hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful" (1 Cor. vii:25), and so on
in many other passages. (8) We must also remark that in the aforesaid
chapter the Apostle says that when he states that he has or has
not the precept or commandment of God, he does not mean the precept or
commandment of God revealed to himself, but only the words uttered by Christ
in His Sermon on the Mount. (9) Furthermore, if we examine the manner in
which the Apostles give out evangelical doctrine, we shall see that it
differs materially from the method adopted by the prophets. (10) The
Apostles everywhere reason as if they were arguing rather than prophesying;
the prophecies, on the other hand, contain only dogmas and commands. (11)
God is therein introduced not as speaking to reason, but as issuing decrees
by His absolute fiat. (12) The authority of the prophets does not submit to
discussion, for whosoever wishes to find rational ground for his arguments,
by that very wish submits them to everyone's private judgment. (13) This
Paul, inasmuch as he uses reason, appears to have done, for he says in 1
Cor. x:15, "I speak as to wise men, judge ye what I say." (14) The prophets,
as we showed at the end of Chapter I., did not perceive what was revealed by
virtue of their natural reason, and though there are certain passages in the
Pentateuch which seem to be appeals to induction, they turn out, on nearer
examination, to be nothing but peremptory commands. (15) For instance, when
Moses says, Deut. xxxi:27, "Behold, while I am yet alive with you, this day
ye have been rebellious against the Lord; and how much more after
my death," we must by no means conclude that Moses wished to convince the
Israelites by reason that they would necessarily fall away from the worship
of the Lord after his death; for the argument would have been false, as
Scripture itself shows: the Israelites continued faithful during the lives
of Joshua and the elders, and afterwards during the time of Samuel, David,
and Solomon. (16) Therefore the words of Moses are merely a moral
injunction, in which he predicts rhetorically the future backsliding of the
people so as to impress it vividly on their imagination. (17) I say that