Wednesdays with Watson is a weekly reading taken from my favorite Puritan writer, Thomas Watson. This week’s selection is taken from A Body of Divinity.
How does it appear that the Scriptures have a divine authority stamped upon them?
Because the Old and New Testament are the foundation of all true religion. If their divinity cannot be proved, the foundation on which we build our faith is gone. I shall therefore endeavour to prove this great truth, that the Scriptures are the very word of God. I wonder whence the Scriptures should come — if not from God. Bad men could not be the authors of it. Would their minds be employed in inditing such holy lines? Would they declare so fiercely against sin? Good men could not be the authors of it. Could they write in such a strain? or could it stand with their grace to counterfeit God’s name, and put, “Thus says the Lord,” to a book of their own devising? Nor could any angel in heaven be the author of it, because the angels pry and search into the abyss of gospel mysteries, which implies their ignorance of some parts of Scripture; and surely, they cannot be the authors of that book which they themselves do not fully understand. Besides, what angel in heaven dared be so arrogant as to impersonate God and, say, “I create,” and, “I the Lord have said it,”? So that it is evident, the pedigree of Scripture is sacred, and it could come from none but God himself.
Words of Grace 