Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

Let the reader observe that the opinion of these fathers is that a thing should not be believed or accepted because someone of the fathers either thought or said so, unless he proves what he says from the canonical Scriptures, that the fathers could have thought differently from what truth demands, and that we have been called by the Lord to that liberty that we may freely judge about the writings of any and all persons according to the canonical writings, and that when we disapprove of anything in the writings of the fathers which does not agree with the Scripture and reject it, this is done without rashness but by a just judgment, without injury and disgrace to the fathers, without prejudice to their honor, and with their consent, and that this is done by those who are also incomparably inferior to the fathers. - Martin Chemnitz, Examen I:261