§ 31. (2) Bellarmine declares:
Question 3: Whether the evangelists and apostles had a mandate to write.
§ 23. (III) The question arises: Did the apostles and evangelists in the New Testament have a mandate to write? This the Papists deny. Lindanus writes: “The nature of the Gospel word is certainly averse to writing and letters” (Panopl., bk. 1, c. 23). Bellarmine, De verbo Dei, bk. 4, c. 4, § secundo: “If Christ and the apostles had intended that the Word of God should be limited and restricted to Scripture, then especially in a matter of such great importance Christ would have commanded this clearly, and the disciples would testify elsewhere that they were writing in accordance with the Lord’s mandate, just as they taught throughout the world according to the Lord’s mandate. But nowhere do we read this.” Costerus, Enchir., p. 43: “Christ did not want His Church to depend on written pages nor was He willing to commit His mysteries to parchment.” Pistorius, Hodeget., pp. 32-33: “The apostles did not write intentionally but because of an incidental necessity … not from God’s mandate.”
§ 24. We produce the following arguments against that erroneous assertion: (1) From the divine impulse by which holy men of God were moved to write. Whoever was moved by divine impulse and inspiration to write, wrote by the mandate and will of God. The reason for this is that in holy men of God the outward command and inner impulse are on an equal level. After all, what else is that divine impulse but an inner, secret mandate of exactly the same weight and authority as the outward, obvious mandate? Even the prophets of the Old Testament did not always receive the external and express mandate to write, yet their writing is and is judged as divine writing that has been done at God’s command. Hosea 8:12: “The Lord says: ‘I have written the wonderful works of My Law for them.’ “Here He attributes to Himself the Mosaic Scripture that was done at the Lord’s impulse and inspiration. But now, the evangelists and apostles went at their writing, moved by divine impulse and inspiration.
We prove this: [a] By the testimony of Scripture. “All Scripture,” namely, all Holy Scripture, as is evident from the preceding verse, “is God-breathed,” the apostle says (2 Tim. 3:16). It is given by divine impulse and is “inspired,” so to speak. Here he is speaking not only of the books of the Old Testament but also of the writings of the New Testament, which are completely of the same genus as the former. Also, most of those New Testament writings already were in existence at that time because this second letter to Timothy is the last of all the apostolic writings and was written in AD 59.
[b] By testimonies of the fathers. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres., bk. 3, c. 1: “What the apostles first preached they later handed down to us in the Scriptures by God’s will.” Athanasius, Epistle ad Liberium, writes about Christ: “He composed the Old and New Testaments.” Epiphanius, Contra 
: “The Holy Spirit then impels Luke to bring from his innermost depths a statement to refute those who had been deceived. Finally, He moves Luke’s hand to write that which others have omitted.” Bishop Dorotheus of Tyre relates: “Luke wrote his Gospel on an order from Peter and his Acts on an order of Paul.” Yet those orders of Peter and Paul proceeded from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit because “holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21). Jerome writes about Mark that “when the brethren at Rome asked Peter for a Gospel, he approved his [Mark’s] writing, and on his authority commended it to the Church for reading” (Catalog.). In bk. 1, c. 15, Eusebius relates similar ideas from Clement of Alexandria, as we mentioned a bit earlier. Augustine, De cons. evangel., bk. 1, last chapter:
When they (the evangelists and apostles) wrote what He revealed and said, we must by no means say that He Himself did not write. After all, His members did that which they learned and their Head dictated. Whatever He wanted us to read about His words and deeds He ordered them to write as if by His own hand. Anyone understands this joint unity and harmonious ministry of members with various responsibilities under a single head. He will take what he reads in the Gospel, as Christ’s disciples tell it, in no other way than if he were seeing the writing of the Lord’s very hand that is attached to the Lord’s own body.
Eucherius, Regulae: “As to when, what sort, and by what authors Holy Scripture would be composed, these were arranged for us before time in God’s inaccessible and incomprehensible counsel.”
[c] By the testimonies of our adversaries themselves. Bellarmine, De verbo Dei, bk. 4, c. 3, § Falsum: “We do not deny that the apostles wrote what they wrote by God’s will and inspiration. It is, however, one thing to do something at God’s suggestion and inspiration but another to do it at His clear command.” And later: “Augustine speaks about an inner command by which Christ as Head invisibly moves His limbs to various actions. We ought to think of this command as a suggestion and inspiration rather than a command in the proper sense.”
In fact, however, what the prophets produced and did from divine inspiration they are considered to have produced and done in accord with the Lord’s mandate. Let this be the same judgment with regard to the apostles. According to the apostle’s passage (1 Cor. 7:25), no one should think that a distinction should be made between God’s mandate and His inspiration. Note what the apostle says about a certain general command that obligates all virgins: that God expressly and specifically has promulgated this, and he distinguishes from this his own opinion, which was prudently applied to the condition of those times and people. Therefore the conclusion stands firm that the evangelists and apostles wrote at God’s mandate and will.
§ 25. (2) We argue from Christ’s command to the apostles to “teach all nations” (Matt. 28:19). The apostles are commanded to teach all nations; they also are ordered to put their instruction in writing, for they could not orally teach all nations in the times to come without writing. But now, the apostles are commanded to “teach all nations” not only of that time but also of the time to come, as is evident from the promise added: “And, lo, I am with you always, to the consummation of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Therefore.
Someone may say, “If it could be proved from these words of Christ that the apostles had been given a mandate to write, the consequence would be that they all ought to have written because they all received this mandate equally.” We respond. This mandate was given to the entire college of apostles, the venerable Twelve. Therefore it is enough that some of them wrote; the others confirmed their writings with their assent, and they sent their hearers to those writings. The mandate to preach pertained not only to all of them but also to each of them. But the mandate to write was given merely to be performed by certain ones because it was unnecessary for each and every one to write. This is something they could have known by the peculiar impulse of God and the familiar conversation of the Holy Spirit.
§ 26. (3) We argue from the office of the apostles. Their office is to witness about Christ the Savior not only with oral preaching but also in writing. Their writing began as a result of a divine mandate. The reason is that if the writing were not divine and were not made from a divine mandate, surely their witness could not be divine. We should not listen to a witness whose testimony is not requested at a trial. But now, the apostles did witness and should have witnessed about Christ not only with their oral preaching but also with their writing. John 15:27: “You also shall bear witness of Me.” Acts 1:8: “You shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 10:40-42: “God made Him manifest … to us who were prechosen by God as witnesses … and He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify.”
Now how did the apostles testify about Christ? The emphasis of the scriptural statements answers whether it was only with their preaching alone or also with their writing. John 21:24: “This is that disciple who is bearing witness to these things and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true.” Rev. 1:2-3: “John bore witness to the Word of God and to the testimony of Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is he who hears and reads the words of this prophecy.” We must take special note of the remarkable passage 1 John 1:3-4 where the three parts of the apostolic office are listed: first, to see and to hear; second, to proclaim; and third, in addition, to write. There, Scripture’s end is also added, which confirms its divine origin: “That which we have seen and heard we also proclaim to you … and we are writing this that your joy may be full.”
§ 27. (4) We argue from the specific command to write. John received divinely an express and specific mandate to write. Therefore it is impossible to deny that at least one of the apostles wrote by mandate. Rev. 1:11: “What you see, write in a book ….” Rev. 1:19: “Write what you have seen.” Rev. 2:1: “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write ….” Rev. 2:8: “And to the angel of the Church in Smyrna write ….” The same command is repeated in Rev. 2:12, 18; 3:1, 7, 14; 14:13; 19:9; 21:5. But now in this work of writing, John and the other writers of the New Testament are of like kind because they all wrote by divine inspiration, which is equated here with an express and explicit command.
Bellarmine makes the exception: “John was ordered to write certain secret visions, not the teaching of the Gospel and precepts for behavior” (De verbo Dei, bk. 4, c. 3). We respond. This, too, is a false and inappropriate exception. The former is evident from the cited passages of Revelation in which, by divine mandate, John wrote to the bishops in Asia not only some “secret visions” but also things that pertain most especially to the teaching of the Gospel and precepts for behavior. The latter we show in this way. We make the same judgment concerning similar matters and matters of the same genus. Up to now, however, divine visions and the teaching of the New Testament are of the same kind: both have their origin in divine revelation, and the apostles preached and wrote both at the Holy Spirit’s impulse. Therefore the judgment about both should be the same. Concerning the writings of the prophets, it is not possible to show with respect to specific parts and sections that they wrote them at an express divine mandate. Nevertheless because there do exist general commands and testimonies concerning their writings, therefore it is correct to judge that each and every part of their writings was published by divine mandate. Why, then, shall we be afraid to declare the same thing about the entire Book of Revelation and, in fact, about each and every book of the New Testament? If John had received a mandate to record only his visions, he surely would have reported in the writing of Revelation nothing pertaining to the teaching of the Gospel and precepts for behavior, lest he pass beyond the limits of his divinely received command.
§ 28. (5) We argue from the approval of the Holy spirit. Whatever writing the Holy Spirit has explicitly approved can be nothing other than divine and from a divine mandate, since what the Holy Spirit approves is in conformity with the divine will and mandate. But now the Holy Spirit has explicitly approved the writing of the apostles both in the synodical letter of Acts 15:28 that marked the beginning of writing in the New Testament—in which the apostles say explicitly, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and us”—as well as by the miracles the apostles performed. You see, the Holy Spirit confirmed their writing with the same miracles with which He confirmed their preaching. If a prince stamps his seal on a letter, he confirms the writing of the letter, and he is judged to have ordered what the letter contains. But the seal of miracles is added to the writing of the apostles (2 Cor. 12:12; Heb. 2:4; etc.). Therefore that writing has divine confirmation.
Christ’s command about “searching the Scriptures” (John 5:39) can be referred to this. This command applies generally to the writings of both the Old and the New Testaments, for both are witnesses to Christ. Likewise, the apostolic command “Give attendance to reading” (1 Tim. 4:13) refers to this because it, too, applies to the books of both the Old and the New Testaments.
§ 29. (6) We argue from a deduction to the absurd. If the evangelists and apostles had written without a divine mandate, their Scripture would not be divine. After all, whatever lacks a divine mandate cannot be considered divine since that alone pleases God and has His approval which is in conformity with His command. Finally, what sort of people would the apostles be if they wrote their literature in God’s name without God’s mandate? Whoever writes letters in the prince’s name without his command is guilty of the charge of lèse-majesté. The apostles were “God’s ambassadors” (2 Cor. 5:20). In whatever way, then, that they revealed God’s will—whether by preaching or writing—we must judge that they did this by the command and authority and in the name of the one who sent them as His ambassadors. Just as “holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21), so also they wrote at His direction and impulse. Whoever stubbornly denies this destroys the divine authority of Scripture, at least indirectly if not directly.
** Theophylact, preface to Matthew: “Because God, the lover of man, gave the Scriptures in the Old Testament, it pleased Him also to write the Gospels in the New.” **
§ 30. The arguments of the Papists have a simple explanation if we observe the distinction we made earlier between the external and internal mandate. (1) Bellarmine (loc. cit.) brings out the following:
The apostles did not await an opportunity or necessity to be offered for preaching orally but went at it voluntarily and by their own intent. On the other hand, they applied their mind to write when they were compelled by a certain necessity. Matthew wrote under the circumstance that, as he was about to go off to the Gentiles, he wanted to leave the Jews a reminder of his teaching. Mark wrote his Gospel compelled by the requests of the Romans. Luke wrote to repress the uncertain accounts of others. John wrote his Gospel because of the developing heresy of the Ebionites. Therefore their primary intent was not to write but to preach, and they did not receive a command to write.
We respond. [a] If the apostles “applied their mind to write when they were compelled by a certain necessity,” as Bellarmine asserts, then they surely believed that their writings were necessary, which Bellarmine nevertheless denies (De verbo Dei, bk. 4, c. 4). [b] The opportunities for writing that were given externally to the apostles do not remove the inner mandate to write; instead, they provide it with a foundation because it was a miraculous disposition of divine providence that offered those opportunities to the apostles. Later, an inner impulse of the Holy Spirit came to those occasions and moved them to apply their hand to writing. [c] Occasions of this sort occur elsewhere in the very preaching of the apostles. In Acts 17:16, when Paul was waiting in Athens for Silas and Timothy, “his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was filled with idols.” Compare this with the entire account of the Acts of the Apostles. But now Bellarmine concedes that the apostles preached at God’s mandate. Therefore we must recognize that occasions for writing do not at all conflict with a mandate to write. [d] What the Church at that time sought from the evangelists and apostles was in conformity with the divine will. Therefore we must believe that God willed this.
§ 31. (2) Bellarmine declares:
If the disciples had intentionally wished to put their teaching in writing, they surely would have written a catechism or similar book. However, they wrote either history, as did the evangelists, or epistles out of some situation, as did Peter, Paul, James, Jude, and John. In their letters they treated arguments about doctrine only in passing. Finally, either each apostle would have published written doctrine, because each had the care of a particular area, or at least they would have gathered together before they departed for their own provinces and would have published a book in common, just as it is evident that they composed the symbol of the faith [i.e., the Creed] in common.
We respond. All this does not yet prove that the apostles published the Scriptures without a divine command. [a] The apostles wanted and had to write down the words and acts of Christ, not to hand down a catechism. But all the articles of the Christian faith are set forth in those discourses of Christ. This is clear from Cent. 1. Magdeburg. and Wigand’s syntagma. [b] The apostles never treat the great articles of faith merely in passing as in a parody, but intentionally, as we can prove by induction. Paul explains the article on justification fundamentally in the Epistles to the Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians; the article on the Eucharist in 1 Corinthians 10-11; the article on Christ’s and our resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15; etc. [c] It was not necessary for each apostle or for all of them to publish a book in common as they put their instruction into writing, because whatever all and every one of them taught conformed exactly to one another’s instruction; and what one of them wrote, he wrote in the name of them all. John approved of the writings of the rest of the apostles and collected the canonical writings of the New Testament, according to Eusebius (Hist. eccles., bk. 3, c. 24), Epiphanius (Haeres. 51, contra 
), and others. [d] The Apostles’ Creed is much like a catechism. Yet that entire creed is contained in the apostolic writings. Augustine, De symb., bk. 1: “The words that you have heard are strewn throughout the divine Scriptures.” Therefore one could not be longing still for a catechism written by the apostles.
§ 32. (3) Andrada, Lindanus, and Costerus relate the prophet’s statement “I shall put My Law in their hearts, and I shall write it upon their interior” (Jer. 31:33) to that of the apostle: “You are our epistle, written by us not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on fleshly tablets of the heart” (2 Cor. 3:3). From this they conclude that “Christ did not want His Church to depend on written pages nor did He wish to entrust His mysteries to parchments.” Bellarmine softens this crude declaration as follows: “We say that the New Testament especially ought to be written in the heart, and it does not demand as necessary that it be written in books.”
We respond. [a] Under the word “Scripture”—for which the Schwenckfeldians contemptuously use the expression “books of parchment and paper”—we include not only the external forms and shapes of letters but also the things [res] signified by the letters, that is, the very Word of God and the divine revelation, shaped and expressed in external characters, as we said in the section on homonyms. But now those “things” or heavenly instruction set forth in the Scriptures are constituted in such a way that in essence they differ not at all from that inner writing which the Holy Spirit has done in the hearts of humans. This is because the Holy Spirit also wanted the same mysteries that He writes in the heart of the Church or the hearts of believers to be written also in letters (John 20:31; Rom. 1:16; etc.). Also, He has clearly commanded the Church to depend on that writing (Deut. 4:2; Isa. 8:20; Luke 16:29; John 5:39; 2 Pet. 1:19).
[b] The prophet’s statement deals with the difference between the Old and New Testaments. The former contains the teaching of the Commandments written on tablets of stone, by which hearts are not renewed inwardly. The latter, on the other hand, contains the promise of grace that gives the Holy Spirit, who regenerates and renews hearts. However, one cannot infer from this that the teaching of the New Testament ought not be committed to writing.
[c] What kind of logical conclusion is this? In the New Testament, through the work of renewal and regeneration, God writes the Law in the hearts of believers. Therefore the apostles did not have a mandate to write? Or therefore the Church does not depend on the books of the prophets and apostles? It is by no means mutually exclusive to hold that God through the Holy Spirit as His salutary “finger” (Matt. 12:[28]; Luke 11:20) writes the word of the Gospel in the hearts of men and that He inscribes the same word on parchment or paper through His apostles as His amanuenses; instead, these can correctly support each other. This is especially true because, after the New Testament Scripture was published, God by no means wished to deal with us immediately but to renew us and inscribe His Law in our hearts mediately through His Word comprehended in the books of the prophets and apostles.
** Jerome, commentary [on Jer. 31:33]: “Now, after the cross, resurrection, and ascension, He promises in the Gospel to give His covenant not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Because the covenant of the Lord has been written in believers’ minds—that He is their God and they are His people—they should by no means seek Jewish teachers and traditions nor the commandments of men but be taught by the Holy Spirit, if they deserve to hear, ‘You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you.’ Moreover, the Spirit breathes where He will and has diverse graces.” **
[d] The metaphoric mode of writing does not remove but rather presupposes the proper mode of writing. Nor can the diversity of things [res] that have been written be overthrown by a diverse mode of writing.
[e] If the meaning of the prophet’s statement were that the teaching of the New Testament should not be put in writing, why would the apostles have wanted to put it in writing? Either one will have to deny that those New Testament books are divine and apostolic—that is, that they were written by the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit—or he will have to concede that such external writing of the apostles does not at all conflict with the internal and spiritual writing that the prophet is mentioning.
[f] The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews—in the middle of his writing (8:10), as he is committing the teaching of the New Testament to writing—quotes that statement of Jeremiah. Paul already had written both letters to the Thessalonians and the first to the Corinthians when he said, “You are a letter … written not with ink but with the Spirit.” However, he was not teaching that point orally but was writing it. From these statements, then, one can draw no conclusion against an external writing.
[g] The meaning of the apostle’s statement is clear from the context. False teachers were trying to creep in among the Corinthians with letters of commendation. Paul, however, says that he does not need such letters because the Corinthians themselves stand as his living letter, about whom the effect itself—the work of conversion—was bearing witness that they had been faithfully established in the doctrine of the Gospel by Paul. It is in this sense that he calls them his “letter” (v. [2]), namely, with respect to his ministry and the instrumental cause; and “a letter from Christ” (v. 3), namely, with respect to the principal cause and object, that is, the doctrine of Christ.
Cornelius à Lapide, commentary on this passage: “You, O Corinthians, by my effort have become for me like a letter of recommendation, read and understood by all. I show this letter as my recommendation to whomever I will. Just as a work recommends its artist and as the seal of a sealed document creates a trust, so you, as a letter of recommendation that you have signed, recommend me.” Again:
“You who were converted by me have been indelibly inscribed and engraved in my mind,” where it is known that Paul wrote this letter twice. First, he wrote it in them when he sowed and inscribed faith and the Spirit of Christ in the mind of the Corinthians. Second, he wrote and imprinted the same letter in his own heart through his concern and love for them. Third, “you are also examples of Christ in whose hearts Christ has been inscribed by my ministry as if by a pen. And Christ Himself has inscribed in them through me and my preaching His faith, hope, love, and other gifts, not with ink but with the Holy Spirit.”
But how will one now be able to infer from this either that the apostles had no mandate to write or that the internal spiritual writing excludes the external writing of the apostles or that the Scriptures of the New Testament were unnecessary or that the apostles wrote one teaching in the hearts of the Corinthians and another on paper?
2 That is, necessary given some condition or supposition—in this case, given man’s corruption. This does not mean “necessary in some imaginary situation.” It is still a real necessity.