"That's the OLD Testament!" I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone object to a biblical doctrine simply because it is predominant in the Old Testament. I came across this yesterday while doing some reading:
Objection: That’s the Old Testament.
Solution: What, are the Damned Manichees again raised from Hell? Shall we again be haunted with the Ghosts of the old Heresies, sentenced to the bottomless Pit, one thousand four hundred years ago, for rejecting the Old Testament?
2. Do you hold the New Testament to be in force? You must then receive the Old. The New Testament is not to be received but as it agrees with the Old. Christ bids, Search the Scripture, John 5:39, 46, meaning the Old Testament, which then was only written; he saith, Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me. He that refuses the Old Testament, where his lust serves him, will do as much for the New. The Evangelists writing of Christ that we might believe on him, runs thus; this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was written. The Apostles in their Epistles confirm all they say in matters of faith, and holy life out of the Old Testament: as to instance two or three places for all, the great point of faith, in 1 Peter 2: 4, 5, 6, 7, the great point of holiness of life, in 1 Peter 1:15, 16, the great duty of obedience to parents, in Ephesians 6:1, 2, 3, read the texts. The Scripture of the Old Testament will furnish a Minister of the New Testament, the man of God, and make him absolute, 2 Timothy 3:15, 16, 17. It is for every Christian a more sure word, 2 Peter 1:19, 21, than voices from Heaven; it is a light that shineth in the dark, until Christ the Daystar dawn in the heart of him that takes heed to it.
-- Richard Byfield, A Short Treatise Describing the True Church of Christ and the Evils of Schism, Anabaptism, and Libertinism, etc. (1653), Page 22.
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