on; 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.
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....

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."

Certainly when any one says 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 mere name and wished to
commune with Him, and be assured of His existence, I fail to see how our
wish would be satisfied by the declaration of a created thing (depending
on God neither more nor less than ourselves), "I am the Lord." If God
contorted the lips of Moses, or, I will not say Moses, but some beast,
till they pronounced the words, "I am the Lord," should we apprehend the
Lord's existence therefrom?

Scripture seems clearly to point to the belief that God spoke Himself,
having descended from heaven to Mount Sinai for the purpose--and not
only that the Israelites heard Him speaking, but that their chief men
beheld Him (Ex. xxiv.). Further, the laws of Moses which might neither
be added to nor curtailed, and which was set up as a national standard
of right, nowhere prescribed the belief that God is without body, or
even without form or figure, but only ordained that the Jews should
believe in His existence and worship Him alo