3.36. CHAP. XXXVI
Of the WORD Of GOD, and of PROPHETS
WHEN there is mention of the word of God, or of man, it doth not
signify a part of speech, such as grammarians call a noun or a verb,
or any simple voice, without a contexture with other words to make
it significative; but a perfect speech or discourse, whereby the
speaker affirmeth, denieth, commandeth, promiseth, threateneth,
wisheth, or interrogateth. In which sense it is not vocabulum that
signifies a word, but sermo
(in Greek λυγος) that is, some speech, discourse, or saying.
Again, if we say the word of God, or of man, it may be understood
sometimes of the speaker: as the words that God hath spoken, or that a
man hath spoken; in which sense, when we say the Gospel of St.
Matthew, we understand St. Matthew to be the writer of it: and
sometimes of the subject; in which sense, when we read in the Bible,
"The words of the days of the kings of Israel, or Judah," it is
meant the acts that were done in those days were the subject of
those words; and in the Greek, which, in the Scripture, retaineth many
Hebraisms, by the word of God is oftentimes meant, not that which is
spoken by God, but concerning God and His government; that is to
say, the doctrine of religion: insomuch as it is all one to say
λυγος θεορ, and
theologia; which is that doctrine which we usually
call divinity, as is manifest by the places following: "The Paul and
Barnabas waxed bold, and said, it was necessary that the word of God
should first have been spoken to you, but seeing you put it from
you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to
the Gentiles."(1) That which is here called
the word of God was the doctrine of Christian religion; as it appears
evidently by that which goes before. And where it is said to the Apostles
by an angel, "Go stand and speak in the Temple, all the words of this
life";(2) by the words of this life is meant
the doctrine of the Gospel, as is evident by what they did in the Temple,
and is expressed in the last verse of the same chapter. "Daily in the Temple,
and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Christ
Jesus":(3) in which place it is manifest that
Jesus Christ was the subject of this "word of life"; or, which is all one,
the subject of the "words of this life eternal" that our Saviour offered them.
So the word of God is called the word of the Gospel, because it containeth the
doctrine of the kingdom of Christ; and the same word is called the word of
faith;(4) that is, as is there expressed, the
doctrine of Christ come and raised from the dead. Also, "When any one heareth
the word of the kingdom";(5) that is the doctrine
of the kingdom taught by Christ. Again, the same word is said "to grow and to
be multiplied";(6) which to understand of the
evangelical doctrine is easy, but of the voice or speech of God, hard and
strange. In the same sense the doctrine of devils(7)
signifieth not the words of any devil, but the doctrine of heathen men concerning
demons, and those phantasms which they worshipped as gods.
Considering these two significations of the word of God, as it is
taken in Scripture, it is manifest in this latter sense (where it is
taken for the doctrine of Christian religion) that the whole Scripture
is the word of God: but in the former sense, not so. For example,
though these words, "I am the Lord thy God," etc., to the end of the
Ten Commandments, were spoken by God to Moses; yet the preface, "God
spake these words and said," is to be understood for the words of
him that wrote the holy history. The word of God, as it is taken for
that which He hath spoken, is understood sometimes properly, sometimes
metaphorically. Properly, as the words He hath spoken to His prophets:
metaphorically, for His wisdom, power, and eternal decree, in making
the world; in which sense, those fiats, "Let their be light, Let there
be a firmament, Let us make man," etc.(8) are
the word of God. And in the same sense it is said, "All things were made
by it, and without it was nothing made that was made":(9)
and "He upholdeth all things by the word of His power";(10)
that is, by the power of His word; that is, by His power: and "The worlds
were framed by the word of God";
(11)
and many other places to the same sense: as also amongst the Latins,
the name of fate, which signifieth properly the word spoken, is
taken in the same sense.
Secondly, for the effect of His word; that is to say, for the
thing itself, which by His word is affirmed, commanded, threatened, or
promised; as where Joseph is said to have been kept in prison, "till
his word was come";(12) that is, till that
was come to pass which he had foretold to Pharoah's butler concerning his
being restored to his office:(13) for there,
by his word was come, is meant the thing itself was come to pass. So also,
Elijah saith to God, "I have done all these thy words,"(14)
instead of "I have done all these things at thy word," or commandment. And,
"Where is the word of the Lord"(15) is put for
"Where is the evil He threatened." And, "There shall none of my words be
prolonged any more";(16) by words are understood
those things which God promised to His people. And in the New Testament, "heaven
and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away";(17)
that is, there is nothing that I have promised or 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";(18) 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";(19) and "the
Eternal Life, which was with the Father": (20) 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,"(21) 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.(22)
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
written in man's heart; as Psalms, 37.31; Jeremiah, 31.33;
Deuteronomy, 30.11, 14, and many other like places.
The name of prophet signifieth in Scripture sometimes prolocutor;
that is, he that speaketh from God to man, or from man to God: and
sometimes predictor, or a foreteller of things to come: and sometimes
one that speaketh incoherently, as men that are distracted. It is most
frequently used in the sense speaking from God to the people. So Moses,
Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others were prophets. And in this
sense the high priest was a prophet, for he only went into the sanctum
sanctorum to enquire of God, and was to declare his answer to the people.
And therefore when Caiaphas said it was expedient that one man should die
for the people, St. John saith that "He spake not this of himself, but
being high priest that year, he prophesied that one man should die for
the nation."(23) Also they that in Christian
congregations taught the people are said to prophesy.(24)
In the like sense it is that God saith to Moses concerning Aaron, "He
shall be thy spokesman to the people; and he shall be to thee a mouth,
and thou shalt be to him instead of God":(25)
that which here is spokesman is, Exodus, 7.1, interpreted prophet: "See,"
saith God, "I have made thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall
be thy prophet." In the sense of speaking from man to God, Abraham is called
a prophet where God in a dream speaketh to Abimelech in this manner, "Now
therefore restore the man his wife, for he is a prophet, and shall pray for
thee";(26) whereby may be also gathered that
the name of prophet may be given not unproperly to them that in Christian
churches have a calling to say public prayers for the congregation. In the
same sense, the prophets that came down from the high place, or hill of god,
with a psaltery, and a tabret, and a pipe, and a harp, Saul amongst them,
are said to prophesy, in that they praised God in that manner
publicly.(27) In the like sense is Miriam called
a prophetess.(28) So is it also to be taken where
St. Paul saith, "Every man that prayeth or prophesieth with his head covered,"
etc., and every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head
uncovered":(29) for prophecy in that place signifieth
no more but praising God in psalms and holy songs, which women might do in the
church, though it were not lawful for them to speak to the congregation. And in
this signification it is that the poets of the heathen, that composed hymns and
other sorts of poems in the honor of their gods, were called vates, prophets, as
is well enough known by all that are versed in the books of the Gentiles,
and as is evident where St. Paul saith of the Cretans that a prophet of their own
said they were liars;(30) not that St. Paul held their
poets for poets for prophets, but acknowledgeth that the word prophet was commonly
used to signify them that celebrated the honour of God in verse.
When by prophecy is meant prediction, or foretelling of future
contingents, not only they were prophets who were God's spokesmen, and
foretold those things to others which God had foretold to them; but
also all those impostors that pretend by the help familiar spirits, or
by superstitious divination of events past, from false causes, to
foretell the like events in time to come: of which (as I have declared
already in the twelfth Chapter of this discourse) there be many
kinds who gain in the opinion of the common sort of men a greater
reputation of prophecy by one casual event that may be but wrested
to their purpose, than can be lost again by never so many failings.
Prophecy is not an art, nor, when it is taken for prediction, a
constant vocation, but an extraordinary and temporary employment
from God, most often of good men, but sometimes also of the wicked.
The woman of Endor, who is said to have had a familiar spirit, and
thereby to have raised a phantasm of Samuel, and foretold Saul his
death, was not therefore a prophetess; for neither had she any science
whereby she could raise such a phantasm, nor does it appear that God
commanded the raising of it, but only guided that imposture to be a
means of Saul's terror and discouragement, and by consequent, of the
discomfiture by which he fell. And for incoherent speech, it was
amongst the Gentiles taken for one sort of prophecy, because the
prophets of their oracles, intoxicated with a spirit or vapor from the
cave of the Pythian Oracle at Delphi, were for the time really mad,
and spake like madmen; of whose loose words a sense might be made to
fit any event, in such sort as all bodies are said to be made of
materia prima. In the Scripture I find it also so taken in these
words, "And the evil spirit came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the
midst of the house."(31)
And although there be so many significations in Scripture of the
word prophet; yet is that the most frequent in which it is taken for
him to whom God speaketh immediately that which the prophet is to
say from Him to some other man, or to the people. And hereupon a
question may be asked, in what manner God speaketh to such a
prophet. Can it, may some say, be properly said that God hath voice
and language, when it cannot be properly said He hath a tongue or
other organs as a man? The Prophet David argueth thus, "Shall He
that made the eye, not see? or He that made the ear, not
hear?"(32) But this may be spoken, not,
as usually, to signify God's nature, but to signify our intention to
honour Him. For to see and hear are honourable attributes, and may be
given to God to declare as far as capacity can conceive His almighty power.
But if it were to be taken in the strict and proper sense, one might argue
from his making of all other parts of man's body that he had also the same
use of them which we have; which would be many of them so uncomely as it
would be the greatest contumely in the world to ascribe them to Him.
Therefore we are to interpret God's speaking to men immediately for
that way, whatsoever it be, by which God makes them understand His
will: and the ways whereby He doth this are many, and to be sought
only in the Holy Scripture; where though many times it be said that
God spake to this and that person, without declaring in what manner,
yet there be again many places that deliver also the signs by which
they were to acknowledge His presence and commandment; and by these
may be understood how He spake to many of the rest.
In what manner God spake to Adam, and Eve, and Cain, and Noah is
not expressed; nor how he spake to Abraham, till such time as he came
out of his own country to Sichem in the land of Canaan, and then God
is said to have appeared to him.(33) So there
is one way whereby God made His presence manifest; that is, by an apparition,
or vision. And again, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a
vision";(34) that is to say, somewhat, as
a sign of God's presence, appeared as God's messenger to speak to him.
Again, the Lord appeared to Abraham by an apparition of three
angels;(35) and to Abimelech in a
dream;(36) to Lot by an apparition of two
angels;(37) and to Hagar by the apparition
of one angel;(38) and to Abraham again by
the apparition of a voice from heaven;(39) and
to Isaac in the night
(40) (that is, in his sleep,
or by dream); and to Jacob in a dream;(41) that
is to say (as are the words of the text), "Jacob dreamed that he saw a ladder,"
etc. And
in a vision of angels;(42) and to Moses in the
apparition of a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush;(43)
and after the time of Moses, where the manner how God spake immediately to
man in the Old Testament is expressed, He spake always by a vision, or by a
dream; as to Gideon, Samuel, Eliah, Elisha, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the rest of
the prophets; and often in the New Testament, as to Joseph, to St.
Peter, to St. Paul, and to St. John the Evangelist in the Apocalypse.
Only to Moses He spake in a more extraordinary manner in Mount
Sinai, and in the Tabernacle; and to the high priest in the
Tabernacle, and in the sanctum sanctorum of the Temple. But Moses, and
after him the high priests, were prophets of a more eminent place
and degree in God's favour; and God Himself in express words declareth
that to other prophets He spake in dreams and visions, but to His
servant Moses in such manner as a man speaketh to his friend. The
words are these: "If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will
make Myself known to him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a
dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all my house;
with him I will speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, not in dark
speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold."(44) And,
"The Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his
friend."(45) And yet this speaking of God to Moses was by mediation of
an angel, or angels, as appears expressly, Acts 7. 35 and 53, and
Galatians, 3.19, and was therefore a vision, though a more clear
vision than was given to other prophets. And conformable hereunto,
where God saith, "If there arise amongst you a prophet, or dreamer
of dreams,"(46) the latter word is but the interpretation of the
former. And, "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your old
men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions":(47)
where again, the word prophesy is expounded by dream and vision. And
in the same manner it was that God spake to Solomon, promising him
wisdom, riches, and honour; for the text saith, "And Solomon awoke,
and behold it was a dream":(48) so that generally the prophets
extraordinary in the Old Testament took notice of the word of God no
otherwise than from their dreams or visions that is to say, from the
imaginations which they had in their sleep or in an ecstasy: which
imaginations in every true prophet were supernatural, but in false
prophets were either natural or feigned.
The same prophets were nevertheless said to speak by the spirit;
as where the prophet, speaking of the Jews, saith, "They made their
hearts hard as adamant, lest they should hear the law, and the words
which the Lord of Hosts hath sent in His Spirit by the former
prophets."(49) By which it is manifest that speaking by the spirit or
inspiration was not a particular manner of God's speaking, different
from vision, when they that were said to speak by the Spirit were
extraordinary prophets, such as for every new message were to have a
particular commission or, which is all one, a new dream or vision.
Of prophets that were so by a perpetual calling in the Old
Testament, some were supreme and some subordinate: supreme were
first Moses, and after him the high priests, every one for his time,
as long the priesthood was royal; and after the people of the Jews had
rejected God, that He should no more reign over them, those kings
which submitted themselves to God's government were also his chief
prophets; and the high priest's office became ministerial. And when
God was to be consulted, they put on the holy vestments, and
enquired of the Lord as the king commanded them, and were deprived
of their office when the king thought fit. For King Saul commanded the
burnt offering to be brought;(50) and he commands the priest to bring the
Ark near him;(51) and, again, to let it alone, because he saw an
advantage upon his enemies.(52) And in the same chapter Saul asketh
counsel of God. In like manner King David, after his being anointed,
though before he had possession of the kingdom, is said to "enquire of
the Lord" whether he should fight against the Philistines at
Keilah;(53) and David commandeth the priest to bring him the ephod, to
enquire whether he should stay in Keilah or not.(54) And King
Solomon took the priesthood from Abiathar,(55) and gave it to
Zadok.(56) Therefore Moses, and the high priests, and the pious kings,
who enquired of God on all extraordinary occasions how they were to
carry themselves, or what event they were to have, were all
sovereign prophets. But in what manner God spake unto them is not
manifest. To say that when Moses went up to God in Mount Sinai it
was a dream, or vision, such as other prophets had, is contrary to
that distinction which God made between Moses and other
prophets.(57) To say God spake or appeared as He is in His own
nature is to deny His infiniteness, invisibility, incomprehensibility.
To say he spake by inspiration, or infusion of the Holy Spirit, as the
Holy Spirit signifieth the Deity, is to make Moses equal with
Christ, in whom only the Godhead, as St. Paul speaketh, dwelleth
bodily.(58) And lastly, to say he spake by the Holy Spirit, as it
signifieth the graces or gifts of the Holy Spirit, is to attribute
nothing to him supernatural. For God disposeth men to piety,
justice, mercy, truth, faith, and all manner of virtue, both moral and
intellectual, by doctrine, example, and by several occasions,
natural and ordinary.
And as these ways cannot be applied to God, in His speaking to Moses
at Mount Sinai; so also they cannot be applied to Him in His
speaking to the high priests from the mercy-seat. Therefore in what
manner God spake to those sovereign prophets of the Old Testament,
whose office it was to enquire of Him, is not intelligible. In the
time of the New Testament there was no sovereign prophet but our
Saviour, who was both God that spake, and the prophet to whom He
spake.
To subordinate prophets of perpetual calling, I find not any place
that proveth God spake to them supernaturally, but only in such manner
as naturally He inclineth men to piety, to belief, to righteousness,
and to other virtues all other Christian men. Which way, though it
consist in constitution, instruction, education, and the occasions and
invitements men have to Christian virtues, yet it is truly
attributed to the operation of the Spirit of God, or Holy Spirit,
which we in our language call the Holy Ghost: for there is no good
inclination that is not of the operation of God. But these
operations are not always supernatural. When therefore a prophet is
said to speak in the spirit, or by the Spirit of God, we are to
understand no more but that he speaks according to God's will,
declared by the supreme prophet. For the most common acceptation of
the word spirit is in the signification of a man's intention, mind, or
disposition.
In the time of Moses, there were seventy men besides himself that
prophesied in the camp of the Israelites. In what manner God spake
to them is declared in the eleventh Chapter of Numbers, verse 25: "The
Lord came down in a cloud, and spake unto Moses, and took of the
spirit that was upon him, and gave it to the seventy elders. And it
came to pass, when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, and
did not cease." By which it is manifest, first, that their prophesying
to the people was subservient and subordinate to the prophesying of
Moses; for that God took of the spirit of Moses put upon them; so that
they prophesied as Moses would have them: otherwise they had not
been suffered to prophesy at all. For there was a complaint made
against them to Moses;(59) and Joshua would have Moses to have
forbidden them; which he did not, but said to Joshua "Be not jealous
in my behalf." Secondly, that the Spirit of God in that place
signifieth nothing but the mind and disposition to obey and assist
Moses in the administration of the government. For if it were meant
they had the substantial Spirit of God; that is, the divine nature,
inspired into them, then they had it in no less manner than Christ
himself, in whom only the Spirit of God dwelt bodily. It is meant
therefore of the gift and grace of God, that guided them to co-operate
with Moses, from whom their spirit was derived. And it appeareth
that they were such as Moses himself should appoint for elders and
officers of the people:(60) for the words are, "Gather unto me seventy
men, whom thou knowest to be elders and officers of the people":
where, thou knowest is the same with thou appointest, or hast
appointed to be such. For we are told before that Moses, following the
counsel of Jethro his father-in-law, did appoint judges and officers
over the people such as feared God;(61) and of these were those
seventy whom God, by putting upon them Moses' spirit, inclined to
aid Moses in the administration of the kingdom: and in this sense
the spirit of God is said presently upon the anointing of David to
have come upon David, and left Saul;(62) God giving His graces to
him He chose to govern His people, and taking them away from him He
rejected. So that by the spirit is meant inclination to God's service,
and not any supernatural revelation.
God spake also many times by the event of lots, which were ordered
by such as He had put in authority over His people. So we read that
God manifested by the lots which Saul caused to be drawn the fault
that Jonathan had committed in eating a honeycomb, contrary to the
oath taken by the people.(63) And God divided the land of Canaan
amongst the Israelites by the "lots that Joshua did cast before the
Lord in Shiloh."(64) In the same manner it seemeth to be that God
discovered the crime of Achan.(65) And these are the ways whereby
God declared His will in the Old Testament.
All which ways He used also in the New Testament. To the Virgin
Mary, by a vision of an angel; to Joseph, in a dream; again to Paul,
in the way to Damascus in a vision of our Saviour; and to Peter in the
vision of a sheet let down from heaven with diverse sorts of flesh
of clean and unclean beasts; and in prison, by vision of an angel; and
to all the Apostles and writers of the New Testament, by the graces of
His Spirit; and to the Apostles again, at the choosing of Matthias
in the place of Judas Iscariot, by lot.
Seeing then all prophecy supposeth vision or dream (which two,
when they be natural, are the same), or some especial gift of God so
rarely observed in mankind as to be admired where observed; and seeing
as well such gifts as the most extraordinary dreams and visions may
proceed from God, not only by His supernatural and immediate, but also
by his natural operation, and by mediation of second causes; there
is need of reason and judgement to discern between natural and
supernatural gifts, and between natural and supernatural visions or
dreams. And consequently men had need to be very circumspect, and
wary, in obeying the voice of man that, pretending himself to be a
prophet, requires us to obey God in that way which he in God's name
telleth us to be the way to happiness. For he that pretends to teach
men the way of so great felicity pretends to govern them; that is to
say, rule and reign over them; which is a thing that all men naturally
desire, and is therefore worthy to be suspected of ambition and
imposture; and consequently ought be examined and tried by every man
before he yield them obedience, unless he have yielded it them already
in the institution of a Commonwealth; as when the prophet is the civil
sovereign, or by the civil sovereign authorized. And if this
examination of prophets and spirits were not allowed to every one of
the people, it had been to no purpose to set out the marks by which
every man might be able to distinguish between those whom they
ought, and those whom they ought not to follow. Seeing therefore
such marks are set out to know a prophet by,(66) and to know a spirit
by;(67) and seeing there is so much prophesying in the Old
Testament, and so much preaching in the New Testament against
prophets, and so much greater a number ordinarily of false prophets
than of true; every one is to beware of obeying their directions at
their own peril. And first, that there were many more false than
true prophets appears by this, that when Ahab consulted four hundred
prophets, they were all false impostors, but only one Micaiah.(68) And
a little before the time of the Captivity the prophets were
generally liars. "The prophets," saith the Lord by Jeremiah, "prophesy
lies in my name. I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, nor
spake unto them: they prophesy to you a false vision, a thing of
naught, and the deceit of their heart."(69) Insomuch as God
commanded the people by the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah not to
obey them. "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, hearken not unto the words
of the prophets that prophesy to you. They make you vain: they speak a
vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord."
(70)
Seeing then there was in the time of the Old Testament such quarrels
amongst the visionary prophets, one contesting with another, and
asking, "When departed the spirit from me, to go to thee?" as
between Micaiah and the rest of the four hundred; and such giving of
the lie to one another, as in Jeremiah, 14.14, and such controversies
in the new Testament this day amongst the spiritual prophets: every
man then was, and now is, bound to make use of his natural reason to
apply to all prophecy those rules which God hath given us to discern
the true from the false. Of which rules, in the Old Testament, one was
conformable doctrine to that which Moses the sovereign prophet had
taught them; and the other, the miraculous power of foretelling what
God would bring to pass, as I have already shown out of Deuteronomy,
13.1, etc. And in the New Testament there was but one only mark,
and that was the preaching of this doctrine that Jesus is the
Christ, that is, the King of the Jews, promised in the Old
Testament. Whosoever denied that article, he was a false prophet,
whatsoever miracles he might seem to work; and he that taught it was a
true prophet. For St. John, speaking expressly of the means to examine
spirits, whether they be of God or not, after he had told them that
there would arise false prophets, saith thus, "Hereby know ye the
Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh, is of God";(71) that is, is approved and allowed as
a prophet of God: not that he is a godly man, or one of the elect
for this that he confesseth, professeth, or preacheth Jesus to be
the Christ, but for that he is a prophet avowed. For God sometimes
speaketh by prophets whose persons He hath not accepted; as He did
by Baalam, and as He foretold Saul of his death by the Witch of Endor.
Again in the next verse, "Every spirit that confesseth not that
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of Christ. And this is the
spirit of Antichrist." So that the rule is perfect rule is perfect
on both sides: that he is a true prophet which preacheth the Messiah
already come, in the person of Jesus; and he a false one that
denieth him come, and looketh for him in some future impostor that
shall take upon him that honour falsely, whom the Apostle there
properly calleth Antichrist. Every man therefore ought to consider who
is the sovereign prophet; that is to say, who it is that is God's
vicegerent on earth, and hath next under God the authority of
governing Christian men; and to observe for a rule that doctrine which
in the name of God he hath commanded to be taught, and thereby to
examine and try out the truth of those doctrines which pretended
prophets, with miracle or without, shall at any time advance: and if
they find it contrary to that rule, to do as they did that came to
Moses and complained that there were some that prophesied in the
camp whose authority so to do they doubted of; and leave to the
sovereign, as they did to Moses, to uphold or to forbid them, as he
should see cause; and if he disavow them, then no more to obey their
voice, or if he approve them, then to obey them as men to whom God
hath given a part of the spirit of their sovereign. For when Christian
men take not their Christian sovereign for God's prophet, they must
either take their own dreams for the prophecy they mean to be governed
by, and the tumour of their own hearts for the Spirit of God; or
they must suffer themselves to be lead by some strange prince, or by
some of their fellow subjects that can bewitch them by slander of
the government into rebellion, without other miracle to confirm
their calling than sometimes an extraordinary success and impunity;
and by this means destroying all laws, both divine and human, reduce
all order, government, and society to the first chaos of violence
and civil war.
[(22)]
Acts, 1. 4; Luke, 24.49
[(24)]
I Corinthians, 14.3
[(27)]
I Samuel, 10.5, 6, 10
[(29)]
I Corinthians, 11.4, 5
[(44)]
Numbers, 12.6, 7, 8
[(57)]
Numbers, 12.6, 7, 8
[(62)]
I Samuel, 16.13, 14
[(66)]
Deuteronomy, 13.1, etc.