Of the ten commandments.
That part of the Scripture, which was first law, was the Ten Commandments, written in two tables of stone, and delivered by God himself to Moses; and by Moses made known to the people. Before that time there was no written law of God, who as yet having not chosen any people to be his peculiar kingdom, had given no law to men, but the law of nature, that is to say, the precepts of natural reason, written in every man’s own heart. Of these two tables, the first containeth the law of sovereignty; 1. That they should not obey, nor honour the gods of other nations, in these words, Non habebis deos alienos coram me, that is, thou shalt not have for gods, the gods that other nations worship, but only me: whereby they were forbidden to obey, or honour, as their king and governor, any other God, than him that spake unto them then by Moses, and afterwards by the high-priest. 2. That they should not make any image to represent him; that is to say, they were not to choose to themselves, neither in heaven, nor in earth, any representative of their own fancying, but obey Moses and Aaron, whom he had appointed to that office. 3. That they should not take the name of God in vain; that is, they should not speak rashly of their king, nor dispute his right, nor the commissions of Moses and Aaron, his lieutenants. 4. That they should every seventh day abstain from their ordinary labour, and employ that time in doing him public honour. The second table containeth the duty of one man towards another, as to honour parents; not to kill; not to commit adultery; not to steal; not to corrupt judgment by false witness; and finally, not so much as to design in their heart the doing of any injury one to another. The question now is, who it was that gave to these written tables the obligatory force of laws. There is no doubt but they were made laws by God himself: but because a law obliges not, nor is law to any, but to them that acknowledge it to be the act of the sovereign; how could the people of Israel, that were forbidden to approach the mountain to hear what God said to Moses, be obliged to obedience to all those laws which Moses propounded to them? Some of them were indeed the laws of nature, as all the second table; and therefore to be acknowledged for God’s laws; not to the Israelites 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.
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.
The second law.
After the Israelites were come into the plains of Moab over against Jericho, and ready to enter into the land of promise, Moses to the former laws added divers others; which therefore are called Deuteronomy; that is, second laws. And are, (as it is written Deut. xxix. 1) the words of a covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel, besides the covenant which he made with them in Horeb. For having explained those former laws, in the beginning of the book of Deuteronomy, he addeth others, that begin at the xiith chapter, and continue to the end of the xxvith of the same book. This law (Deut. xxvii. 3) they were commanded to write upon great stones plastered over, at their passing over Jordan: this law also was written by Moses himself in a book, and delivered into the hands of the priests, and to the elders of Israel (Deut. xxxi. 9), and commanded (verse 26) to be put in the side of the ark; for in the ark itself was nothing but the ten commandments. This was the law, which Moses (Deut. xvii. 18) commanded the kings of Israel should keep a copy of: and this is the law, which having been long time lost, was found again in the temple in the time of Josiah, and by his authority received for the law of God. But both Moses at the writing, and Josiah at the recovery thereof, had both of them the civil sovereignty. Hitherto therefore the power of making Scripture canonical, was in the civil sovereign.
Besides this book of the law, there was no other book, from the time of Moses till after the Captivity, received amongst the Jews for the law of God. For the prophets, except a few, lived in the time of the Captivity itself; and the rest lived but a little before it; and were so far from having their prophecies generally received for laws, as that their persons were persecuted, partly by false prophets, and partly by the kings which were seduced by them. And this book itself, which was confirmed by Josiah for the law of God, and with it all the history of the works of God, was lost in the captivity and sack of the city of Jerusalem, as appears by that of 2 Esdras, xiv. 21, thy law is burnt; therefore no man knoweth the things that are done of thee, or the works that shall begin. And before the captivity, between the time when the law was lost, (which is not mentioned in the Scripture, but may probably be thought to be the time of Rehoboam, when (1 Kings xiv. 26) Shishak, king of Egypt, took the spoil of the temple), and the time of Josiah when it was found again, they had no written word of God, but ruled according to their own discretion, or by the direction of such as each of them esteemed prophets.
The Old Testament when made canonical.
From hence we may infer, that the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which we have at this day, were not canonical nor a law unto the Jews, till the renovation of their covenant with God at their return from the captivity, and restoration of their commonwealth under Esdras. But from that time forward they were accounted the law of the Jews, and for such translated into Greek by seventy elders of Judea, and put into the library of Ptolemy at Alexandria, and approved for the word of God. Now seeing Esdras was the high-priest, and the high-priest was their civil sovereign, it is manifest that the Scriptures were never made laws, but by the sovereign civil power.
The New Testament began to be canonical under Christian sovereigns.