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dispositions, affections, inclinations, which peer out of the windows of our hearts; together with all perils and events, that are incident

unto us!

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 love to mankind your 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 blessfrom your edness is no more separable from our safety, than blessedness.

SECT. VI.

you

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 La ban 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 forecontriving 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 Egyptians' 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 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

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

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; mur.ain 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 ir.efragably, in several tempests and thunder-storms, which, to the unspeakable terror of the inhabitants, were seen, heard, felt, in the western parts *; 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'st.

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

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. + 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,

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 forecontriving 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 Egyptians' 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 a probability of second causes in nature, we are apt to confine our thoughts from looking higher: vet, 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

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

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; murain 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 ir efragably, in several tempests and thunder-storms, which, to the unspeakable terror of the inhabitants, were seen, heard, felt, in the western parts; 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 na

ture'st.

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

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. + 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,

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