Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

foretold those things to others which God had foretold to them; but
also all those impostors that pretend by the help familiar spirits, or
by superstitious divination of events past, from false causes, to
foretell the like events in time to come: of which (as I have declared
already in the twelfth Chapter of this discourse) there be many
kinds who gain in the opinion of the common sort of men a greater
reputation of prophecy by one casual event that may be but wrested
to their purpose, than can be lost again by never so many failings.
Prophecy is not an art, nor, when it is taken for prediction, a
constant vocation, but an extraordinary and temporary employment
from God, most often of good men, but sometimes also of the wicked.
The woman of Endor, who is said to have had a familiar spirit, and
thereby to have raised a phantasm of Samuel, and foretold Saul his
death, was not therefore a prophetess; for neither had she any science
whereby she could raise such a phantasm, nor does it appear that God
commanded the raising of it, but only guided that imposture to be a
means of Saul's terror and discouragement, and by consequent, of the
discomfiture by which he fell. And for incoherent speech, it was
amongst the Gentiles taken for one sort of prophecy, because the
prophets of their oracles, intoxicated with a spirit or vapor from the
cave of the Pythian Oracle at Delphi, were for the time really mad,
and spake like madmen; of whose loose words a sense might be made to
fit any event, in such sort as all bodies are said to be made of
materia prima. In the Scripture I find it also so taken in these
words, "And the evil spirit came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the
midst of the house."*
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* I Samuel, 18. 10
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And although there be so many significations in Scripture of the
word prophet; yet is that the most frequent in which it is taken for
him to whom God speaketh immediately that which the prophet is to
say from Him to some other man, or to the people. And hereupon a
question may be asked, in what manner God speaketh to such a
prophet. Can it, may some say, be properly said that God hath voice
and language, when it cannot be properly said He hath a tongue or
other organs as a man The Prophet David argueth thus, "Shall He
that made the eye, not see or He that made the ear, not hear"* But
this may be spoken, not, as usually, to signify God's nature, but to
signify our intention to honour Him. For to see and hear are
honourable attributes, and may be given to God to declare as far as
capacity can conceive His almighty power. But if it were to be taken
in the strict and proper sense, one might argue from his making of all
other parts of man's body that he had also the same use of them
which we have; which would be many of them so uncomely as it would
be the greatest contumely in the world to ascribe them to Him.
Therefore we are to interpret God's speaking to men immediately for
that way, whatsoever it be, by which God makes them understand His
will: and the ways whereby He doth this are many, and to be sought
only in the Holy Scripture; where though many times it be said that
God spake to this and that person, without declaring in what manner,
yet there be again many places that deliver also the signs by which
they were to acknowledge His presence and commandment; and by these
may be understood how He spake to many of the rest.
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* Psalms, 94. 9
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