Observations, censures, and confutations of notorious errours in Mr. Hobbes his Leviathan and other his bookes to which are annexed occasionall anim-adversions on some writings of the Socinians and such hæreticks of the same opinion with him / by William Lucy ...

Sect. 3.

So now at the last, I will addresse my selfe to my businesse, the first Chap. of St. John verse 1. In the be∣ginning was the word, &c. there is scarce any one word in these fourteen or fifteen verses, which I intend (God willing) to expound, that hath not abid some slurre, or other, to discountenance the true sense of it; I shall be∣gin with the first word, In the beginning, [This (say they with one consent) is understood of the beginning of the Gospell, which, (say they) was when John Baptist begun to preach,] so Socinus, where before, at the bottome of page 13. and page 14. In principio erat verbum, In the beginning was the Word, that is, Christ the Son of God, in the beginning of the Gospell, to wit, in that time in which John Baptist began to recall the Israelitish people to the right; and before that, by the preaching of the Baptist, he was known to the Jewes, he was, and he was designed by God to this Office (that is) of manifesting his will] thus far Socinus; and by this we see his conceipt to be, that in the beginning, was in the beginning of the Baptist's preaching, then was Christ, the word which was man; he wonder's much, up and down, that men should conceive that St. John should write such mysteries of Christ's

essence, according to his divinity, where indeed, we think, he make's him write the unreasonable things of his humanity that ever could have been conceived to be expressed by such phrases, to understand which I must trespasse a little farther upon the Reader's pati∣ence, to consider what these writers meane by this terme (Word) which Socinus and from him, the rest ex∣presse thus.

Notes

• How the Soci∣nians inter∣pret, Joh. 1.1.
• With re••e∣rence to the Baptist's prea∣ching.