Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/48

44 When it is said in the first chapter of John's Gospel, that the Lord himself is the Word, as being the divine truth contained in it, by which all things visible and invisible were created, and which also was made flesh; the declaration is to be understood only in reference to those books, which in their interior senses treat of him and his kingdom, and which were dictated either by himself, or by the spirit proceeding from himself: for such books only can be considered as pre-eminently holy and divine. These are, in the Old Testament, the five books of Moses, called Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; the book of Joshua, Judges, the two books of Samuel, the two books of Kings, the Psalms of David, the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi; and in the New Testament, the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; and the Apocalypse. Other books may be very useful, so far as they are in agreement with these; but they cannot for a moment be accounted equal to them, or put in competition with them, for want of those infinitely superior prerogatives, which must ever distinguish between a divine and a human production.

THE ten commandments, being the first-fruits of the Word, and containing a summary of all things relating to religion, or to love towards God, and love towards our neighbour, are to be received and acknowledged as laws not only of natural, civil, and moral obligation, but also as laws of the truly