The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 03 (of 11)
Thomas Hobbes · en
alone, but to all people: but of those that were peculiar to the
Israelites, as those of the first table, the question remains; saving
that they had obliged themselves, presently after the propounding of
them, to obey Moses, in these words (_Exod._ xx. 19), _Speak thou to us,
and we will hear thee; but let not God speak to us, lest we die_. It was
therefore only Moses then, and after him the high-priest, whom, by
Moses, God declared should administer this his peculiar kingdom, that
had on earth the power to make this short Scripture of the Decalogue to
be law in the commonwealth of Israel. But Moses, and Aaron, and the
succeeding high-priests, were the civil sovereigns. Therefore hitherto,
the canonizing or making the Scripture law, belonged to the civil
sovereign.
[Sidenote: Of the judicial and Levitical law.]
The judicial law, that is to say, the laws that God prescribed to the
magistrates of Israel for the rule of their administration of justice,
and of the sentences or judgments they should pronounce in pleas between
man and man; and the Levitical law, that is to say, the rule that God
prescribed touching the rites and ceremonies of the priests and Levites,
were all delivered to them by Moses only; and therefore also became
laws, by virtue of the same promise of obedience to Moses. Whether these
laws were then written, or not written, but dictated to the people by
Moses, after his being forty days with God in the Mount, by word of
mouth, is not expressed in the text; but they were all positive laws,
and equivalent to holy Scripture, and made canonical by Moses the civil
sovereign.
[Sidenote: The second law.]