“No prophets or teachers ought to be counted true and faithful, except those through whom God speaks, who invent nothing themselves, who teach not according to their own fancies, but faithfully deliver what God has committed to them… A rule is prescribed to all God’s servants, that they bring not their own inventions, but simply deliver, as from hand to hand, what they have received from God… It is therefore sufficient as to the ministers of the Word, that their tongues be consecrated to God, so that they may not mix any of their own fictions with His pure doctrine.”
–John Calvin, Commentaries on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah and the Lamentations, trans. John Owen (repr. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), 1:43.
