The Duty of searching the Scriptures.
JOHN v. 39.
_Search the Scriptures._
WHEN the Sadducees came to our blessed LORD, and put to him the
question, “whose wife that woman should be in the next life, who had
seven husbands in this,” he told them “they erred, not knowing the
scriptures.” And if we would know whence all the errors, that have
over-spread the church of CHRIST, first arose, we should find that, in
a great measure, they flowed from the same fountain, ignorance of the
word of GOD.
Our blessed LORD, though he was the eternal GOD, yet as man, he made
the scriptures his constant rule and guide. And therefore, when he was
asked by the lawyer, which was the great commandment of the law, he
referred him to his Bible for an answer, “What readest thou?” And thus,
when led by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil, he repelled all his
assaults, with “it is written.”
A sufficient confutation this, of their opinion, who say, “the Spirit
only, and not the Spirit by the Word, is to be our rule of action.” If
so, our Saviour, who had the Spirit without measure, needed not always
have referred to the written word.
But how few copy after the example of CHRIST? How many are there who do
not regard the word of GOD at all, ♦but throw the sacred oracles aside,
as an antiquated book, fit only for illiterate men?
♦ “bot” replaced with “but”
Such do greatly err, not knowing what the scriptures are, or for what
they are designed.