SECT. V.

THE KNOWLEDGE OF ANGELS.

Ir Sampson could have had his full strength in his mill, when he wanted his eyes, it would have little availed him; such is power without knowledge: but where both of these concur in one, how can they fail of effect? Whether of these is more eminent in the blessed spirits, it is not easy to determine.

So perfectly Knowing are they, as that the very heathen philosophers have styled them by the name of Intelligences; as if their very being were made up of understanding. Indeed, what is there in this whole compass of the large universe, that is hid from their eyes? Only the closet of man's heart is locked up from them; as reserved solely to their Maker: yet so, as that they can, by some insensible chinks of those secret notifications which fall from us, look into them also. All other things, whether secrets of nature, or closest counsels or events, are as open to their sight, as the most visible objects

are to ours.

They do not, as we mortals are wont, look through the dim and horny spectacle of senses; or understand by the mediation of phantasms: but rather, as clear mirrors, they receive at once the full representations of all intelligible things; having, besides that connatural light which is universally in them all, certain special illuminations from the Father of Lights.

m

Even we men think we know something; neither may our good God lose the thank of his bounty, this way: but, alas, he, that is reputed to have known most of all the heathen', whom some have styled the Genius of Nature, could confess, that the clearest understanding is to those things which are most manifest, but as a bat's eyes to the sun. Do we see but a worm crawling under our feet, we know not what that is, which in itself gives it a being: do we hear but a bee humming about our ears, the greatest naturalist cannot know, whether that noise come from within the body, or from the mouth, or from the wings of that fly": how can we then hope or pretend, to know those things, which are abstruse and remote? But these heavenly spirits do not only know things as they are in themselves, and in their inward and immediate causes; but do clearly see the First and Universal Cause of all things, and that in his glorious essence: how much more do they know our shallow dispositions, affections, inclinations, which peer out of the windows of our hearts; together with all perils and events, that are incident unto us!

Arist. Metaphys. 1. ii. m Bonavent. Vulcan. præf. in lib. De Mundo. "Lord Bacon, in his Natural Hist.

We walk, therefore, amidst not more able than watchful overseers and so are we looked through, in all our ways, as if heaven were all eyes. Under this blessed vigilancy, if the powers of hell can either surprise us with suddenness, or circumvent us with subtlety, let them not spare to use their advantage.

But, O ye Tutelar Spirits, ye well know our weakness, and their strength; our silliness, and their craft; their deadly machinations, and our miserable obnoxiousness: neither is your love to mankind and fidelity to your Maker, any whit less than your knowledge; so as your charge can no more miscarry under your hands and eyes, than yourselves. As you do always enjoy the beatifical 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.

SECT. VI.

THE EMPLOYMENTS AND OPERATIONS OF ANGELS.

EVEN while we see you not, O 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 there are innumerable numbers of you employed, in governing and ordering the creature; in guarding the elect; 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 you 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 to our holy vocation, as ye did to 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 foretell our danger, as to Lot, to Joseph and Mary; another while, ye comfort our affliction, as to Hagar: 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; Exod. iv. another while, ye encourage us in our devotions, as ye did Paul and Silas, and Cornelius: one while, ye deliver 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 in all the gracious offices, which ye perform.

Certainly, there are many thousand events, wherein 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 cognation; the messenger saw nothing but men like himself, but Abraham saw an angel fore-contriving the work: God, saith he, shall send his angel before thee, that thou mayest take a wife thence; Gen. xxiv. 7. When the Israelites, forcibly, by dint of sword, expelled the Canaanites and 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 disorderly starting 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 miss it: they thought of nothing but some sudden dizziness of brain, that disappointed them; we know it was an angel, that struck them with blindness. Nothing appeared, when the Egyptian's firstborn were struck dead in one night: the astrologers would perhaps say they were planet-struck; we know it was done by the hand of an angel. Nothing was seen at the pool of Bethesda, but a moved water, when the sudden cures were wrought: which perhaps might be attributed to some beneficial constellation; 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.

Neither is it otherwise, in the frequent experiments of our life. Have we been raised up from deadly sicknesses, 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 tell how by our providence to have evaded? our invisible guardians have done it.

I see no reason to dislike that observation of Gerson. "Whence is it," saith he, " that little children are conserved from so many perils of their infancy; fire, water, falls, suffocations, but by the agency of angels"?" Surely, where we find

Qualiter pueri, inter tot infantiæ discrimina, &c. Gers. Serm. de Angel.

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; when 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; when 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 fellows, and discoursed to them of the natural reasons of that uproar in the clouds, and those sudden flashes wherewith they seemed, out of the ignorances of causes, to be too much affrighted 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 that God, who will have his works rather entertained with wonder and trembling, than with curious scanning?

Neither is it otherwise in those violent hurricanes, devouring earthquakes, and more than ordinary tempests, and fiery apparitions, which we have seen and heard of: for, however there be natural causes given of the usual events of this kind; yet nothing hinders, but that the Almighty, for the manifestation of his power and justice, may set spirits, whether good or evil, on work to do the same things sometimes with more state and magnificence of horror. Like as we see frogs bred ordinarily, both out of putrefaction and generation; and yet, when it was, for a plague to Egypt, they were supernaturally produced: hail, an ordinary meteor; murrain of cattle, an ordinary disease; yet, for a plague to obdured Pharaoh, miraculously wrought.

Neither need there be any great difficulty, in discerning, when such like events run in a natural course, and when spirits are actors in them: the manner of their operation, the occasions and effects of them, shall soon descry them to a judicious eye: for, when we shall find, that they do manifestly deviate from the road of nature, and work above the power of secondary causes, it is easy to determine them to be of a higher efficiency. I could instance irrefragably, in several tempests and thunder-storms, which, to the unspeakable terror of the inhabitants, were seen, heard, felt, in the western parts";

In the Churches of Foye Totness, and Withycomb. Of the same kind were those prodigious tempests at Milan; an. 1521. and at Mechlin; Aug. 7, an. 1527.

wherein, the translocation and transportation of huge massy stones and irons of the churches, above the possibility of natural distance, together with the strange preservation of the persons assembled, with other accidents sensibly accompanying those astonishing works of God, still fresh in the minds of many, shewed them plainly to be wrought by a stronger hand than nature's.

And whither else should we ascribe many events, which ignorance teacheth us to wonder at in silence? If murders be descried, by the fresh bleeding of cold and almost putrefied carcases: if a man by some strong instinct be warned to change that lodging, which he constantly held for some years; and finds his wonted sleeping place that night crushed, with the unexpected fall of an unsuspected contignation: if a man, distressed with care for the missing of an important evidence, (such a one have I known',) shall be informed in his dream, in what hole of his dove-cote he shall find it hid: if a man, without all observation of physical criticisms, 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? If a man shall in his dream, as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus professes, receive the prescript of the remedy of his disease, which the physicians, it seems, could not cure; whence can this be, but by the suggestion of spirits?

And, surely, since I am convinced, that their unfelt hands are in many occurrences of my life; I have learned so much wit and grace, as rather to yield them too much than too little stroke, in ordering all my concernments. O ye Blessed Spirits, many things I know ye do for me, which I discern not while yet you do them; but 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: I bless you, as the means of all that is done by you for me.

SECT. VII.

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

Histoires Prodigieuses de P. Boaistuan, c. 8. Of the same kind was that fearful tempest, which, in the 4th year of King William Rufus, blew down 600 houses in London; and, reaving Bow Church, carried away six beams of twenty-seven foot long; and struck them into the earth, the streets being then unpaved, so deep, that only four foot remained above ground. Chron. of Sir Robert Baker, of the reign of Will. 2.

Mr. William Cook, senior, of Waltham Holy Cross.

Marc. Aurel. Antoninus his Meditat. concerning himself. 1. i. cap. 17. The like he reports of Chryses, ibid.