From History of Redemption by Jonathan Edwards, From the whole that has been said, we may strongly argue that the Scriptures are the Word of God, because they alone inform us what God aims at in His works. God doubtless is pursuing some design and carrying on some scheme in the various changes and revolutions which from age to age come to pass in the world. It is most reasonable to suppose that there is some certain great design to which Providence subordinates all great successive changes in affairs. It is reasonable to suppose that all revolutions from the beginning of the world to the end of it are but the various parts of the same scheme, all conspiring to bring to pass that great event which the great Creator and Governor of the world has ultimately in view, and that the scheme will not be finished nor the design fully accomplished and the great end and ultimate event fully brought to pass. till the end of the world and the last revolution is brought about. Now there is nothing else that informs us what this scheme and design of God in his works is but the Holy Scriptures. Nothing else pretends to set in view the whole series of God's works of providence from beginning to end and to inform us how all things were from God at first, for what end they are how they were ordered from the beginning, how they will proceed to the end of the world, what they will come to at last, and how then all things shall be to God. Nothing else but the Scriptures has any pretense for showing any manner of regular scheme or drift in those revolutions which God orders from age to age. Nothing else pretends to show what God would effect by the things which he has done, is doing and will do, what he seeks and intends by them. Nothing else pretends to show with any distinctness or certainty how the world began or to tell us the true original of things. Nothing but the scriptures set forth how God governed the world from the beginning of the generations of men upon the earth. in an orderly history, and nothing else sets before us how he will govern it to the end by an orderly prophecy of future events. Agreeable to the challenge which God makes to the gods and prophets and teachers of the heathen in Isaiah 41 verses 22 and 23, let them bring forth and show us what will happen. Let them show the former things what they be, that we may consider them and know the latter end of them, or declare us things for to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods. Reason shows that it is fit and requisite that the intelligent and rational beings of the world should know something of God's scheme and design in his works. for they doubtless are principally concerned. God's great design in his works is doubtless concerning his reasonable creatures rather than brute beasts and lifeless things. The revolutions by which God's great design is brought to pass are doubtless chiefly among them and concern their state and not the state of things without life or reason. And Therefore, surely it is requisite that they should know something of it, especially since reason teaches that God has given his rational creatures a capacity of seeing him in his works, for this end that they may see God's glory in them and give him that glory. But how can they see God's glory in his works if they do not know what his design in them is and what he aims at by what he is doing in the world? Further, it is fit that mankind should be somewhat informed of God's design in the government of the world because they are made capable of actively falling in with that design, of promoting it, and acting herein as his friends and subjects. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that God has given mankind some revelation to inform them of this. But there is nothing else that does it but the Bible. In the Bible this is done. Here we may learn the first original of things and have an orderly account of the scheme of God's works from the beginning. Through those ages that are beyond the reach of all other histories. Here we are told what God aims at in the whole, and that is the great end, how he has contrived the grand design and the great things he would accomplish Here we have a most rational, excellent account of this matter, worthy of God, and exceedingly showing forth the glory of his perfections, his majesty, his wisdom, his glorious holiness, grace, and love, and his exaltation above all as the first and the last. Here we are shown the various parts of the work of providence, and how all are connected in a regular, beautiful and glorious frame. In the Bible, we have an account of the whole scheme of providence, from the beginning of the world to the end of it, either in history or prophecy, and are told what will become of things at last, how they will issue in the subduing of God's enemies and in the salvation and glory of His Church. and setting up of the everlasting kingdom of his Son. How rational, worthy, and excellent a revelation is this, and how excellent a book is the Bible, which contains so much beyond all other books in the world. and what characters are here of its being indeed a divine book, a book that the great Jehovah has given to mankind for their instruction, without which we should be left in miserable darkness and confusion.