be accounted sacred and Divine; we may now see what should rightly be
understood by the expression, the Word of the Lord; debar (the Hebrew
original) signifies word, speech, command, and thing. (32) The causes for
which a thing is in Hebrew said to be of God, or is referred to Him, have
been already detailed in Chap. I., and we can therefrom easily gather what
meaning Scripture attaches to the phrases, the word, the speech, the
command, or the thing of God. (33) I need not, therefore, repeat what I
there said, nor what was shown under the third head in the chapter on
miracles. (34) It is enough to mention the repetition for the better
understanding of what I am about to say - viz., that the Word of the Lord
when it has reference to anyone but God Himself, signifies that Divine law
treated of in Chap. IV.; in other words, religion, universal and catholic
to the whole human race, as Isaiah describes it (chap. i:10), teaching that
the true way of life consists, not in ceremonies, but in charity, and a true
heart, and calling it indifferently God's Law and God's Word.

(35) The expression is also used metaphorically for the order of nature and
destiny (which, indeed, actually depend and follow from the eternal mandate
of the Divine nature), and especially for such parts of such order as were
foreseen by the prophets, for the prophets did not perceive future events as
the result of natural causes, but as the fiats and decrees of God. (36)
Lastly, it is employed for the command of any prophet, in so far as he had
perceived it by his peculiar faculty or prophetic gift, and not by the
natural light of reason; this use springs chiefly from the usual prophetic
conception of God as a legislator, which we remarked in Chap. IV.
(37) There are, then, three causes for the Bible's being called
the Word of God: because it teaches true religion, of which God is the
eternal Founder; because it narrates predictions of future events as
though they were decrees of God; because its actual authors generally
perceived things not by their ordinary natural faculties, but by a