# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1860_S229
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Instruction Against Doubt of the Divine Word and Its Truth. 229

to draw upon it or to build upon it, very earnestly forbids, and instead leads solely into the divine and the heavenly, goes straight to God the Lord Himself, and sets Him plainly before men's eyes, so that a God-fearing heart, which weighs it diligently, must confess that every word of the holy Bible lives and has a mighty, penetrating, great power — of which more shall be said hereafter, in its proper place, where it more properly belongs.

Since, then, it is thus with this, that men on earth must certainly have a word and law of the eternal God from which to learn and know him and his will, and since no other word or law is to be found between heaven and earth by which this same great God should have revealed himself to them and set down his will, except precisely in the Book of the holy Bible — it is therefore most fitting of all to hold this Word for God's Word, and accordingly for pure truth.

Secondly, this is testified in particular by the creation of man, since it cannot indeed be denied that he was created into this world to serve God his Creator and to honor him. But since God Himself (as has already been said) must have prescribed to man and shown him how and in what way he should render such service and honor, it must follow that this took place as soon as men had come upon the earth, and that accordingly his revealed and recorded will must have existed from the beginning of creation, and thus must have the primacy (as one says) or the oldest precedence over all writings. Now it is found undeniably that the books and writings of Moses precede all other writings in time and age by several hundred years, and that they begin from the general creation — indeed, with the first man who was set into the world — together with the description of the divine will; moreover, that from that point on they set forth in order the state of the world, in what manner the Church of God, as well as both the spiritual and the temporal government, took their beginning and progress, and how everything has continually followed upon one another, none of which is read of in any other writer at all. It therefore certainly follows that the holy Bible, which begins with the books of Moses and continues further to the Revelation of St. John, is the one infallible, most truthful Word of God of all.

Thirdly, that Holy Scripture is quite certainly God's truthful and infallible Word is proved by the ever-abiding, unanimous confession of the Christian Church, in which, from the beginning until this hour, it has thus been acknowledged, preserved from one people to another, and at last delivered into our hands in this day, as Eusebius writes of it, book 3, chapters 3, 25, 35, in these words: By the name of canonical or approved Scripture we understand not the writings of all writers without distinction, but the books of the Prophets and Apostles, which at every age have been recognized by the Church of God as approved and beyond doubt, and it is certain that they come from the Prophets and Apostles and were