"Compare Scripture with Scripture. False doctrines, like false witnesses, agree not among themselves"
About this Quote
A Puritan doesn’t waste time flirting with ambiguity, and Gurnall’s line has the clean snap of a courtroom objection. “Compare Scripture with Scripture” is both method and warning: don’t build doctrine off a single shiny verse plucked from its neighbors. Read across the whole canon, test one passage against another, and let internal coherence do the policing. The point isn’t literary harmony for its own sake; it’s epistemology. In a world where religious authority is contested, consistency becomes a proxy for truth.
The second sentence sharpens into polemic. “False doctrines, like false witnesses, agree not among themselves” borrows legal imagery to make heresy feel not merely mistaken but culpable. A false witness can rehearse a story, but the details betray him under cross-examination. So too with bad theology: it may sound plausible in isolation, but it frays when forced to answer the full record. Gurnall is selling a kind of doctrinal forensic science, and the implied audience is anyone tempted by novelty, charisma, or proof-texting.
Context matters: 17th-century England is a battlefield of sermons, sects, and civil upheaval, where competing interpreters all claim the Bible’s backing. Gurnall’s move is conservative but also strategically democratic. He shifts authority away from private “revelations” and toward a shared text that any literate believer can interrogate. Subtext: the Bible is its own best interpreter, and the faithful should become skilled examiners, not passive consumers of religious claims. In a polemical age, coherence isn’t just aesthetic; it’s survival.
The second sentence sharpens into polemic. “False doctrines, like false witnesses, agree not among themselves” borrows legal imagery to make heresy feel not merely mistaken but culpable. A false witness can rehearse a story, but the details betray him under cross-examination. So too with bad theology: it may sound plausible in isolation, but it frays when forced to answer the full record. Gurnall is selling a kind of doctrinal forensic science, and the implied audience is anyone tempted by novelty, charisma, or proof-texting.
Context matters: 17th-century England is a battlefield of sermons, sects, and civil upheaval, where competing interpreters all claim the Bible’s backing. Gurnall’s move is conservative but also strategically democratic. He shifts authority away from private “revelations” and toward a shared text that any literate believer can interrogate. Subtext: the Bible is its own best interpreter, and the faithful should become skilled examiners, not passive consumers of religious claims. In a polemical age, coherence isn’t just aesthetic; it’s survival.
Quote Details
| Topic | Bible |
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