God has not cared that we should anywhere have assurance of His very words;

and that not merely perhaps, because of the tendency in His children to word-worship, false logic, and corruption of truth,

but because He would not have them oppressed by words,

seeing that words, being human, therefore but partially capable, could not absolutely contain or express what the Lord meant,

and that even He must depend for being understood upon the spirit of His disciple.

Seeing it could not give life, the letter should not be throned with power to kill.

—George MacDonald,
George MacDonald: an anthology,
edited by C.S. Lewis (entry 178)