A Key (Penn)/Section III

OF THE SCRIPTURES, THEIR TRUTH AUTHORITY AND SERVICE
Perversion 6:  The Quakers deny Scripture, for they deny them to be the word of God.

Principle: They own and style the Scriptures as they own and style themselves: a declaration of those things most truly believed, given forth in former ages by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit: consequently they are profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. We believe them and read them, and say it is the work we have to do in this world and the earnest desire of our souls to Almighty God that we may feel and witness the fulfilling of them in and upon ourselves; that so God's will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. But to call them the Word of God which they never call themselves, but by which they peculiarly denominate and call Christ and in no slight to them— which we believe to be of Divine authority, and to embrace the best of books—and allow to be as much the word of God as a book can be—they do, in duty and reason bound, attribute to Christ only.

And yet as the word of God may in some sense signify the command of God, referring to the thing or matter commanded as the mind of God, it may be called the Word of the Lord, or Word of God; as on particular occasions, the prophets had the Word of the Lord to persons and places, that is to say, the mind or will of God, or that which was commanded them of the Lord to declare or do. So Christ uses it when He tells the Pharisees that they had made the word or command of God of none effect by their traditions. But because people are apt to think if they have the Scriptures they have all—for that they account them the word of God, and so look no farther, that is, to no other Word from whence these good words came—therefore this people have been constrained, and, they believe, by God's good Spirit again to point them to the great Word, Christ Jesus, in Whom is life, and that life is the Light of men: that they might feel something nearer to them than the Scriptures—the Word in the heart, from whence all the Holy Scriptures came, which is Christ within them, the hope of their glory. And to be sure, He is the only right expounder, as well as the author, of the Holy Scripture, without whose Light, Spirit, or grace, they cannot be savingly read by those that read them.

Perversion 7:  They deny them to be any means whereby to resist temptation.

Principle: This is a very uncharitable aspersion. True it is that they deny Scriptures of themselves to be sufficient to resist temptations, for then all that have them and read them would be sure to be preserved by them against temptations. But that they should deny them to be any means or instrument in God's hand, is either great ignorance or injustice in their adversaries. God has made use of the Scriptures, and daily does and will make use of them, for instruction, reproof, comfort, and edification, through the Spirit, to those that read them as they ought to do.