(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."

(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 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." (31) 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?

(32) 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.) (33) Further the law 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 alone: it forbade them to invent or fashion any likeness of the
Deity, but this was to insure purity of service; because, never having seen
God, they could not by means of images recall the likeness of God, but only
the likeness of some created thing which might thus gradually take the place