XI. Object is the coherent biblical text; Hebrew and Greek authentic norms

XI. The object is the biblical text cohering with itself in its whole series. Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 7) calls the text the body and fabric of God's prophecy, in which, as subject-matter, words are considered, and in the words a proper or tropical signification, from which the sense is so drawn that the interpreter permits neither himself to be severed from the text, nor words from the text, nor sense from the words. Sense is one thing, signification another. The former belongs to whole utterances; the latter to single words. Sense is drawn from the nature and order of the words as they regard one another in Scripture's sayings, and is perfected by the Holy Spirit alone — whose alone is true interpretation, just as in civil law the interpretation of statutes belongs to him who constituted them.

Further: the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, furnished and corrected with Masoretic notes as preserved by us Christians in approved copies (even Jewish ones), is so free from all corruption — whether of diction and sentences or of letters and points — that it is the divine NORM, canon, and rule by which all versions in other tongues, and especially the Latin Vulgate, ought to be examined and emended. The Greek text of the New Testament, preserved in approved codices, is likewise so free from corruptions that it is the most exact norm by which all versions and interpretations ought to be examined and corrected. Glassius demonstrates this at length in Sacred Philology, Book 1, tracts 1 and 2.