The Holy Scripture - english version B.indd - Sabbat

Pre-Reformation Interpreters.333victorious, purer for the conflict, nobler for the victory.The truth to which these confessors witnessed sprang up again a century later,and rolled over Europe the tremendous tide of the Reformation.And whence came this testimony which no power could repress? Whencecame this testimony, trumpet-tongued, that Rome, in all its myriad-handed might,was impotent to silence or arrest? Whence came it, but from that sacred volume,writ in gloomy prisons, in lands of captivity, in scenses of exile, for the guidance,the preservation, the support of God's suffering saints and faithful witnessesin every age! Daniel the captive, Paul the prisoner, John the exile, - such were itsinspired authors ; men whose piercing vision looked down the long vista of theChurch's conflicts, marked her martyrdoms, and saw her triumphs from afar.Oh, word of divinely given prophecy! Oh, wondrousvolume, whose seven seals the Lamb has loosed and openedto meet the moral and spiritual needs of the suffering Church He loves sowell! how have your solemn utterances, your mysterioussymbols, been scanned and studied by earnest, saintly eyes! how has youbeen pondered in prisons, rememered on racks, repeated in the flames! Your textsare windows through which the light shines from the ... haven down into thedarkest depths of earth's conflicts, mysteries, and woes. Oh, sacred andsantifying truth! how have your words been watered with the tearsof suffering saints, steeped in their griefs and sorrows, and dyed in thecopious streaming of their blood! Precious are the lives which have sealedyou ; precious the truth those lives have sealed! Your words havebeen wings by which the persecuted Church has soaredfrom the wilderness and the battlefield into the pureserene of everlasting love and peace! Like a bright angel, youare heaven descended, and lead to the skies. By you has God guided to theirglorious consummation the noble army of saints, confessors, martyrs, shininground His throne like the everlasting stars. They are gone into that world of glory -forever gone ; but the light which led them there remains behind! ... but westill grasp the book they loved, which made them all they were, and all they are.You Waldenses, from the lonely, blood-stained Alps ; you nameless victims ofthe dreadful Inquisition ; you noble Protestants before the Reformation, Wicliffe,Huss, Jerome, Cobham, Savonarola, - we posses they holy pages hwich youpondered, the words of truth and life you sealed with martyr blood! Be thosewords to us what they were to you ; let them be our inspiration and our testimony,and the testimony of our children after us, till the hour when truth, emancipatedfrom all trammels, shall shine through the world in its unclouded splendour, anderror and superstition and falsehood from its presence shall forever flee away !taken from: „ROMANISM AND THE REFORMATION“ by H. Grattan Guinness, London, 1887,pp. 116-136