intellectual certainty will doubtless attest.  (11) Here,
however, my chief purpose is to speak of matters having
reference to Scripture, so these few words on the light
of reason will suffice.

(1:12) I will now pass on to, and treat more fully, the other
ways and means by which God makes revelations to mankind, both
of that which transcends ordinary knowledge, and of that within
its scope; for there is no reason why God should not employ
other means to communicate what we know already by the power
of reason. 

(1:13) Our conclusions on the subject must be drawn solely from
Scripture; for what can we affirm about matters transcending
our knowledge except what is told us by the words or writings
of prophets?  (14) And since there are, so far as I know, no
prophets now alive, we have no alternative but to read the books
of prophets departed, taking care the while not to reason from
metaphor or to ascribe anything to our authors which they do
not themselves distinctly state.  (15) I must further premise
that the Jews never make any mention or account of secondary,
or particular causes, but in a spirit of religion, piety, and
what is commonly called godliness, refer all things directly
to the Deity. (1:16) For instance if they make money by a
transaction, they say God gave it to them; if they desire
anything, they say God has disposed their hearts towards it;
if they think anything, they say God told them.  (17) Hence we
must not suppose that everything is prophecy or revelation
which is described in Scripture as told by God to anyone, but
only such things as are expressly announced as prophecy or
revelation, or are plainly pointed to as such by the context.

(1:18) A perusal of the sacred books will show us that all God's
revelations to the prophets were made through words or appearances,
or a combination of the two.  (19) These words and appearances
were of two kinds;
   1.- real when external to the mind of the prophet
       who heard or saw them,
   2.- imaginary when the imagination of the prophet
       was in a state which led him distinctly to
       suppose that he heard or saw them.

(1:20) With a real voice God revealed to Moses the laws which
He wished to be transmitted to the Hebrews, as we may see from
Exodus xxv:22, where God says, "And there I will meet with
thee and I will commune with thee from the mercy seat which is
between the Cherubim."  (21) Some sort of real voice must
necessarily have been employed, for Moses found God ready to
commune with him at any time. This, as I shall shortly show,
is the only instance of a real voice.

(1:22) We might, perhaps, suppose that the voice with which God
called Samuel was real, for in 1 Sam. iii:21, we read, "And the
Lord appeared again in Shiloh, for the Lord revealed Himself to
Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord;" implying that the
appearance of the Lord consisted in His making Himself known to
Samuel through a voice; in other words, that Samuel heard the
Lord speaking.  [1:2] (23) But we are compelled to distinguish
between the prophecies of Moses and those of other prophets,
and therefore must decide that this voice was imaginary, a
conclusion further supported by the voice's resemblance to the
voice of Eli, which Samuel was in the habit of hearing, and
therefore might easily imagine; when thrice called by the Lord,
Samuel supposed it to have been Eli.

(1:24) The voice which Abimelech heard was imaginary, for it is
written, Gen. xx:6, "And God said unto him in a dream."  (25) So
that the will of God was manifest to him, not in waking, but only
in sleep, that is, when the imagination is most active and
uncontrolled.  (1:26) Some of the Jews believe that the actual
words of the Decalogue were not spoken by God, but that the
Israelites heard a noise only, without any distinct words, and
during its continuance apprehended the Ten Commandments by pure
intuition; to this opinion I myself once inclined, seeing that
the words of the Decalogue in Exodus are different from the words
of the Decalogue in Deuteronomy, for the discrepancy seemed to
imply (since God only spoke once) that the Ten Commandments were
not intended to convey the actual words of the Lord, but only His
meaning.  (1:27) However, unless we would do violence to Scripture,
we must certainly admit that the Israelites heard a real voice, for
Scripture expressly says, Deut. v:4, "God spake with you face to
face," i.e. as two men ordinarily interchange ideas through the
instrumentality of their two bodies; and therefore it seems more
consonant with Holy Writ to suppose that God really did create a
voice of some kind with which the Decalogue was revealed.  (28) The 
discrepancy of the two versions is treated of in Chap. VIII.

(1:29) Yet not even thus is all difficulty removed, for it seems
scarcely reasonable to affirm that a created thing, depending on
God in the same manner as other created things, would be able to
express or explain the nature of God either verbally or really by
means of its individual organism: for instance, by declaring in
the first person, "I am the Lord your God."

(1:30) Certainly when anyone says with his mouth, "I understand,"
we do not attribute the understanding to the mouth, but to the
mind of the speaker; yet this is because the mouth is the natural
organ of a man speaking, and the hearer, knowing what understanding
is, easily comprehends, by a comparison with himself, that the
speaker's mind is meant; but if we knew nothing of God beyond the