Question II: Whether the bare letter without the Spirit's illumination leads to God — denied; first reason

Question II. Does Scripture simply — insofar as it is grasped only as letter, is an outward testimony, and is contained in outward tablets — lead to God, convert, sanctify, and make blessed without the Holy Spirit's illumination? It is denied.

I. Because if the act of conversion, sanctification, and salvation is to be attributed to bare Scripture apart from and beyond the Holy Spirit's cooperation, it follows that even the Devil himself, and those hardened with that second hardening which Calvin, that most eminent theologian, notes at Luke chapter 11 — the hardened and blasphemous, yet thoroughly practiced in the Scriptures — would be converted, sanctified, and saved. But the consequent is absurd. Therefore so is the antecedent. The reason of the consequence is this: because the Devil and the ungodly no less than godly people possess, teach, and dispute from Scripture simply as it stands in the letters, without the Holy Spirit's cooperation (Matthew 4:6); they abound in dogmatic faith, yet tremble (James 2:19).