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Theologico-Political Treatise — Part 1 by Benedictus de Spinoza
page 22 of 95 (23%)
Holy Writ many similar examples, but I think they are sufficiently well
known already.

(43) However, we get a still more clear confirmation of our position in Num
xii:6,7, as follows: "If there be any prophet among you, I the Lord will
make myself known unto him in a vision" (i.e. by appearances and signs, for
God says of the prophecy of Moses that it was a vision without signs), "and
will speak unto him in a dream " (i.e. not with actual words and an actual
voice). (44) "My servant Moses is not so; with him will I speak mouth to
mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude of the
Lord he shall behold," i.e. looking on me as a friend and not afraid, he
speaks with me (cf. Ex xxxiii:17).

(45) This makes it indisputable that the other prophets did not hear a real
voice, and we gather as much from Deut. xxiv:10: "And there arose not a
prophet since in Israel like unto Moses whom the Lord knew face to face,"
which must mean that the Lord spoke with none other; for not even Moses saw
the Lord's face. (46) These are the only media of communication between
God and man which I find mentioned in Scripture, and therefore the only ones
which may be supposed or invented. (47) We may be able quite to comprehend
that God can communicate immediately with man, for without the intervention
of bodily means He communicates to our minds His essence; still, a man who
can by pure intuition comprehend ideas which are neither contained in nor
deducible from the foundations of our natural knowledge, must necessarily
possess a mind far superior to those of his fellow men, nor do I believe
that any have been so endowed save Christ. (48) To Him the ordinances of God
leading men to salvation were revealed directly without words or visions, so
that God manifested Himself to the Apostles through the mind of Christ as He
formerly did to Moses through the supernatural voice. (49) In this sense the
voice of Christ, like the voice which Moses heard, may be called the voice
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