Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

evil spirits into those that became phrenetic, lunatic, or
epileptic, is not to take the word in the sense of the Scripture;
for the Spirit there is taken for the power of God, working by
causes to us unknown. As also the wind that is there said to fill
the house wherein the Apostles were assembled on the day of Pentecost*
is not to be understood for the Holy Spirit, which is the Deity
itself; but for an external sign of God's special working on their
hearts to effect in them the internal graces and holy virtues He
thought requisite for the performance of their apostleship.
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*Acts, 2. 2
CHAPTER XXXV
OF THE SIGNIFICATION IN SCRIPTURE OF KINGDOM OF GOD,
OF HOLY, SACRED, AND SACRAMENT
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THE kingdom of God in the writings of divines, and specially in
sermons and treatises of devotion, is taken most commonly for
eternal felicity, after this life, in the highest heaven, which they
also call the kingdom of glory; and sometimes for the earnest of
that felicity, sanctification, which they term the kingdom of grace;
but never for the monarchy, that is to say, the sovereign power of God
over any subjects acquired by their own consent, which is the proper
signification of kingdom.
To the contrary, I find the kingdom of God to signify in most places
of Scripture a kingdom properly so named, constituted by the votes
of the people of Israel in peculiar manner, wherein they chose God for
their king by covenant made with Him, upon God's promising them the
possession of the land of Canaan; and but seldom metaphorically; and
then it is taken for dominion over sin (and only in the New
Testament), because such a dominion as that every subject shall have
in the kingdom of God, and without prejudice to the sovereign.
From the very creation, God not only reigned over all men
naturally by His might, but also had peculiar subjects, whom He
commanded by a voice, as one man speaketh to another. In which
manner He reigned over Adam and gave him commandment to abstain from
the tree of cognizance of good and evil; which when he obeyed not, but
tasting thereof took upon him to be as God, judging between good and
evil, not by his Creator's commandment, but by his own sense, his
punishment was a privation of the estate of eternal life, wherein
God had at first created him: and afterwards God punished his
posterity for their vices, all but eight persons, with a universal
deluge; and in these eight did consist the then kingdom of God.
After this, it pleased God to speak to Abraham, and to make a
covenant with him in these words, "I will establish my covenant
between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for
an everlasting covenant, to be a God to thee, and to thy seed after
thee; And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the
land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an
everlasting possession."* In this covenant Abraham promiseth for
himself and his posterity to obey, as God, the Lord that spake to him;
and God on his part promiseth to Abraham the land of Canaan for an
everlasting possession. And for a memorial and a token of this
covenant, he ordaineth the sacrament of circumcision.*(2) This is it
which is called the Old Covenant, or Testament, and containeth a
contract between God and Abraham, by which Abraham obligeth himself
and his posterity in a peculiar manner to be subject to God's positive