Antiquity, providence preserving Scripture, and the sects' consensus jointly commend its authority

Besides these, many arguments can be taken toward conciliating Scripture's authority and veneration from Scripture's antiquity, from God's care in preserving it, and from the world's hatred toward it, and God's just judgment against its haters and despisers. For the books of Moses, which are as it were the basis and foundation of the whole of Scripture, are by far the most ancient of all that exist. Indeed there are no writings that equal the antiquity of Solomon and David. And yet almost the whole world long waged war against Scripture and tried to abolish it — as in Jewish times that Antiochus Epiphanes, and in Christian memory the Roman Emperors, whose power was so great and whose empire so widely extended. But as much as the world worked to abolish it, so much did God's providence watch that it should remain safe and entire hitherto.

Nor is the consensus of the nations — indeed of the various sects — of small moment in this matter. Since today three chief sects thrive, afterward subdivided into many others — namely the Jewish, the Christian, and the Mahometan — which occupy the greatest part of the world. Jews, Christians, and Mahometans all acknowledge the authority of the Old Testament. The Jews indeed reject the New Testament, but the Mahometans hold it in esteem with us, and at least venerate Christ as God's greatest Prophet. What then could compel so many peoples, disagreeing among themselves in customs and sects, and mutually pursuing one another with the keenest hatreds, to approve these books as sacred and divine, unless the force of truth itself and a certain divine efficacy?

Which arguments, although perhaps not all equally valid if taken singly by themselves, nevertheless when taken together have the greatest force toward proving Scripture's excellence and conciliating authority to it. Nay, those superior ones which we have explained more widely we judge to be such that by them Scripture's authority can validly be asserted and proved even against atheists and the profane, who can retort and oppose nothing that has any force, and whose vanity it is not hard to show.