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The City of God

Chapter 13.--Of the Invisible God, Who Has Often Made Himself Visible, Not as He Really Is, But as the Beholders Could Bear the Sight.

Neither need we be surprised that God, invisible as He is, should often have appeared visibly to the patriarchs. For as the sound which communicates the thought conceived in the silence of the mind is not the thought itself, so the form by which God, invisible in His own nature, became visible, was not God Himself. Nevertheless it is He Himself who was seen under that form, as that thought itself is heard in the sound of the voice; and the patriarchs recognized that, though the bodily form was not God, they saw the invisible God. For, though Moses conversed with God, yet he said, "If I have found grace in Thy sight, show me Thyself, that I may see and know Thee." ¹ And as it was fit that the law, which was given, not to one man or a few enlightened men, but to the whole of a populous nation, should be accompanied by awe-inspiring signs, great marvels were wrought, by the ministry of angels, before the people on the mount where the law was being given to them through one man, while the multitude beheld the awful appearances. For the people of Israel believed Moses, not as the Lacedaemonians believed their Lycurgus, because he had received from Jupiter or Apollo the laws he gave them. For when the law which enjoined the worship of one God was given to the people, marvellous signs and earthquakes, such as the divine wisdom judged sufficient, were brought about in the sight of all, that they might know that it was the Creator who could thus use creation to promulgate His law.

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XIII: De inuisibili deo, qui se uisibilem saepe praestiterit, non secundum quod est, sed secundum quod poterant ferre cernentes.

Nec mouere debet, quod, cum sit inuisibilis, saepe uisibiliter patribus apparuisse memoratur. sicut enim sonus, quo auditur sententia in silentio intellegentiae constituta, non est hoc quod ipsa: ita et species, qua uisus est deus in natura inuisibili constitutus, non erat quod ipse. uerumtamen ipse in eadem specie corporali uidebatur, sicut illa sententia ipsa in sono uocis auditur; nec illi ignorabant inuisibilem deum in specie corporali, quod ipse non erat, se uidere. nam et loquebatur cum loquente Moyses et ei tamen dicebat: si inueni gratiam ante te, ostende mihi te met ipsum, scienter ut uideam te. cum igitur oporteret dei legem in edictis angelorum terribiliter dari, non uni homini paucisue sapientibus, sed uniuersae genti et populo ingenti: coram eodem populo magna facta sunt in monte, ubi lex per unum dabatur, conspiciente multitudine metuenda et tremenda quae fiebant. non enim populus Israel sic Moysi credidit, quemadmodum suo Lycurgo Lacedaemonii, quod a Ioue seu Apolline leges, quas condidit, accepisset. cum enim lex dabatur populo, qua coli unus iubebatur deus, in conspectu ipsius populi, quantum sufficere diuina prouidentia iudicabat, mirabilibus rerum signis et motibus apparebat ad eandem legem dandam creatori seruire creaturam.