Scripture's authority is sharply disputed; Rome grants God as author in itself but hangs our knowledge on the Church; ours say Scripture itself suffices

The authority of Scripture is sharply disputed between the Orthodox and the Pontificians. The question is: whence sacred Scripture has its authority. Both sides, however, understand by the authority of Scripture that dignity according to which it merits faith in everything it says in any way, and the highest obedience from faith in the things it commands and forbids.

But here the Pontificians make a distinction. They grant that Scripture in itself has its authority from nowhere else than from God; yet they contend that that authority, as it concerns us, hangs on the Church's testimony. This is their mind: that Scripture is worthy of all faith and reverence because it proceeded from God, the fountain of all truth and the supreme Lord of all; yet that one cannot know certainly and without doubt that Scripture came forth from God from any other ground than that the Church witnesses it. Thus, that Scripture is of irrefragable truth and has the highest empire over consciences comes from its having God as author; but that it is certainly acknowledged to have God as author already hangs on the Church's testimony.

But our writers do not hang the authority of sacred Scripture, either in itself or as it concerns us, on the Church's testimony and authority. For they assert that the sacred books can be acknowledged to have come forth from God from another ground than the voice of the witnessing Church; and that when the faithful receive these books as divine, they do not do so because of the Church's authority; but that Scripture itself is enough to furnish knowledge of itself.