violent, so luxurious, so cruel, so blasphemous, so opposed to the Scriptures, so exactly described by them, so outrageous against peoples and potentates, would exist twelve years? And the Holy Spirit declares that he would last twelve hundred and sixty, and so it is! I shall not attempt, gentlemen, to inform you of the various calculations which have been made as to his beginning, or as to his ending; I only call upon you to admire this fourteenth prophetic feature of the Roman Pontiff, as we have already admired the others. 

Finally, gentlemen, these same prophecies all equally predict his judgment and his ruin. I shall not enter on this subject, but I must bring it before you in concluding, were it only to give us fresh courage. These are the words of Daniel — “The judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end. And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall he given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him."

Review of Louis Gaussen's "Theopneusty."

This volume is, hands-down, the best I have ever read on the subject of Plenary Inspiration. Gaussen has done the Church an inestimable service with this book. It should be required reading for seminary students at any and every level. Much of the theological tomfoolery rampant in American evangelicalism would lose traction if ministers were conversant in the arguments of this book.

Highlights of the book are his handling of the standard objections to Inspiration, his discussion of the relation between the Bible and science, and the treatment of textual criticism.

With regard to the first, he makes mincemeat out of the objection that Inspiration is diminished because we have translations. His response, put simply, is that anyone who knows the original languages proficiently can critique a translation. The translations we have today have been edited and revised many times by language scholars who are all competent in the original languages and can easily spot errors in each others' work. Inspiration, on the other hand, gets one shot. Either the book in inspired by God when the prophet or apostle pens it, or it is not. There is no committee or panel of experts on inspiration who can pool their collective knowledge and assess the quality of the prophet/apostle's work and revise it to attain inerrant status.

In an unusual departure from a normal presentation of a case, Gaussen tackles all of the objections to Plenary Inspiration before he presents a positive case for it. This is actually quite effective, because the reader is not constantly thinking, “What about ______?” One is free to concentrate on the positive case without the distraction of questions in the back of one's mind.

Gaussen also does a great job dealing with the question of science and Scripture. His position is quite simple: Science changes and develops with advances in technology and new discoveries. Scripture does not change because it is the infallible, inerrant Word of the unchanging God. Therefore, Gaussen always places Scripture above science. He warns about the danger of modifying one's view of Scripture based on the latest scientific discoveries and theories, by showing the follies of otherwise reputable scholars of the past whose work is easy to discount for this very reason. Greek and Roman natural histories treat mythological creatures such as the phoenix and the Antipodes as if they were real. What do we say about theologians who appealed to the accounts of such creatures in the interest of the Christian faith? It is embarrassing, of course, and we'd much rather pretend that this never happened. Every such instance in the past is due to the author placing too much confidence in the science of his day and re-interpreting Scripture in the light of such “consensus” knowledge. We are equally foolish to do the same. By taking this tack, Gaussen has protected his volume from aging. His arguments are as valid today as they were in the 1850's.

The treatment of textual criticism is worth the price of admission. Gaussen warns, that while the textual critic does the Church a great service when he works within proper bounds. He admonishes that the textual critic is a “historian, not a conjurer.”

Although Gaussen cites many important Patristic sources in defense of Plenary Inspiration, he refuses to place much weight there, choosing rather to rely on the testimony of Scripture. In fact, he goes so far as to say that this is the ONLY way in which Plenary Inspiration is to be proven. If one were inclined to object that this is begging the question, Gaussen is quick to respond, “There would be a begging of the question, if, to prove that that the Scriptures are inspired, we should invoke their own testimony, as if they were inspired.” But, he notes that this is not what he is doing. He is considering Scripture, firstly, as a historical document worthy of respect by reason of its authenticity. By recourse to its pages, we find out what Jesus believed and taught, just like we search for what Socrates taught by reading Plato. Now, throughout the Bible we find declarations that the whole system of it religion is based upon a miraculous intervention of God in revealing its history and doctrines. This leaves no third option. We either relegate all Scripture to the realm of the mythological, or acknowledge that if what it narrates is true, it is inspired. There is nothing in this line of reasoning that can be called begging the question.

He concludes by asserting that there are only two religions in the world: One that places the Bible above everything, and one which places something else above the Bible. One position believes that all the written word is inspired of God, even to a single iota or tittle; the Scriptures cannot be broken. The other position employs human judges of the word of God. Whether it be science, tradition, human reason, or some new ostensible 'revelation,' it places something above the Bible. At bottom, this is the source of all false religion. Whether it be Judaism with its Targums and Talmud, Islam with its Quran, Romanism with its tradition and 'infallible Pope, Mormonism with its golden tablets and magic glasses, liberal theology with its denial of the miraculous elements of Scripture, or Pentecostalism with its never-ending series of dreams, visions, words of prophecy, and tongues, - in every case, we find a human judge feeling himself competent to sit in judgment of that which claims to be the inspired Word of God.

Louis Gaussen on Textual Criticism

"Let Sacred Criticism be a Historian, not a Conjuror"

“We value highly, for the church of God, every labor which makes her understand a passage better; yes, were it only one passage, one single word of the holy Scriptures. But when you pass on to crude hypotheses; when you embrace a thousand conjectures concerning the sacred writers, to make their word depend on the hazard of their presumed circumstances, instead of regarding their circumstances as prepared and chosen of God in reference to their ministry; when you subordinate the nature, the abundance or brevity of these instructions to more of less fortunate concurrence of their ignorance or of their recollections; - this is to degrade inspiration, and to bring down the character of the word of God; it is to lay deep the foundations of infidelity; it is to forget that 'men of God spake as the were moved (φερόμενοι) by the Holy Ghost, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth” (2 Peter 1:21; 1 Corinthians 2:13)

“It has been asked, “Did the Evangelists read each others writings?” And what is that to me, if they were all 'moved by the Holy Ghost;' and if, like the Thessalonians, I receive their book, 'not as the word of man, but as it is, in truth, the word of God.' Let this question be proposed in its place, it may be entirely innocent; but it is so no longer when it is discussed as it has been, and when so much importance is attached to it. Can the solution of it throw light on one single passage of the sacred books, and establish their truths more firmly? We do not believe that it can.

“When we hear it asked whether St. John had read the Gospels of the other three; if St. Mark and St. Luke had read the Gospel of St. Matthew before writing their own; when we hear it asked whether the Evangelists did anything more than describe with discernment the most important portions of oral traditions; when we see great volumes written upon these questions, to attack or defend these systems, as if faith and even science were truly interested in it, and as if the answers were very important to the Christian Church; when we hear it affirmed that the first three Evangelists had consulted some original document now lost; Greek, according to some; Hebrew, according to others; when we see men plunging still farther into this romantic field; when we see them reaching the complicated drama of the Bishop of Landaff (Herbert Marsh - aku), with his first Hebrew historical document, his second Hebrew dogmatic document, his third Greek document, (a translation of the first); then his documents of the second class, formed by the translation of Luke, and Mark, and Matthew, which finally reduces the sources to seven, without counting three others, peculiar to St. Luke and St. Mark; or even, again, when we see Mr. Veysie in England, and Dr. Gieseler in Germany, deriving either the first three Gospels, of the four Gospels from apocryphal histories previously circulated among the Christian churches; when we see the first of these Doctors determining that Mark has copied them with a more literal exactness than Luke, on account, they say, of his ignorance of the Greek; while Matthew's Gospel, written at first in Hebrew, must, doubtless, have been translated afterward into Greek by a person who modified it to make it correspond with Mark and Luke, and, finally, gave it to us as we have it; when we see these systems exhibited, not in a few phrases in the indulgence of a light curiosity, but so many and such great volumes written upon them as if they involved the interests of the kingdom of God; Oh! we must say it, we feel, in the view of all such science, a sentiment profoundly painful. But, after all, is that science? Is judicial astrology a science? No; and these men are no longer philosophers: they have abandoned facts; they prophesy the history of the past; they are, alas! the astrologers of theology.”

Louis Gaussen, “Theopneusty, or The Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures,” (Sacred Criticism, A Historian, Section II)

Louis Gaussen On So-called "Trivial" Details in Scripture

“Yet we must say before going any farther: we almost blush to defend the word of God under this form; and we feel for this species of apology, a kind of conscientious disgust. Is it entirely proper; and can we give ourselves to it without irreverence? Care must be take at all times, as to the manner of defending the things of God; lest we imitate the imprudence of Uzzah, who reached out his hand to hold up the ark of God, because the oxen had slipped. The wrath of God, we are told, burned against his indiscretion (2 Samuel 6:6-7). if it is well understood on both sides, that a word is in the canon of the oracles of God, why defend it as worthy of Him, by human reasons? You might; without doubt, defend it against unbelievers; but with men who recognize the divinity of the Scriptures, is it not to wrong the word; is it not to take a false position, and touch the ark as Uzzah did? If this word should present itself to our eyes as a root out of dry ground; were it without any charm; were there neither form nor comeliness, nor anything in it to make it desirable, still ought you to venerate it and expect everything for it, from Him who has given it. Is it not then to fail of your duty to Him; to attempt when He speaks, to prove by argument, the respect which is His due? Should I not be ashamed, when my Savior and my God has been showed me, rising from supper, taking a basin, girding Himself with a napkin, and coming to wash the feet of His disciples; should I not be ashamed to set myself to proving, that, in spite of all that, His is still the Christ! Ah; I would rather adore Him more than ever! But it is so; the majesty of the Scriptures will stoop even to us. Do you see it there rising from the table, laying aside its robe, putting on the dress of a servant, and kneeling before sinners to wash their feet? 'If I do not wash thee, thou hast no part with me.' Is it not then, in this very humiliation that it reveals itself with the greatest charm, as the voice of the humiliated Word? Could we mistake it and could we rank ourselves for an instant by the side of those who do not know it?

“It seems to us, that there is no arrogance comparable to that of a man, who, recognizing the Bible as a book of God, pretends after all, to assay it with his hand; to separate the pure from its impure, the inspired from the uninspired, God from ma. It is to overthrow all the foundations of faith; it is to make it no more a belief in God, but a belief in man. It ought then to be enough for us that a chapter or word makes part of the Scriptures, to induce us to believe it divinely good; for God has pronounced upon it, as upon the creation: 'I have seen everything that I have made, and behold, all is good.' We will never then say, I find this word admirable, therefore it is of God; and still less, I do not see its utility, therefore it is of man. God preserve us from it! But we will say, it is in the Scriptures; then it is from God. It is from God; then it is useful, it is wise, it is admirable; if I do not see it such yet, the fault is in me alone.”

Loiuis Gaussen, Theopneusty, or the Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, pp 243-245

It Is Scripture Itself , Not The Authors, That Are The Subjects Of Inspiration

 

“This miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit had not for its object the sacred writers, who were only his instruments, and who were soon to pass away; but its object was the sacred books themselves, which were destined to reveal to the Church from age to age, the immutable counsels of God.

 

“The influence which was exercised upon these men, and of which they themselves were conscious in very different degrees, has never been defined to us. Nothing authorizes us to explain it. The Scriptures themselves have never presented to us its mode or its measure as an object of study. They speak of it always incidentally; they never connect our piety with it. That alone which they propose as the object of our faith is the inspiration of their word; is the divinity of their books; between these they make no difference.

 

“Their word, say they, is theopneustic; their books are of God, whether they recount the mysteries of a past anterior to the creation, or those of a future posterior to the return of the Son of Man; the eternal counsels of the most High, the secrets of the human heart, or the deep things of God; whether they give utterance to their own emotions or record their own recollections, relate contemporaneous events, copy genealogies or make extracts from inspired documents; their writings are inspired; their statements are directed by heaven; it is always God who speaks, who relates, ordains or reveals by their mouth, and who, to accomplish it, employs their personality in different degrees. For 'the Spirit of the Lord was upon them, and his word upon their tongue.' And if it is always the word of man, because it is always men who utter it, it is likewise always the word of God, for it is always God that superintends, guides and employs them. They give their narrations, their doctrines, or their precepts, 'not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth.' And it is thus that God has constituted himself not only the voucher of all these facts, the author of all these ordinances, and the revealer of all these truths, but that also he has caused them to be given to the Church in the precise order, measure and terms which he has judged most conducive to his heavenly design.” 

 

Louis Gaussen (1790 – 1863), Theopneusty; or, The Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, English edition of 1843, pages 34-35