There is a store of wonders in the visible creation, but the spiritual and intelligent world is still more worthy to engage our hearts; both as we are men, endued with reason; and as regenerate, enlightened by faith. It is so much more excellent than the other, by how much it is removed from all earthly means of apprehension. Brute creatures may behold these visible things, perhaps with sharper eyes than we; but spiritual objects are as utterly out of their reach, as if they had no being. Nearest therefore to beasts are those men, who suffer themselves to be so led by their senses, as to believe nothing but what is suggested by that purblind and unfaithful informer. Let such men doubt whether they have a soul in their body, because their eye never met with it; or that there are any stars in the firmament at noonday, because they appear not; or that there is any air wherein they breathe, because nothing appears to them but an insensible vacuity.

The Sadducees were the most stupid of all heretics, if as some have construed them, they had utterly denied the very being of any spirits. But surely they could not be so senseless; for believing the books of Moses, and being conscious of their own animation, their bosoms must needs convince them of their spiritual inmate and what but a spirit could enable them to argue against spirits? How then could they believe in the existence of God, and at the same time deny the existence of a spirit. It was bad enough that they denied the immortality and constant subsistence of those angelic, immaterial substances; an opinion long since hissed out, not of the school of christianity only, but of the very stalls and sties of the most brutish paganism. Yet there are some it seems who durst wickedly rake it out of the dust, and who have of late let fall some suspicious glances this way. But surely, all that know they have souls, must needs believe a world of spirits which they see not; if from no other grounds, yet out of that analogy which they cannot but find betwixt this lesser and that greater world. For as this little world, man, consists of an outward visible body, and an inward spiritual soul, which

gives life and motion to that organic frame, so possessing all parts that it is wholly in all and in each part wholly; so must it also be in the great universe, the sensible and material part whereof has being and motion from those spiritual powers, both supreme and subordinate, which dwell in it and fill and actuate it. Every illuminated soul therefore looks about him with no other than St. Paul's eyes, which looked not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Cor. iv. 18.

SECTION 2.

Distribution of the Invisible World.

As in an egg, the yolk lies in the midst encompassed round with the white, and that again by a film and shell; so the visible world is inclosed within the intellectual. Yet here is not a mere involution only, but a spiritual and pervading influence, that governs and manages this moving world. As therefore we should sadly misconceive of man, if we thought him to be nothing but a body, because our eyes see no more; so we shall no less grossly err, if we conceive of nothing to be in this vast universe, but the mere lifeless substance of the heavens and the elements, which are present to our view.

Here then, above and beyond all worlds, and in this material world also, our illuminated eyes meet first with the God of spirits; the DEITY, incomprehensible, the Fountain of all life and being, the infinite and self-existing Essence; one most pure, simple, eternal Act; the absolute, omnipotent, omnipresent Spirit; who in himself is more than a world of worlds, filling and comprehending both the spiritual and sensible world; in comparison of whom, this all is nothing, and but for him had been and were nothing. Upon this blessed object, oh my soul, may thy thoughts for ever dwell. Here the more they are fixed, the more shall they find themselves weaned from

all sensible things, and swallowed up with an admiration of that, which they are still further off from comprehending.

Next to this all-glorious and infinite Spirit, they meet with those immaterial and invisible powers, who receive their original and continuance, their natures and offices, from that King of glory. Each one of these is so mighty, as to make up a world of power alone; each one so knowing, as to contain a world of wisdom; and all of them so innumerably many, that their number is next to infinite; and all this numberless number is so perfectly united in one celestial policy, that their entire communion, under the laws and government of their sovereign Creator, makes them a complete world of spirits, invisibly living and moving both within and above this visible globe of the material world.

After these, we meet with the glorified souls of the just; who, now let loose from this prison of clay, enjoy the full liberty of heaven; and being at last reunited to their then immortal bodies, and to their most glorious Head, both are and possess a world of everlasting bliss.

Last of all, may thy thoughts fall upon those infernal powers of darkness, the spiritual wickednesses in heavenly places;' whose number, might, and combination, make up a dreadful world of evil angels, conflicting where they prevail not, and tormenting where they overcome. These, together with the reprobate souls whom they have captivated, are the most horrible and woeful prospects of mischief and misery, which either world is subject to.

Now all and every of these, in respect of largeness, may well pass for so many different worlds: yet as we generally account the whole globe of heaven and earth, and the other inclosed elements, though vast in their several extents, to make up but one sensible world; so we shall consider all the entire specifications of spirits, as ranked in so many regions of one immaterial and intelligible world.

Let us then first silently adore that one transcendent, self-existent, and infinite Essence, in three most glorious persons, the blessed Deity, which filleth heaven and earth with the majesty of his glory; as vailed with the beams

of infinity, and hid in inaccessible light. Then let us turn our eyes to the spiritual guard, the invisible attendants of that divine Majesty; without the knowledge and right apprehension whereof, we shall never conceive of their God and ours as we ought. But oh ye blessed, immortal, glorious spirits, who can know you, but he that is of you? Alas, this soul of mine knows not itself: how shall it know you? Surely, our minds can no more conceive of you, than our eyes can see you: only, since he that made you, hath given us some little glimpse of your subdivine natures, properties and operations, let us endeavour to recount them to his glory in yours.

SECTION 3.

The Number of Holy Angels.

THE good Lord forgive me, that amongst my other offences I have suffered myself so much to forget, not only his divine presence, but the presence of his holy angels also. It is, I confess, my great sin, that I have filled mine eyes with other objects; and have been slack in returning praises to my God, for the continual assistance of those blessed and beneficent spirits, which have ever graciously attended me, without intermission, from the first hour of my conception to this present moment; neither shall they ever, I hope, absent themselves from my tutelage and protection, till they have presented to my poor soul her final glory. Oh that the dust and clay were so washed out of my eyes, that I might behold, together with the presence, the numbers, the beauties, and excellencies of those my ever-present guardians.

When we are convinced of the wonderful magnitude of those brilliant stars which we see moving in the firmament, we cannot but acknowledge that if God had made only one of them, he could never have been enough magnified in his power. But when our sense joins with our reason, to force upon us an acknowledgment of the infinite number of those great luminaries, we are utterly lost

in amazement at this stupendous proof of omnipotence. Nor is it otherwise with the invisible host of heaven. If the power of one angel be such, that at his Maker's appointment, he were able to reduce the world to nothing; and the nature of any one so eminent, that it far surmounts any part of the visible creation; what shall we say to that innumerable multitude of mighty and majestic spirits, wherewith the great God of heaven hath furnished his throne and footstool.

I know not upon what grounds some could pretend to compute, that if all men were reckoned up, from the first Adam to the last man that shall stand upon the earth, there might be to each one assigned more than ten angels. Yet Ambrose's account goes farther still, for he makes all mankind to be that one lost sheep in the parable, and the angels (whose company the great Shepherd left for a time, to come down to this earthly wilderness) to be the ninety and nine. Lo, here would be near a hundred for one. Yet even that number is poor in comparison of the reckoning of him, who presumes to tell us there are more angels in every several rank, than there is of the particulars of all the material things in this world, whether of stars, or leaves, or spires of grass. But sure I am, that cannot be computed. When our Lord speaks of more than twelve legions, he doth not say how many more there are. If those twelve, according to Jerome's computation, amount to seventy two thousand, the 'more than twelve' were doubtless more than many millions. He that made them can tell us. The beloved disciple in Patmos says by inspiration, ' I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the beasts, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands.' Rev. v. 11. Now the elders were but twenty four, and the beasts were but four; all those other thousands therefore were angels: and if so many were about his throne, how many do we think were about his missions! Before him, the prophet Daniel (betwixt whom and the evangelist there is so perfect a correspondence, that we may well say, Daniel was the John of the Old Testament, and John the Daniel of the New) hath made the like