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| Of the Invisible God, Who Has Often Made Himself Visible, Not as He Really Is, But as the Beholders Could Bear the Sight.
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Chapter 13.—Of the Invisible God,
Who Has Often Made Himself Visible, Not as He Really Is, But as the
Beholders Could Bear the Sight.
Neither need we be surprised that
God, invisible as He is, should often have appeared visibly to the
patriarchs. For as the sound which communicates the thought
conceived in the silence of the mind is not the thought itself, so
the form by which God, invisible in His own nature, became visible,
was not God Himself. Nevertheless it is He Himself who was seen
under that form, as that thought itself is heard in the sound of
the voice; and the patriarchs recognized that, though the bodily
form was not God, they saw the invisible God. For, though Moses
conversed with God, yet he said, “If I have found grace in Thy
sight, show me Thyself, that I may see and know Thee.”406
And as it
was fit that the law, which was given, not to one man or a few
enlightened men, but to the whole of a populous nation, should be
accompanied by awe-inspiring signs, great marvels were wrought, by
the ministry of angels, before the people on the mount where the
law was being given to them through one man, while the multitude
beheld the awful appearances. For the people of Israel believed
Moses, not as the Lacedæmonians believed their Lycurgus, because
he had received from Jupiter or Apollo the laws he gave them. For
when the law which enjoined the worship of one God was given to the
people, marvellous signs and earthquakes, such as the divine wisdom
judged sufficient, were brought about in the sight of all, that
they might know that it was the Creator who could thus use creation
to promulgate His law.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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