beginning" (i.e. from the time when I first came to you, to
preach God's anger and His sentence forth against you) "I
spoke not in secret; from the time that it was, there am I,"
and now I am sent by the mercy of God as a joyful messenger
to preach your restoration.  (1:107) Or we may understand him
to mean by the revealed law that he had before come to warn
them by the command of the law (Levit. xix:17) in the same
manner under the same conditions as Moses had warned them,
that now, like Moses, he ends by preaching their restoration.
(108) But the first explanation seems to me the best.

(1:109) Returning, then, to the main object of our discussion,
we find that the Scriptural phrases, "The Spirit of the Lord
was upon a prophet," "The Lord breathed His Spirit into men,"
"Men were filled with the Spirit of God, with the Holy Spirit,"
&c., are quite clear to us, and mean that prophets were endowed
with a peculiar and extraordinary power, and devoted themselves
to piety with especial constancy(3); that thus they perceived
the mind or the thought of God, for we have shown that God's
Spirit signifies in Hebrew God's mind or thought, and that the
law which shows His mind and thought is called His Spirit; hence
that the imagination of the prophets, inasmuch as through it
were revealed the decrees of God, may equally be called the mind
of God, and the prophets be said to have possessed the mind of God.
(1:109a) On our minds also the mind of God and His eternal thoughts
are impressed; but this being the same for all men is less taken
into account, especially by the Hebrews, who claimed a
pre-eminence, and despised other men and other men's knowledge.

(110) Lastly, the prophets were said to possess the Spirit of
God because men knew not the cause of prophetic knowledge, and
in their wonder referred it with other marvels directly to the
Deity, styling it Divine knowledge.

[1:7] (111) We need no longer scruple to affirm that the prophets
only perceived God's revelation by the aid of imagination, that is,
by words and figures either real or imaginary.  (112) We find no
other means mentioned in Scripture, and therefore must not invent
any.  (113) As to the particular law of Nature by which the
communications took place, I confess my ignorance.  (114) I might,
indeed, say as others do, that they took place by the power of God;
but this would be mere trifling, and no better than explaining some
unique specimen by a transcendental term.  (115) Everything takes
place by the power of God.  (116) Nature herself is the power of
God under another name, and our ignorance of the power of God is
co-extensive with our ignorance of Nature.  (117) It is absolute
folly, therefore, to ascribe an event to the power of God when
we know not its natural cause, which is the power of God.

(1:118) However, we are not now inquiring into the causes of
prophetic knowledge.  (119) We are only attempting, as I have
said, to examine the Scriptural documents, and to draw our
conclusions from them as from ultimate natural facts; the
causes of the documents do not concern us.

III:[1:120] As the prophets perceived the revelations of God by the
aid of imagination, they could indisputably perceive much that
is beyond the boundary of the intellect, for many more ideas can
be constructed from words and figures than from the principles
and notions on which the whole fabric of reasoned knowledge is
reared.

(1:121) Thus we have a clue to the fact that the prophets perceived
nearly everything in parables and allegories, and clothed spiritual
truths in bodily forms, for such is the usual method of imagination.
(122) We need no longer wonder that Scripture and the prophets speak
so strangely and obscurely of God's Spirit or Mind (cf. Numbers xi:17,
1 Kings xxii:21, &c.), that the Lord was seen by Micah as sitting,
by Daniel as an old man clothed in white, by Ezekiel as a fire, that
the Holy Spirit appeared to those with Christ as a descending dove,
to the apostles as fiery tongues, to Paul on his conversion as a great
light.  (123) All these expressions are plainly in harmony with the
current ideas of God and spirits.

(1:124) Inasmuch as imagination is fleeting and inconstant, we find
that the power of prophecy did not remain with a prophet for long,
nor manifest itself frequently, but was very rare; manifesting
itself only in a few men, and in them not often.

(1:125)We must necessarily inquire how the prophets became assured
of the truth of what they perceived by imagination, and not by sure
mental laws; but our investigation must be confined to Scripture,
for the subject is one on which we cannot acquire certain knowledge,
and which we cannot explain by the immediate causes.  (126) Scripture
teaching about the assurance of prophets I will treat of in the next
chapter.

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[2:0] CHAPTER II. - OF PROPHETS.

(2:1) It follows from the last chapter that, as I have said, the
prophets were endowed with unusually vivid imaginations, and not
with unusually, perfect minds.  (2) This conclusion is amply
sustained by Scripture, for we are told that Solomon was the
wisest of men, but had no special faculty of prophecy.  (3) Heman,
Calcol, and Dara, though men of great talent, were not prophets,
whereas uneducated countrymen, nay, even women, such as Hagar,
Abraham's handmaid, were thus gifted.  (4) Nor is this contrary to
ordinary experience and reason.  (5) Men of great imaginative power