the words of this life”; 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”; 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 (Acts 15:7) 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 ( Rom. 10:8–9) is called “the word of faith”; that is, as is there expressed, the doctrine of Christ come, and raised from the dead. Also ( Matt. 13:19), “When anyone heareth the word of the kingdom,” that is, the doctrine of the kingdom taught by Christ. Again, the same word is said (Acts 12:24) “to grow and to be multiplied”; which to understand of the evangelical doctrine is easy, but of the voice or speech of God, hard and strange. In the same sense (1 Tim. 4:1) the “doctrine of devils” 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 there be light,” “Let there be a firmament,” “Let us make man,” etc. ( Gen. 1), are the word of God. And in the same sense it is said (John 1:3), “All things were made by it,