Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus II (Pars Altera): Demonstratio Catholica

The Reformers, in order to vindicate for individuals the faculty of judging concerning faith, taught that a private inspiration, or subjective illumination, is granted by the Holy Spirit to each one who reads Scripture. For they said that the word of God, objectively inspired, by its inherent power, which is the power of the Holy Spirit, so illuminates each reader subjectively that they necessarily understand the genuine sense.¹

And so individual faithful are constituted judges of all dogmas and of all teachers, since they themselves immediately have God as interpreter and teacher, according to that saying of Luther: "Let everyone be the freest judge of all who teach him, taught within by God alone."²

Nevertheless, this private inspiration is refuted both by Sacred Scripture and by Protestant history.

1. Sacred Scripture. Nothing do the Protestants hold more solemnly than the assertion: that nothing is to be believed unless it is proved from Scripture. And necessarily indeed, since Scripture is for them the unique source of revealed faith, as they commonly affirm, e. g. in the „Formula concordiae" (1577): „We believe that the sacred letters alone are that unique and most certain rule, to which all dogmas must be referred, and according to which judgment must be passed on all doctrines and all teachers."³ But private inspiration cannot be proved valid by any testimony of Scripture, although the Protestants scrape together many texts of the Old and New Testament to support it.⁴

From the Old Testament they adduce the prophecies of Isaiah:⁵ „All your children shall be taught of the Lord"; of Jeremiah:⁶ „And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor ... saying: Know the Lord: for they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest, saith the Lord"; of Joel:⁷ „And it shall come to pass after this, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy." But by these prophecies it is only promised that in messianic times men will be given the perfect revelation of God — nay, that by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit even charisms will be conferred. But of private inspiration, insofar as it would explain Scripture to individual faithful to the exclusion of the authority of the Church, no mention is made.

From the New Testament they object the words of Paul: „But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God ... but the spiritual man judgeth all things; and he himself is judged of no man",⁸ and also those of John: „You have the unction from the Holy One, and know all things ... you have no need that any man teach you".⁹ By these and similar words the apostles — without speaking of a subjective inspiration granted to readers of the Scriptures — warn the faithful not to lend their ear to private teachers, but to preserve intact the faith received through the help of the apostolic magisterium. Hence, having rejected the private norm, whether written or oral, they establish as the proximate rule of faith the one magisterium of the Church.

2. Protestant history demonstrates to the eyes that that private inspiration of the Holy Spirit is defended in vain, since Protestantism abounds in dissensions and contradictions. The „inspired" men had scarcely abjured the Catholic Church when they quarreled among themselves and at different times taught different and opposed things about one and the same matter. V. g. Luther was consistent neither with Zwingli, nor with Calvin, nor with himself. In the most serious heads of doctrine a truly Babylonian confusion soon prevailed; e. g. concerning original sin sixteen, concerning justification twenty, concerning the eucharistic words „Hoc est corpus meum" two hundred opinions were put forward. There is no absurdity so impious and so monstrous that it has not been evolved out of Scripture by force of that feigned private inspiration. Scripture left to the arbitrary judgment of individuals is rightly described by the Protestant theologian Samuel Werenfels († 1740) in verses:

„This book it is, in which each one seeks his own dogmas, And likewise each one finds his own dogmas."¹⁰

And thus gradually there arose almost innumerable sects, which, while they continually changed their own doctrines,¹¹ most bitterly attacked the opinions of others, devastating England, Belgium, Germany, and Scotland with fire and sword.

Unless, therefore, you wish to call the Holy Spirit the author of these absurdities, it must be conceded that the Protestants, in explaining the Scriptures, were led not by private inspiration but by private caprice.