“The Scriptures are ‘the Word of God’. What title can there be of greater value? What maybe said of them to make them of greater authority, than to say, ‘The Lord hath spoken them’? that ‘they came not by the will of men, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost’?… The word of the gospel is not as the word of an earthly prince. It is of more majesty than the word of an angel… For it is the Word of the living and almighty God, of the God of hosts, which hath done whatsoever pleased him, both in heaven and in earth. By this Word he maketh his will known.. .This Word the angels and blessed spirits used, when they came down from heaven, to speak unto the people; when they came to the blessed virgin, and to Joseph, and to the others: they spake as it was written in the prophets and in the Scriptures of God: they thought not their own authority sufficient, but they took credit to their saying, and authority to their message, out of the Word of God… Whatsoever truth is brought unto us contrary to the Word of God, it is not truth, but falsehood and error: whatsoever honour done unto God disagreeth from the honour required by his Word, it is not honour unto God, but blasphemy… Tyrants, and Pharisees, and heretics, and the enemies of the cross of Christ have an end; but the Word of God hath no end. No force shall be able to decay it. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Cities shall fall: kingdoms shall come to nothing: empires shall fade away as the smoke; but the truth of the Lord shall continue for ever. Burn it, it will rise again: kill it, it will live again: cut it down by the root, it will spring again.”
John Jewel, Treatise of the Holy Scriptures, Works Parker Society, vol IV, 1163ff
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