Scriptures is God Himself speaking in and through them to His people. This alone gives the fides divina. This is the so-called formal principle of the Reformation, no less important than the so-called material principle of justification by faith.1

The Reformers applied this critical test to the traditional theories of the Bible, and eliminated the apocryphal books from the Canon. They also revived the ancient doubts as to Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Epistle of James, 2 Peter, Jude, and the Apocalypse. The Reformed symbols elaborated the formal principle further than the Lutheran, and ordinarily specified the books that they regarded as canonical. In this they rejected the traditions of the early Christian Church.

The Church of Rome, in accordance with its principle of church authority and tradition, determined the apocryphal books to be canonical at the Council of Trent, and defined. officially the extent and limits of the Canon, and excluded all doubts and questionings on the Canon from the realm of orthodoxy. The Protestant Reformers accepted the Canon of their symbols, excluding the apocryphal books, not because of the Jewish tradition, which they did not hesitate to dispute, as they did that of the Church itself, but for higher internal reasons. It is doubtless true 2 that the Reformers fell back on the authority of Jerome in their determination of the Canon, as they did largely upon Augustine for the doctrine of grace; but this was in both cases for support against Rome in authority which Rome recognized, rather than as a basis on which to rest their faith and criticism. They went further back than Jerome to the more fundamental principle of the common consent of the believing children of God, which in course of time eliminated the sacred canonical books from those of a merely national and temporary character, because these books approved themselves to their souls as the very Word of God. As Dr. Charteris says:

1 Dorner, Gesch. Prot. Theo., pp. 234 seq., 379 seq.; Julius Müller, "Das Verhältniss zwischen der Wirksamkeit des heiligen Geistes und dem Gnadenmittel des göttlichen Wortes," in his Dogmat. Abhandlungen, 1871, pp. 139 seq.; Reuss, Histoire du Canon, pp. 308 seq.

2 W. Robertson Smith, Old Testament in the Jewish Church, 1881, p. 41.

"The Council of Trent had formally thrown down a challenge. It recognized the canon because of the traditions of the Church, and on the same ground of tradition accepted the unwritten ideas about Christ and His apostles, of which the Church had been made the custodian. The reformers believed Scripture to be higher than the Church. But on what could they rest their acceptance of the canon of Scripture? How did they know these books to be Holy Scriptures, the only and ultimate divine revelation? They answered that the divine authority of Scripture is self-evidencing, that the regenerate man needs no other evidence, and that only the regenerate can appreciate the evidence. It follows from this, if he do not feel the evidence of their contents, any man may reject books claiming to be Holy Scripture."1

It is true this test did not solve all questions. It left in doubt several writings which had been regarded as doubtful for centuries. But uncertainty as to these does not weaken the authority of those that are recognized as divine; it only affects the extent of the Canon, and not the authority of those writings regarded as canonical.

"Suppose we were not able to give positive proof of the divine inspiration of every particular Book that is contained in the Sacred Records, it does not therefore follow that it was not inspired; and yet much less does it follow that our religion is without foundation. Which I therefore add, because it is well known there are some particular Books in our Bible that have at some times been doubted of in the Church, whether they were inspired or no. But I cannot conceive that doubt concerning such Books, where persons have suspended their assent, without casting any unbecoming reflections, have been a hindrance to their salvation, while what they have owned and acknowledged for truly divine, has had sanctifying effect upon their hearts and lives." 2

This is the Protestant position. Unless these books have given us their own testimony that they are divine and therefore canonical, we do not receive them with our hearts; we do not rest our faith and life upon them as the very Word of God; we give mere intellectual assent; we receive them on authority, tacitly and without opposition, and possibly with the dogma

1 "The New Testament Scriptures: their Claims, History, and Authority," Croall Lectures, 1882, 1883, p. 203.

2 Ed. Calamy, Inspiration of the Holy Writings, London, 1710, p. 42.

tism which not unfrequently accompanies incipient doubt, but also without true interest in them, and true faith in their divine authority, and the certainty of their divine contents. The Canon of Holy Scripture as defined by the Reformed symbols may be successfully vindicated on Protestant principles. The Church has not been deceived with regard to it. Esther, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, and the Apocalypse will verify themselves in the hearts of those who study them. But it is illegitimate to first attempt to prove their canonicity and then their inspiration, or to rely upon Jewish Rabbinical tradition any more than upon Roman Catholic tradition, or to anathematize all who doubt some of them, in the spirit of Rabbi Akiba and the Council of Trent. The only legitimate Protestant method is that of the Reformers: first prove their canonicity from their own internal divine testimony, and accept them as canonical because the Christian soul rests upon them as the veritable divine Word. "For he that believes what God saith, without evidence that God saith it; doth not believe God, while he believes the thing that is from God, et eadem ratione, si contigisset Alcorano Turcico credidisset." 1

The fault with the Reformers was not in their use of this sure test, but in their neglect to use it with sufficient thoroughness. Unfortunately they allowed themselves to be influenced by other subjective tests and dogmatic considerations. Thus Luther, by his exaggeration of his interpretation of the Pauline doctrine of justification, was unable to understand the Epistle of James, and spoke of it as "an epistle of straw." There can be no doubt that the rejection of 2 Maccabees was due in great measure to its support of the Roman Catholic doctrine of sacrifices for the dead; 2 and that the Wisdom of Sirach was rejected partly, at least, because of its supposed countenance of the Roman Catholic doctrine of salvation by works. Such dogmatic objections influenced greatly the Reformers in their views as to the entire Apocrypha. They did not apply their principle in its simplicity and in its purity, but allowed themselves to confuse it with other less valid considera

1 Whichcote, Eight Letters of Dr. A. Tuckney and Benj. Whichcote, 1753, p. 111. 22 Macc. 1239-45.

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tions. This set a bad example to their successors, who were more subjective and dogmatic in their principles, and less evangelical and vital.

Furthermore, the Protestant Reformers, in the matter of the Canon, were simply claiming a liberty of opinion with regard to the limits of the Canon which had been freely exercised by the early Christian Fathers, and which, indeed, had never been seriously questioned in the Christian Church. It was not necessary for them to battle against Catholic tradition, which indeed was undoubtedly on their side, if only they traced the tradition far enough backwards in the historic development of the Catholic Church.

In fact, the Roman Catholics, on the one side, were claiming the right of the Church to define the doctrine of the Canon of Holy Scripture, and they exercised that right for the first time in Christian history. The Church had the same right to define the Canon of Holy Scripture as to define other Christian doctrines. Unfortunately the Council of Trent was not a truly œcumenical council. It represented only a portion of the Christian Church, and therefore its definitions are the definitions of the Roman Catholic party in the Church. They do not represent the Greek, Oriental, and Protestant communions.

On the other hand, the Protestant Reformers were not simply exercising the right of private opinion with reference to certain books, whether they belonged to the Canon or not; but they set up a new test of canonicity, which, however true and reliable it may be in itself, had not the consent of antiquity, and ought not to have been imposed upon Christians as a new dogma. When the Reformed symbols undertook to rule the apocrypha out from the Canon of Holy Scripture, they were officially limiting the Canon of Holy Scripture, no less truly than the Council of Trent, only they represented a much smaller constituency and a lesser section of the Church of Christ. The practical result was that the Council of Trent defined a larger Canon, the Reformed synods a smaller Canon.

So long as the controversy with Rome was active and energetic, and ere the counter-reformation set in, the Protestant principle maintained itself; but as the internal conflicts of

Protestant churches began to absorb more attention, and the polemic with Rome became less vigorous, the polemic against brethren more violent, the Reformed system of faith was built. up by a series of scholastics over against Lutheranism, and Calvinistic scholastics contended against Arminianism. The elaboration of the Protestant Reformed system by a priori deduction carried with it the pushing of the principles of Protestantism more and more into the background. The authority of the Reformed Faith and Tradition assumed the place of the Roman Faith and Tradition; and the biblical scholarship of Protestant churches, cut off from the line of Roman Tradition, sought historical continuity and worked its way back along the line of Hieronymian Tradition to the earlier Jewish Rabbinical Tradition; and so began to establish a Protestant traditional orthodoxy in the Swiss schools under the influence of Buxtorf, Heidegger, and Francis Turretine; and in the Dutch schools under the influence of Voetius.

Lutheran theology had the same essential development through internal struggles. The irenical school of Calixtus at Helmstädt had struggled with the scholastic spirit, until the latter had sharpened itself into the most radical antagonism to the Reformed Church and the Melanchthon type of Lutheran theology. Carlov stated the doctrine of verbal inspiration in the same essential terms as the Swiss scholastics, and was followed therein by the Lutheran scholastics generally.

"It treated Holy Scripture as the revelation itself, instead of as the memorial of the originally revealed, ideal, actual truth; the consequence being that Holy Scripture was transformed into God's exclusive work, the human element was explained away, and the original living power thrust away behind the writing contained in letters. Faith ever draws its strength and decisive certainty from the original eternally living power to which Scripture is designed to lead. But when Scripture was regarded as the goal, and attestation was sought elsewhere than in the experience of faith through the presence of truth in the Spirit, then the Reformation standpoint was abandoned, its so-called material principle violated, and it became easy for Rationalism to expose the contradictions in which the inquirers had thus involved themselves."

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1 Dorner, System of Christian Doctrine, Vol. II. p. 186.