Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

foretold that shall not come to pass. And in this sense it is that St.
John the Evangelist, and, I think, St. John only, calleth our
Saviour Himself as in the flesh the Word of God, "And the Word was
made flesh";*(7) that is to say, the word, or promise, that Christ
should come into the world, "who in the beginning was with God":
that is to say, it was in the purpose of God the Father to send God
the Son into the world to enlighten men in the way of eternal life;
but it was not till then put in execution, and actually incarnate;
so that our Saviour is there called the Word, not because he was the
promise, but the thing promised. They that taking occasion from this
place do commonly call him the Verb of God do but render the text more
obscure. They might as well term him the Noun of God: for as by
noun, so also by verb, men understand nothing but a part of speech,
a voice, a sound, that neither affirms, nor denies, nor commands,
nor promiseth, nor is any substance corporeal or spiritual; and
therefore it cannot be said to be either God or man; whereas our
Saviour is both. And this Word which St. John in his Gospel saith
was with God is, in his first Epistle, called the "Word of
life";*(8) and "the Eternal Life, which was with the Father":*(9) so
that he can be in no other sense called the Word than in that
wherein He is called Eternal Life; that is, he that hath procured us
eternal life by his coming in the flesh. So also the Apostle, speaking
of Christ clothed in a garment dipped in blood, saith his name is "the
Word of God,"*(10) which is to be understood as if he had said his
name had been "He that was come according to the purpose of God from
the beginning, and according to His word and promises delivered by the
prophets." So that there is nothing here of the incarnation of a word,
but of the incarnation of God the Son, therefore called the Word,
because his incarnation was the performance of the promise; in like
manner as the Holy Ghost is called the Promise.*(11)
-
* Psalms, 105. 19
*(2) Genesis, 11. 13
*(3) I Kings, 18. 36
*(4) Jeremiah, 17. 15
*(5) Ezekiel, 12. 28
*(6) Matthew, 24. 35
*(7) John, 1. 14
*(8) Ibid., 1. 1
*(9) Ibid., 1. 2
*(10) Apocalypse, 19. 13
*(11) Acts, 1. 4; Luke, 24. 49
-
There are also places of the Scripture where by the Word of God is
signified such words as are consonant to reason and equity, though
spoken sometimes neither by prophet nor by a holy man. For Pharaoh
Necho was an idolater, yet his words to the good King Josiah, in which
he advised him by messengers not to oppose him in his march against
Carchemish, are said to have proceeded from the mouth of God; and that
Josiah, not hearkening to them, was slain in the battle; as is to be
read II Chronicles, 35. 21, 22, 23. It is true that as the same
history is related in the first Book of Esdras, not Pharaoh, but
Jeremiah, spake these words to Josiah from the mouth of the Lord.
But we are to give credit to the canonical Scripture whatsoever be
written in the Apocrypha.
The Word of God is then also to be taken for the dictates of
reason and equity, when the same is said in the Scriptures to be