either surprise us with suddenness, or circumvent us with subtlety, let them not spare to use their advantage.

But, oh ye tutelar Spirits, ye well know our weakness, and their strength; our folly, and their craft, their deadly machinations, and our miserable obnoxiousness. Nor is your love to mankind and fidelity to your Maker, any whit less than your knowledge; your charge therefore can no more miscarry under your hands and eyes, than yourselves. As you always enjoy the beatific vision of your Maker, so your eye is never off from his little ones Your blessedness is no more separable from our safety, than you from your blessedness.

SECTION 6.

The Employment and Operations of Angels.

EVEN while we see you not, oh ye blessed Spirits, we know what ye do. He that made you hath told us your task. As there are many millions of you, attending the all-glorious throne of your Creator, and singing perpetual hallelujahs to him in the highest heavens: so innumerable multitudes of you are employed in governing and ordering the world, in guarding the elect, and in executing the commands which ye receive from the Almighty.

What variety is here, of your assistance! One while ye lead us in our way, as ye did Israel; another while ye instruct us, as ye did Daniel; one while ye fight for us, as ye did for Joshua; another while ye purvey for us, as for Elijah; one while ye fit us for our holy vocation, as ye did Isaiah; another while ye dispose of the opportunities of our calling for good, as ye did of Philip's to the Eunuch; one while ye foretel our danger, as to Lot, to Joseph and Mary; another while ye relieve our affliction, as ye did Hagar's; one while ye oppose evil projects against us, as to Balaam; another while ye will be striven with for a blessing, as with Jacob; one while ye resist our offensive courses, as to Moses another while

ye encourage us in our devotions, as ye did Paul and Silas, and Cornelius. One while ye deliver us from durance, as Peter; another while ye preserve us from danger and death, as the Three Children; one while ye are ready to restrain our presumption, as the cherub before the gate of paradise; another while to excite our courage, as to Elijah and Theodosius; one while to refresh and cheer us in our sufferings, as to the apostles; another while to prevent our sufferings, as to Jacob in the pursuit of Laban and Esau, to the Sages in the pursuit of Herod. One while ye cure our bodies, as at the pool of Bethesda; another while ye carry up our souls to glory, as ye did to Lazarus. It were endless to instance all the gracious offices which ye perform.

Certainly, there are many thousand events in which common eyes see nothing but nature, which yet are effected by the ministration of angels. When Abraham sent his servant to procure a wife for his son, from amongst his own relations, the messenger saw nothing but men like himself: but Abraham saw an angel beforehand contriving the work. God, saith he, shall send his angel before thee, that thou mayest take a wife from thence. Gen. xxiv. 7. When the Israelites forcibly expelled the Canaanites, the Amorites, and the other branded nations, nothing appeared but their own arms; but the Lord of hosts could say, I will send mine angel before thee, by whom I shall drive them thence.' Balaam saw his ass starting disorderly in the path: he that formerly had seen visions, now sees nothing but a wall and a way; but in the mean time his ass, who for the present had more of the prophet than his master, could see an angel and a sword. The Sodomites went groping in the street for Lot's door, and missed it; they thought of nothing but some sudden dizziness of brain that disappointed them; but we know that it was an angel that struck them with blindness. Nothing appeared when the Egyptians' firstborn were struck dead in one night: the astrologers would perhaps say they were planet-struck; but we know it was done by the eye of an angel. Nothing was seen at the pool of Bethesda but agitated water, when the sudden cures were wrought, which perhaps

might be attributed to some planetary influence; but we know that an angel descended, and made the water thus sanative. Gehazi saw his master strangely preserved from the Aramite troops; but had not his eyes been opened by the prophet's prayers, he had not seen whence that aid came.

It is the same in many instances of our life. Have we been raised up from deadly sickness, when all natural helps have given us up? God's angels have been our secret physicians. Have we had instinctive intimations of the death of some absent friends, which no human intelligence hath bidden us to suspect? Who but our angels hath wrought it. Have we been preserved from mortal dangers, which we could not possibly tell how to evade? Our invisible guardians have done it. Whence is it that little children are preserved from so many perils during their infancy,-fire, water, falls, suffocations,-but by the agency of angels. Where we find a probability of second causes in nature, we are apt to confine our thoughts from looking higher; yet even there many times, are unseen hands. Had we seen the house fall upon the heads of Job's children, we should perhaps have attributed it to the natural force of a vehement blast; now we know it was the work of a spirit. Had we seen those thousands of Israel falling dead of the plague, we should have complained of some strange infection in the air; but David saw the angel of God acting in that mortality. Human reason is apt to be injuriously saucy, in ascribing those things to an ordinary course of natural causes, which the God of nature doth by supernatural agents.

A master of philosophy, travelling with others on the way, when a fearful thunder-storm arose, checked the fear of his companions, and discoursed to them of the natural causes of that uproar in the clouds, and those sudden flashes which through ignorance so much alarmed them. In the midst of his philosophical discourse, he was struck dead with that dreadful eruption which he slighted. What could this be but the finger of God, who will have his works regarded with wonder and trembling, rather than with curious speculations. Nor is it otherwise in those violent hurricanes, those devouring carthquakes, and

fiery meteors which we have seen and heard of. For though a variety of natural causes may be assigned, yet nothing hinders but that the Almighty, for the manifestation of his power and justice, may employ good or evil spirits to do the same things sometimes with more state and magnificence of horror. Frogs we see are an ordinary production, yet when it was for a plague to Egypt, they were supernaturally produced. Hail is an ordinary occurrence, murrain of cattle an ordinary disease; yet for a plague to obdurate Pharaoh, both were miraculously wrought.

When we observe things manifestly deviating from the road of nature, and working above the power of secondary causes, to what can we ascribe them but to causes that are supernatural. Murders are often discovered in a way that cannot be accounted for. And if a man by some strong instinct be warned to change his lodging, which he constantly held for some years before, and finds his wonted sleeping place that night crushed with some unexpected fall; or if another, without any physical observation, shall receive and give intelligence many days before, what hour shall be his last: to what cause can we attribute these, but to our attending angels? And since I am convinced that their unfelt hands are in many occurrences of my life, I have learned to yield them too much rather than too little, in the ordering of all my concerns. Oh ye blessed Spirits, many things I know ye do for me which I discern not till after they are done and many things ye may do more, which I know not. I bless my God and yours, as the Author of all ye do: as the means of all that is done by you for me.

I bless you,

The Degrees and Orders of Angels.

HEAVEN hath nothing in it but perfection; but even perfection itself hath degrees. As the glorified souls, so the blessed angels have their heights of excellency and

glory. He who will be known as the God of order, observes no doubt, a most exact order in his court of heaven, nearest to the residence of his Majesty. Equality hath no place, either in earth or in hell; nor have we any reason to seek it in heaven. He that was rapt into the third heaven can tell us of thrones, dominions, principalities, angels and archangels, in that region of blessedness. We cannot therefore think these to be only one class of spirits; doubtless they are distinctions of divers orders. But what their several ranks, offices or employments are, he were not more wise that could tell, than he is bold that dare speak. None can exceed those in presumption who have taken upon them to marshal these angelic spirits into their several rooms; proportioning their stations, dignities and services, according to the model of earthly courts; disposing them into three general hierarchies, the first relating to the immediate attendance of the Almighty, the other two to the government of the creature, both general and particular.

For my own part I must crave leave to wonder at this boldness, and profess myself as far to seek whence this learning should come, as how to believe it. I do indeed believe there are divers orders of celestial spirits; but I think they are not to be believed that dare to determine them, especially when I see him who was rapt into the third heaven, varying the order of their places in the several mentions of them. Ephes. i. 21. Col. i. 16. I desire to be satisfied with this, that the least degree, both of saints and angels, is blessedness. But as for those degrees of glory, it would be too ambitious in me to desire to know them. It is enough for me to rest in hope, that I shall once see them. Meanwhile, let me be learnedly ignorant, and incuriously devout; silently blessing the power and wisdom of my infinite Creator, who knows how to honour himself by all these glorious and unrevealed subordinations.