Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

inspired into them, then they had it in no less manner than Christ
himself, in whom only the Spirit of God dwelt bodily. It is meant
therefore of the gift and grace of God, that guided them to co-operate
with Moses, from whom their spirit was derived. And it appeareth
that they were such as Moses himself should appoint for elders and
officers of the people:*(2) for the words are, "Gather unto me seventy
men, whom thou knowest to be elders and officers of the people":
where, thou knowest is the same with thou appointest, or hast
appointed to be such. For we are told before that Moses, following the
counsel of Jethro his father-in-law, did appoint judges and officers
over the people such as feared God;*(3) and of these were those
seventy whom God, by putting upon them Moses' spirit, inclined to
aid Moses in the administration of the kingdom: and in this sense
the spirit of God is said presently upon the anointing of David to
have come upon David, and left Saul;*(4) God giving His graces to
him He chose to govern His people, and taking them away from him He
rejected. So that by the spirit is meant inclination to God's service,
and not any supernatural revelation.
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* Numbers, 11. 27
*(2) Ibid., 11. 16
*(3) Exodus, 18
*(4) I Samuel, 16. 13, 14
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God spake also many times by the event of lots, which were ordered
by such as He had put in authority over His people. So we read that
God manifested by the lots which Saul caused to be drawn the fault
that Jonathan had committed in eating a honeycomb, contrary to the
oath taken by the people.* And God divided the land of Canaan
amongst the Israelites by the "lots that Joshua did cast before the
Lord in Shiloh."*(2) In the same manner it seemeth to be that God
discovered the crime of Achan.*(3) And these are the ways whereby
God declared His will in the Old Testament.
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* I Samuel, 14. 43
*(2) Joshua, 18. 10
*(3) Ibid., 7. 16, etc.
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All which ways He used also in the New Testament. To the Virgin
Mary, by a vision of an angel; to Joseph, in a dream; again to Paul,
in the way to Damascus in a vision of our Saviour; and to Peter in the
vision of a sheet let down from heaven with diverse sorts of flesh
of clean and unclean beasts; and in prison, by vision of an angel; and
to all the Apostles and writers of the New Testament, by the graces of
His Spirit; and to the Apostles again, at the choosing of Matthias
in the place of Judas Iscariot, by lot.
Seeing then all prophecy supposeth vision or dream (which two,
when they be natural, are the same), or some especial gift of God so
rarely observed in mankind as to be admired where observed; and seeing
as well such gifts as the most extraordinary dreams and visions may
proceed from God, not only by His supernatural and immediate, but also
by his natural operation, and by mediation of second causes; there
is need of reason and judgement to discern between natural and
supernatural gifts, and between natural and supernatural visions or
dreams. And consequently men had need to be very circumspect, and
wary, in obeying the voice of man that, pretending himself to be a
prophet, requires us to obey God in that way which he in God's name