Found
here. My comments in bold.
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This is an extremely long and opaque article, and we've deleted some sections that do not come to bear on the issue at hand. We shall try to wade through it to pull out the salient points.
Warfield seems to be the source of all cessationist thought, so it is good that we get to the bottom of the issue. We would hope he would be able to provide the Scriptural case for cessationism, but alas, in thousands of words he does not manage to quote a single Scripture verse. In fact, he hardly is able to even provide any Scriptural references at all!
Astounding.
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WHEN our Lord came down to earth He drew heaven with Him. The signs which accompanied His ministry were but the trailing clouds of glory which He brought from heaven, which is His home. The number of the miracles which He wrought may easily be underrated. It has been said that in effect He banished disease and death from Palestine for the three years of His ministry. If this is exaggeration it is pardonable exaggeration. Wherever He went, He brought a blessing:
One hem but of the garment that He wore
Could medicine whole countries of their pain;
One touch of that pale hand could life restore.
We ordinarily greatly underestimate His beneficent activity as He went about, as Luke says, doing good.’
His own divine power by which He began to found His church He continued in the Apostles whom He had chosen to complete this great work. They transmitted it in turn, as part of their own miracle-working and the crowning sign of their divine commission, to others, in the form of what the New Testament calls spiritual gifts2 in the sense of extraordinary capacities produced in the early Christian communities by direct gift of the Holy Spirit.
The number and variety of these spiritual gifts were considerable. Even Paul’s enumerations, the fullest of which occurs in the twelfth chapter of I Corinthians, can hardly be read as exhaustive scientific catalogues. The name which is commonly applied to them3 is broad enough to embrace what may be called both the ordinary and the specifically extraordinary gifts of the Spirit; both those, that is, which were distinctively gracious, and those which were distinctly miraculous. In fact, in the classical passage which treats of them (I Cor. 12-14) both classes are brought together under this name. The non-miraculous, gracious gifts are, indeed, in this passage given the preference and called “the greatest gifts”; and the search after them is represented as “the more excellent way”; the longing for the highest of them — faith, hope, and love — being the most excellent way of all. Among the miraculous gifts themselves, a like distinction is made in favor of “prophecy” (that is, the gift of exhortation and teaching), and, in general, in favor of those by which the body of Christ is edified.
(With a flowery style to which we are unaccustomed in our day, our verbose author finally makes a point, and it is a stumble. In an unattributed assertion, he deems prophecy to be simply exhortation and teaching. This is false. Teaching and prophecy are separate, though related, gifts.
Ro. 12:6-8 We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. 7 If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; 8 if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
1Co. 12:28 And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues.
Ep. 4:11 It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers...
Notice that prophecy and teaching are part of lists of gifts, distinct enough from each other to merit separate mention.)
(...)
(Now comes an Appeal to History, which of course has nothing to do with the biblical case for cessation of the charismata.) How long did this state of things continue? It was the characterizing peculiarity of specifically the Apostolic Church, and it belonged therefore exclusively to the Apostolic age — although no doubt this designation may be taken with some latitude. These gifts were not the possession of the primitive Christian as such;6 nor for that matter of the Apostolic Church or the Apostolic age for themselves; they were distinctively the authentication of the Apostles.
(Unsupported assertion. On what scriptural basis should we conclude that the gifts were solely to authenticate the apostles? Perhaps there is a case to be made, but the author does not make it.)
They were part of the credentials of the Apostles as the authoritative agents of God in founding the church. Their function thus confined them to distinctively the Apostolic Church, and they necessarily passed away with it.7 (From an unsupported assertion comes an unsupported conclusion, again bereft of scriptural documentation.)
Of this we may make sure on the ground both of principle and of fact; that is to say both under the guidance of the New Testament teaching as to their origin and nature, and on the credit of the testimony of later ages as to their cessation. (The "testimony of later ages" is not a Scriptural argument. We can think of our own reasons for the lack of the supernatural in the post-apostolic church. Perhaps it was apostasy. Perhaps it was lack of faith. Perhaps it was the abandonment of elder-centered church leadership. Perhaps God intended the supernatural to continue on, but the church went its own way.
In any case, we would love to see our esteemed author make his case from Scripture.)
