Devotional 10: The Holy Spirit Speaking in Scripture

The Confession Read

The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 1, Section 10

Introduction

The year was 1521. A young Augustinian monk stood before the assembled power of the Holy Roman Empire: the Emperor himself, the papal legates, the princes of Germany, the archbishops and theologians of Rome. He was commanded to recant. The books he had written lay on a table before him, accused of heresy. Behind him stood the accumulated authority of a thousand years of ecclesiastical tradition. Before him stood the stake, should he refuse. The words he spoke in that moment would echo through the centuries, and they are, in compressed form, the very doctrine we consider in this final section of the Confession's first chapter. "Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason," Luther declared, "for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves — I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted, and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen." What Luther asserted, and what the Westminster Divines would codify more than a century later, is the great Protestant principle of the final authority of Holy Scripture. In every controversy of religion there must be a supreme judge. The alternative is one of two disasters: anarchy, a chaos of competing voices, or tyranny, a single human authority imposing its will on all. The Divines, gathering up the testimony of the Reformers and the witness of the Scriptures themselves, declare that the supreme judge is not the Pope, not the councils of the church, not the learned divines of any age, not the inward impressions of any private spirit. It is the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture. This is the doctrine that brings the first chapter of the Westminster Confession to its close. We have learned that Scripture is necessary, that the canon is fixed at sixty-six books, that the Apocrypha has no place in it, and that its authority rests not on the church but on God its author. We have examined the inward witness of the Spirit, the sufficiency of the whole counsel of God, and the clarity of the sacred page for all who use the ordinary means. We have traced the transmission of the text in the original languages and the glorious work of translation into every tongue, and we have considered the self-interpreting character of the Word. Now we come to the capstone: Scripture as the supreme tribunal before which every claim to truth must be tested, the voice of the Spirit from which there is no appeal. This is not an academic point to be filed away in a confessional document. It is the spiritual charter of every believer's liberty of conscience before God, the foundation of every pulpit's authority and the limit of every synod's power. It is the ground upon which the martyrs stood. And it speaks to you, dear hearer, in the quiet of your own chamber, as you open the Book and listen for the voice of God.

Scripture Foundation

The pattern of the apostolic church, recorded in the book of Acts, gives us the clearest biblical precedent for the principle the Confession now declares. When the first great theological controversy threatened to divide the church — the question of whether Gentile converts must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses — the apostles and elders gathered in Jerusalem to consider the matter. There was disputing. Peter rose and testified of his experience with Cornelius. Paul and Barnabas reported what God had done among the Gentiles. Arguments were made, testimonies were heard, and then James, the brother of our Lord, rose to settle the matter. His words, recorded in Acts 15:15-17, reveal the ultimate ground of the apostolic decision: "And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: that the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things." The Greek is instructive: touto sumphonousin hoi logoi ton propheton — "with this the words of the prophets are in harmony." The verb sumphoneo, from which we take our English "symphony," means to sound together, to be in accord. James is not claiming a private revelation or the authority of his apostolic office as sufficient in itself. He is pointing to what is written. The words of the prophets, sacred Scripture set down centuries before, are the standard against which apostolic testimony is measured. James speaks not as the president of a self-authenticating council but as a servant of the Word who has found the resolution of the controversy in the Scriptures themselves. The apostolic church knew no supreme judge but the Spirit speaking in the Word. This is the consistent pattern of our Lord's own ministry. When confronted with controversies over divorce, the resurrection, and the authority of tradition, His invariable response was to appeal to the Scriptures. In Matthew 22:29, He rebukes the Sadducees: "Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God." The Greek word planasthe means you are being led astray, wandering from the path. And what would bring them back? Not the decrees of the Sanhedrin or a fresh word from heaven, but the Scriptures. If they had known the Scriptures, they would not have erred. The implication is weighty: the Scriptures are the sufficient remedy for doctrinal error, and ignorance of them is the mother of heresy. Already in the Old Testament, the principle was firmly established. The prophet Isaiah, living in an age of political turmoil and religious syncretism, gave the definitive word in Isaiah 8:20: "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." The people of God were tempted to seek guidance from mediums and wizards, from the political alliances of Egypt and Assyria, from the new religious fashions of the surrounding nations. Isaiah's rebuke is stark and absolute: Latorah velit'udah — to the instruction and to the testimony. The law is the Torah of Moses; the testimony is the prophetic witness. Together they constitute the touchstone by which every claim to spiritual truth is judged. Anything that does not accord with this written revelation has no light in it. The Hebrew shachar means dawn, the promise of illumination. A teaching that contradicts the written Word brings no dawn; it remains in darkness, and those who follow it walk in darkness still. The Apostle Peter, near the end of his life, gave the church a final exhortation that summarises the whole Reformed doctrine of the supreme judge. In 2 Peter 1:19, he writes: "We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts." Peter had been an eyewitness of Christ's majesty on the Mount of Transfiguration, hearing the voice from the excellent glory. And yet he says we have something more sure than his own eyewitness testimony: the prophetic word, the written Scriptures. The Greek is bebaioteron, the comparative form: more firm, more certain, more reliable. If an apostle's firsthand experience of the transfigured Christ takes second place to the written Word, how much more should the decrees of councils and the inward promptings of private spirits take second place to it? The Apostle Peter likewise grounds the ministry of the Word in this principle. In 1 Peter 4:11 he commands: "If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God." The Greek word logia, oracles, carries a sacred weight. In the ancient world, an oracle was a divine utterance, a direct communication from a deity through a chosen medium. Peter applies this word to the Scriptures and commands that every Christian speaker — preacher, teacher, exhorter — is to speak as though delivering the oracles of God, not mingling them with human opinions or supplementing them with private revelations. This implies, of necessity, that the oracles of God are the standard by which all speaking is measured. The test is not the speaker's sincerity or eloquence but whether the speaking conforms to what God has already spoken in the Scriptures. Our Lord Jesus Christ, in His high priestly prayer on the night of His betrayal, gave us the foundation for this entire doctrine in a single phrase. In John 17:17, He prays: "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." The article is definite: ho logos ho sos aletheia estin — the word, the one that is thine, is truth. Not contains truth. Not points toward truth. Not becomes truth when illuminated by the Spirit in the heart of the believer. Is truth. Because the Word is truth in its very essence, it is the final standard by which all claims to truth are measured. And because it is God's Word — the Word that is thine, proceeding from the Father — to appeal beyond it is to appeal beyond God Himself. When the Spirit speaks in the Scripture, the triune God speaks. No authority in heaven or on earth can overturn that sentence. Finally, our Lord's command in John 5:39 stands as a perpetual summons: "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me." The Greek eraunate is an imperative of strenuous effort: search, investigate, examine with care. Christ directs the scholars of Israel to the Scriptures themselves, not to the oral traditions of the elders or the rulings of the Sanhedrin. Why? Because the Scriptures testify of Him. To subordinate the Scriptures to any human authority is to place that authority between the soul and Christ. And the Spirit who inspired those Scriptures, as Christ promised in John 16:13, "will guide you into all truth" — not by speaking independently of the Word, but by opening that Word to the understanding. The Spirit and the Word are never in competition, for the Spirit is the author of the Word. When He speaks in the Scripture, His judgment is final, and from it there is no appeal.

What the Divines Meant

The Westminster Assembly convened in 1643, in the midst of the English Civil War, to reform the doctrine, worship, and government of the Church of England. The men who gathered in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey were among the most learned theologians the English-speaking world has ever produced, pastors and scholars who had seen what happens when the supreme judge in religion is misplaced. They had seen the consequences when the Pope claimed to be the supreme judge. Rome had taught, and at Trent had reaffirmed, that unwritten traditions possessed equal authority with Scripture and that the Church, meaning the Pope and bishops, was the infallible interpreter of both. The effect was that Scripture was placed under the custody of a human institution that could define its meaning at will. The Divines, with the whole Reformation, rejected this as a usurpation of the Spirit's authority. The Pope is not the supreme judge, nor the Roman magisterium, nor the supposed unanimous consent of the fathers. All human authorities may err and have erred. Only the Spirit speaking in the Word is infallible. They had also seen the opposite error in the radical wing of the Reformation. The Anabaptists, the Enthusiasts, the Quakers, and various other sects claimed that the Spirit spoke directly to the individual believer, in revelations and inward promptings that were independent of the written Word and often in contradiction to it. One claimed the Spirit told him to abolish civil government. Another claimed the Spirit revealed that the soul slept between death and resurrection. Another claimed the Spirit taught him that the Scriptures themselves were a dead letter, superseded by the living voice within. The results were chaos, fanaticism, and the fragmentation of the church into a thousand warring sects, each claiming the Spirit for itself while rejecting the objective standard by which the Spirit had bound Himself to speak. The Divines, drawing on Calvin's decisive argument against the enthusiasts, insisted that the Spirit is not separated from His Word. The Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture is the supreme judge: not the Holy Spirit speaking apart from it, not the Holy Spirit adding to it, not the Holy Spirit contradicting it. The Spirit and the Word are joined by a bond that cannot be broken, because the Spirit is the author of the Word and will never contradict Himself. The careful language of the Confession reveals the precision of the Divines' thought. The supreme judge "can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture." Not the Scripture alone, as if the book were a dead letter. Not the Spirit alone, as if He spoke without the objective control of the written Word. But the Spirit speaking in the Scripture: the living God addressing His people through the living and abiding Word He has inspired. The Spirit is the judge, but He exercises His judgment through the instrument of the written Word. This is why the Divines placed this section after the inward witness, the sufficiency, the clarity, the original languages, and the self-interpreting character of Scripture. All those doctrines lead to this one: because Scripture is inspired, sufficient, clear, preserved, translated, and self-interpreting, it can function as the supreme court from which there is no appeal. The four categories of things that are to be examined by this supreme judge are comprehensive and deliberate. "All controversies of religion" — every disputed point of doctrine, every contested practice, every question over which Christians have divided. "All decrees of councils" — including the decrees of Nicaea, Chalcedon, Trent, and the Westminster Assembly itself. No council is above Scripture; every council stands under its judgment. "Opinions of ancient writers" — the church fathers, the doctors of the church, Augustine, Chrysostom, Aquinas. However venerable, however brilliant, however orthodox in the main, their opinions are subject to the judgment of the Word. "Doctrines of men" — the teaching of any merely human authority, whether Pope or presbyter, whether ancient or modern. "And private spirits" — the inward promptings, the supposed revelations, the charismatic utterances, the inner light claimed by individuals or movements. All of it, without exception, must be brought before the bar of Scripture. The final phrase is heavy with pastoral care: "in whose sentence we are to rest." The purpose of having a supreme judge is not endless litigation but final resolution. The Divines are teaching what the Reformed scholastics would later call ultimum refugium: the final refuge, the court beyond which there is no appeal. Controversies are not to be perpetually reopened. The conscience is not to be kept in perpetual uncertainty. There is a place to rest. The Divines did not mean that every doctrinal question has been resolved to the satisfaction of every inquirer; they knew that in this life we see through a glass darkly. But they meant that the authority of Scripture is final even where our understanding is partial. When the Spirit has spoken in the Word — clearly, repeatedly, unanimously across the canon — the believer may rest. There is no higher court. There is no further appeal. The matter is settled, not because we have exhausted its depths, but because God has spoken, and the servant of God may safely rest in what his Master has said.

Theological Depth

John Calvin, in the opening book of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, gives the classic Reformed exposition of this principle, contending on two fronts at once. Against Rome, he argues that the church cannot be the final authority because the church itself is founded on the Word. "A most pernicious error has very generally prevailed," he writes, "that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the suffrages of the church; as though the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended on the decision of men." The church recognizes Scripture as a judge recognizes the law under which he himself stands; the church does not confer authority upon Scripture but receives authority from it. Against the enthusiasts, Calvin is equally firm. He describes those who "boast of the Spirit" while neglecting the Word as "labouring under a sort of insanity." The Spirit who inspired the Scriptures does not operate independently of them, leading believers to despise the written Word in favour of private revelations. "The office of the Spirit which is promised to us," Calvin insists, "is not to feign new and unheard-of revelations, or to coin a new form of doctrine by which we may be led away from the received doctrine of the gospel, but to seal to our minds that very doctrine which the gospel recommends." The Spirit illumines the Word; He does not supplement it, much less supplant it. Calvin's formulation became the standard Reformed position: the same Spirit who is the author of Scripture is also its interpreter, but He interprets it in and through the Scripture itself, never in opposition to it. This carries a practical consequence every believer must face. If the Spirit spoke independently of the Word, how could any believer distinguish a true inward impression from imagination? But because the Spirit has bound Himself to the Word, every claim, even those arising within the heart, can be tested by the objective standard of what is written. The Spirit speaking in the heart is always to be tested by the Spirit speaking in the Scripture. The internal must bow to the external, not because the Spirit is divided, but because He has established this order for the protection of His people. A. A. Hodge, in his commentary on the Westminster Confession, expands upon the corporate dimension of this doctrine. He notes that the supreme judge is the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture, and the Spirit speaks to the whole church, not to isolated individuals. "The Scriptures," Hodge writes, "are addressed to the Church as the witness and depository of the truth." This does not mean the church possesses authority over the Scriptures but that the church is the community within which the Scriptures are read and understood. Individual interpretations are to be tested not only against Scripture but against the accumulated wisdom of the church as expressed in its creeds and confessions, not because creeds are infallible, but because they represent the church's best efforts to summarise what the Spirit has spoken. A private interpretation that overturns the consensus of the whole church through all ages should give every believer serious pause. The Spirit speaks in the whole body of the Word, read and understood by the whole body of the church, under the illumination of the same Spirit who dwells in them all. Francis Turretin, in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology, treats the question of the supreme judge with characteristic clarity. He frames the issue as a contest between four claims: the Roman Catholic claim of the Pope or Pope in council, the Socinian claim of human reason, the Enthusiast claim of the inner light, and the Reformed claim of the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures. None of the first three, Turretin demonstrates, can meet the essential criteria of a supreme judge. A supreme judge, Turretin argues, must be infallible. Popes, councils, human reason, and private revelations have all demonstrably erred. The Reformed tradition would later encapsulate this truth in the lapidary Latin phrase norma normans non normata: the rule that rules and is not ruled, the standard that measures all others and is itself measured by none. The Pope has erred: Honorius was condemned as a heretic. Councils have erred: Ariminum upheld Arianism. Human reason contradicts itself across centuries, and private revelations are untestable and conflict with each other. Only the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture meets the criteria: infallible because the Spirit of truth cannot err, public because written in a book all may consult, accessible because translated into every tongue, and final because the Spirit speaking in the Word is God Himself speaking. Thomas Watson, always the pastoral voice among the Puritans, applies this doctrine to the individual believer with memorable force. In his Body of Divinity, he asks: what use should the Christian make of this truth that the Spirit speaking in the Scripture is the supreme judge? His answer cuts against the natural pride of the human heart. "It calls us to bring every opinion, every scruple, every case of conscience, to the touchstone of the Scripture." Watson does not exempt his own cherished beliefs, his own long-held traditions, his own comfortable assumptions. Everything must be brought to the bar. And this requires a willingness to be corrected. "A humble Christian will not be ashamed to confess that he has been mistaken. It is a greater honour to be led by the Scripture than to lead the Scripture." Here is the practical test of whether the Spirit speaking in the Scripture is truly the supreme judge of your soul. When you open the Word and find that it contradicts something you have long believed or a practice you have long followed, what do you do? Do you bend the Scripture to fit your belief, or do you bend your belief to fit the Scripture? The former is the practice of every heretic; the latter is the practice of every saint. Benjamin B. Warfield, writing at the height of the modernist controversy, brought the Westminster principle to bear upon a new threat: the claim that critical scholarship had the right to judge the Scriptures. Warfield insisted that this reversed the proper order. "The Scriptures are not to be judged by the canons of modern science," he argued. "On the contrary, the Scriptures themselves are the canon — the measuring rod — by which all other claims to truth are to be measured." This was not obscurantism; Warfield was himself a careful scholar who used every legitimate tool of historical and linguistic study. But he insisted that the scholar, like every other Christian, sits under the Word, not over it. The Supreme Court does not stand in the dock. When the Word has spoken, scholarship must bow, not because scholarship is worthless, but because God is greater than man, and the Spirit's speech is the final word. Robert Shaw, in his Exposition of the Westminster Confession, draws out the ecclesiastical implications. If the Spirit speaking in Scripture is the supreme judge, then synods and councils, including the Westminster Assembly itself, are not legislative bodies that make new law for the church but ministerial bodies charged with interpreting and applying the law God has already given. Their decrees bind the conscience only insofar as they are consonant with the Word. The moment a church court goes beyond or contradicts Scripture, its authority evaporates. This is the theological foundation for the liberty of conscience the Confession will later expound. The Christian is free from the commandments of men precisely because the Christian is bound to the commandment of God in Scripture. True liberty is not the absence of a supreme judge; it is the right to appeal from every human judge to the one Judge whose decision is final.

Puritan Application

First, examine the court of final appeal in your own soul. Every man and woman has a supreme judge: some authority to which they ultimately submit. For some, it is tradition: "This is what my church has always taught." For others, it is reason: "I will accept only what makes sense to me." For still others, it is experience: "I know what I have felt." For many in our age, it is the shifting consensus of the culture. The Westminster Divines call you to examine that court. Is your supreme judge infallible? Has tradition never erred? Has reason never contradicted itself? Has experience never deceived? There is only one Judge whose decisions are always right and from whose sentence there is no appeal. Settle it in your heart this day: the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture shall be the last word in every controversy. Let every other voice be heard — tradition, reason, experience, the counsel of the godly — but let none of them have the last word. Reserve that for God alone, speaking where He has promised to speak: in the sacred page. Second, test every sermon, book, and teaching you receive by the touchstone of the Word. The Apostle John commands, "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God." How are you to try them? Not by the speaker's eloquence, popularity, or ability to stir your feelings. The touchstone is the Word. Does the teaching accord with what the Spirit has already spoken in the Scriptures? The Bereans were more noble precisely because they received apostolic preaching with readiness of mind and then searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Even Paul's preaching was tested against the written Word; how much more the teaching you hear from your own pastor or read in the latest Christian bestseller? Make this your inviolable practice: nothing is believed until it has been weighed in the balances of the sanctuary and not found wanting. Third, do not separate the Spirit from the Word. There is a strain of piety in every age that exalts the Spirit at the expense of the Scripture, that seeks direct revelations, fresh words, spontaneous leadings, prophetic impressions, while neglecting the daily discipline of reading and meditating upon the written Word. This is a dangerous error, however sincerely it is held. The Spirit has chosen to bind Himself to the Word He inspired. He will not be separated from it. To seek the Spirit's guidance while neglecting the Scriptures is like a sailor who throws away his chart and compass and claims to be guided by the stars. The stars are there, but without the means God has appointed to read them, he will certainly be lost. The Spirit who dwells in you is the same Spirit who breathed out the Scriptures. He will guide you, but He will guide you into, not away from, His own Word. The inward illumination of which the Confession speaks in Sections 5 and 6 does not replace the outward Word but opens the eyes to see what is already there. If you would hear the Spirit's voice, open the Book He has written. Fourth, rest in the finality of the Spirit's sentence. The Confession says we are to rest in the sentence of the supreme judge. This is pastoral comfort. There are questions to which you will never find a fully satisfying answer in this life. Why did God permit the fall? How does divine sovereignty co-exist with human responsibility? The Spirit has spoken on these matters in Scripture, enough to give light for the path, though not enough to satisfy every curiosity. But what He has spoken, He has spoken. You do not need to keep reopening the case or find a clever solution that resolves every tension. You may rest. The Judge has ruled. The fact that you cannot fully grasp the ruling does not diminish its authority. Faith rests in the word of the King, even when the reasons of the King are hidden in the unsearchable depths of His wisdom. Fifth, let this doctrine guard you against the twin errors of this age: autocratic traditionalism on one side and radical individualism on the other. The traditionalist says, "The church has always taught it; therefore it must be believed." The individualist says, "The Spirit has shown it to me; therefore it must be believed." Both errors elevate a human source above the divine source of the written Word. The Reformed faith honours the church's teaching office as a subordinate help to understanding the Word and acknowledges the Spirit's work in the believer as the necessary illuminator of the Word, but it bows the knee to neither church nor self. It bows to God alone, speaking where He has spoken, in the Book He has given. Sixth and last, let this truth fill you with holy boldness and deep humility in equal measure. Boldness, because you have a word from God that stands above every human authority. When conscience is bound by the Word, it is free from every human tyranny. You need not fear what man can do to you when you know that the Judge of all the earth has spoken, and that in His court your case is settled. This is the boldness that sent the martyrs to the stake singing psalms. It is the boldness that enabled Athanasius to stand against the world, Luther to stand against the empire, the Covenanters to stand against the crown. The Word of God is not in chains, and the man or woman whose conscience is captive to that Word is the freest soul on earth. But humility, because you do not stand over the Word as its judge; you stand under it as its servant. You are not the supreme court. Your interpretation is not infallible. Your theological system is not identical with the mind of the Spirit. There is always more light to break forth from God's Word, and the Spirit may use a brother or sister, even a brother or sister with whom you sharply disagree, to correct your understanding and conform it more closely to the text. Hold your convictions with the firmness that comes from the Word, but hold them with the humility that comes from knowing you are not the Word. The Spirit speaking in the Scripture is the supreme judge; you are only a student in His school, a servant at His table, a sheep listening for the Shepherd's voice. And there is no safer, no better, no more blessed place to be than that.

Prayer

O blessed Spirit of truth, who didst breathe out the Holy Scriptures through prophets and apostles, who didst preserve them pure through every age, and who dost open the eyes of Thy people to behold wondrous things out of Thy law: we bow before Thee as the supreme Judge of all controversies and the final authority before whom every knee must bow. We confess before Thee that we have often set up other judges in our hearts. We have submitted our consciences to the opinions of men, to the traditions of our fathers, to the dictates of our own reason, to the promptings of our own hearts, and to the spirit of the age in which we live. We have treated Thy Word as one voice among many, weighing it against human wisdom and choosing between them as though we were a higher court. Forgive us this treason against Thy majesty. Teach us that Thy sentence is final and that to appeal beyond it is to appeal beyond God. Grant us, we pray, the Berean nobility of mind, that we may receive the preaching of Thy Word with all readiness and yet test every word by the Scriptures. Grant us the Berean diligence, that we may search the Scriptures daily, not in the spirit of proud criticism, but in the spirit of humble submission. Grant us the Berean discernment, that we may distinguish between the voice of the Shepherd and the voice of strangers, between the Spirit speaking in Scripture and the spirit of error speaking in the world. And grant us the Berean joy, that in discovering Thy truth we may discover Thy heart, and in obeying Thy precepts we may taste Thy peace. O Spirit of the living God, fall afresh upon Thy church in this generation. We are tossed by every wind of doctrine. We are divided by controversies that grieve Thy heart. We have multiplied words and diminished the Word. Raise up, we beseech Thee, a generation of preachers who will speak as the oracles of God, not mingling the chaff of human opinion with the wheat of divine truth. Raise up a generation of hearers who will judge all things by the touchstone of the Word. And raise up a generation of saints who will rest — truly rest — in what Thou hast spoken, ceasing from the endless striving of theological combat and finding in Thy Word the Sabbath rest of the soul. We ask these things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the living Word made flesh, to whom all the Scriptures bear witness, and in whom all the promises of God are yea and amen. To Him, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be all glory and dominion, now and forever. Amen.