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, that 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 λόγος Θεοῦ, and _theologia_; which is, that doctrine which we usually call _divinity_, as is manifest by the places following, (_Acts_ xiii. 46) _Then 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_. 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 (_Acts_ v. 20) where it is said to the apostles by an angel, _Go stand and speak in the Temple, all 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_ xv. 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._ x. 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 (_Matth._ xiii. 19) _When any one heareth the word of the kingdom_; that is, the doctrine of the kingdom taught by Christ. Again, the same word, is said (_Acts_ xii. 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._ iv. 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. [Sidenote: The word of God metaphorically used, first, for the decrees and power of God.]