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.

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? 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. 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. 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. Hence we must not suppose that everything is
prophecy or revelation which is described in Scripture as told by God to
any one, but only such things as are expressly announced as prophecy or
revelation, or are plainly pointed to as such by the context.

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. 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.

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." Some sort of real voice
must necessarily have been employed, for Moses found God ready to
commune with him at any time. This is the only instance of a real voice.

... 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 apprehend the Ten
Commandments by pure intuiti