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| Of the Appearance on Sinai. Whether the Trinity Spake in that Appearance or Some One Person Specially.
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Chapter 15.—Of the
Appearance on Sinai. Whether the Trinity Spake in that Appearance
or Some One Person Specially.
25. But now of the clouds, and
voices, and lightnings, and the trumpet, and the smoke on Mount
Sinai, when it was said, “And Mount Sinai was altogether on a
smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke
thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace; and all the people that
was in the camp trembled; and when the voice of the trumpet sounded
long and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him
by a voice.”297
And a little
after, when the Law had been given in the ten commandments, it
follows in the text, “And all the people saw the thunderings, and
the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain
smoking.” And a little after, “And [when the people saw it,]
they removed and stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick
darkness298
where God
was, and the Lord said unto Moses,”299
etc. What shall I say about this,
save that no one can be so insane as to believe the smoke, and the
fire, and the cloud, and the darkness, and whatever there was of
the kind, to be the substance of the word and wisdom of God which
is Christ, or of the Holy Spirit? For not even the Arians ever
dared to say that they were the substance of God the Father. All
these things, then, were wrought through the creature serving the
Creator, and were presented in a suitable economy
(dispensatio) to human senses; unless, perhaps, because it
is said, “And Moses drew near to the cloud where God was,”
carnal thoughts must needs suppose that the cloud was indeed seen
by the people, but that within the cloud Moses with the eyes of the
flesh saw the Son of God, whom doting heretics will have to be seen
in His own substance. Forsooth, Moses may have seen Him with the
eyes of the flesh, if not only the wisdom of God which is Christ,
but even that of any man you please and howsoever wise, can be seen
with the eyes of the flesh; or if, because it is written of the
elders of Israel, that “they saw the place where the God of
Israel had stood,” and that “there was under His feet as it
were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of
heaven in his clearness,”300
therefore we are to believe that
the word and wisdom of God in His own substance stood within the
space of an earthly place, who indeed “reacheth firmly from end
to end, and sweetly ordereth all things;”301
| 301 Wisdom 8.1" id="iv.i.iv.xvi-p7.1" parsed="|Wis|8|1|0|0" osisRef="Bible:Wis.8.1">Wisd. viii. 1 | and that the Word of God, by whom
all things were made,302
is in such wise changeable, as now
to contract, now to expand Himself; (may the Lord cleanse the
hearts of His faithful ones from such thoughts!) But indeed all
these visible and sensible things are, as we have often said,
exhibited through the creature made subject in order to signify the
invisible and intelligible God, not only the Father, but also the
Son and the Holy Spirit, “of whom are all things, and through
whom are all things, and in whom are all things;”303
although
“the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even
His eternal power and Godhead.”304
26. But as far as concerns our
present undertaking, neither on Mount Sinai do I see how it
appears, by all those things which were fearfully displayed to the
senses of mortal men, whether God the Trinity spake, or the Father,
or the Son, or the Holy Spirit severally. But if it is allowable,
without rash assertion, to venture upon a modest and hesitating
conjecture from this passage, if it is possible to understand it of
one person of the Trinity, why do we not rather understand the Holy
Spirit to be spoken of, since the Law itself also, which was given
there, is said to have been written upon tables of stone with
the finger of God,305
by which name we know the Holy
Spirit to be signified in the Gospel.306
And fifty days are numbered from
the slaying of the lamb and the celebration of the Passover until
the day in which these things began to be done in Mount Sinai; just
as after the passion of our Lord fifty days are numbered from His
resurrection, and then came the Holy Spirit which the Son of God
had promised. And in that very coming of His, which we read of in
the Acts of the Apostles, there appeared cloven tongues like as of
fire, and it sat upon each of them:307
which agrees with Exodus, where it
is written, “And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because
the Lord descended upon it in fire;” and a little after, “And
the sight of the glory of the Lord,” he says, “was like
devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children
of Israel.”308
Or if these
things were therefore wrought because neither the Father nor the
Son could be there presented in that mode without the Holy Spirit,
by whom the Law itself must needs be written; then we know
doubtless that God appeared there, not by His own substance, which
remains invisible and unchangeable, but by the appearance above
mentioned of the creature; but that some special person of the
Trinity appeared, distinguished by a proper mark, as far as my
capacity of understanding reaches, we do not see.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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