34. and his angels may be understood of the Church's PART III. adversaries and their ministers); but then it is repugnant to their immateriality; because everlasting Angel, what. fire is no punishment to impatible substances, such as are all things incorporeal. Angels therefore are not thence proved to be incorporeal. In like manner where St. Paul says, (1 Cor. vi. 3) Know ye not that we shall judge the angels? and 2 Pet. ii. 4, For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down into hell: and (Jude i. 6) And the angels that kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the last day: though it prove the permanence of angelical nature, it confirmeth also their materiality. And (Matt. xxii. 30) In the resurrection men do neither marry nor give in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven: but in the resurrection men shall be permanent, and not incorporeal; so therefore also are the angels. There be divers other places out of which may be drawn the like conclusion. To men that understand the signification of these words, substance, and incorporeal; as incorporeal is taken, not for subtle body, but for not body; they imply a contradiction: insomuch as to say, an angel or spirit is in that sense an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect, there is no angel nor spirit at all. Considering therefore the signification of the word angel in the Old Testament, and the nature of dreams and visions that happen to men by the ordinary way of nature; I was inclined to this opinion, that angels were nothing but supernatural apparitions 34. PART III. of the fancy, raised by the special and extraordi nary operation of God, thereby to make his presence and commandments known to mankind, and chiefly to his own people. But the many places of the New Testament, and our Saviour's own words, and in such texts, wherein is no suspicion of corruption of the Scripture, have extorted from my feeble reason, an acknowledgment and belief, that there be also angels substantial, and permanent. But to believe they be in no place, that is to say, no where, that is to say, nothing, as they, though indirectly, say, that will have them incorporeal, cannot by Scripture be evinced. Inspiration, what, On the signification of the word spirit, dependeth that of the word INSPIRATION; which must either be taken properly; and then it is nothing but the blowing into a man some thin and subtle air or wind, in such manner as a man filleth a bladder with his breath; or if spirits be not corporeal, but have their existence only in the fancy, it is nothing but the blowing in of a phantasm; which is improper to say, and impossible; for phantasms are not, but only seem to be, somewhat. That word therefore is used in the Scripture metaphorically only as (Gen. ii. 7) where it is said that God inspired into man the breath of life, no more is meant, than that God gave unto him vital motion. For we are not to think that God made first a living breath and then blew it into Adam after he was made, whether that breath were real, or seeming; but only as it is, (Acts xvii. 25) that he gave him life, and breath; that is, made him a living creature. And where it is said, (2 Tim. iii. 16) all Scripture is given by inspiration from God, speaking there what. 34. of the Scripture of the Old Testament, it is an easy PART III. metaphor, to signify, that God inclined the spirit or mind of those writers, to write that which should Inspiration, be useful, in teaching, reproving, correcting, and instructing men in the way of righteous living. But where St. Peter, (2 Pet. i. 21) saith, that Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but the holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, by the Holy Spirit is meant the voice of God in a dream or vision supernatural, which is not inspiration. Nor, when our Saviour breathing on his disciples, said, Receive the Holy Spirit, was that breath the Spirit, but a sign of the spiritual graces he gave unto them. And though it be said of many, and of our Saviour himself, that he was full of the Holy Spirit; yet that fulness is not to be understood for infusion of the substance of God, but for accumulation of his gifts, such as are the gift of sanctity of life, of tongues, and the like, whether attained supernaturally, or by study and industry; for in all cases they are the gifts of God. So likewise where God says (Joel ii. 28) I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophecy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions, we are not to understand it in the proper sense, as if his Spirit were like water, subject to effusion or infusion; but as if God had promised to give them prophetical dreams, and visions. For the proper use of the word infused, in speaking of the graces of God, is an abuse of it; for those graces are virtues, not bodies to be carried hither and thither, and to be poured into men as into barrels. PART III. 34. In the same manner, to take inspiration in the proper sense, or to say that good spirits entered into men to make them prophecy, or evil spirits into those that became phrenetic, lunatic, or epileptic, is not to take the word in the sense of the Scripture'; for the Spirit there is taken for the power of God, working by causes to us unknown. As also (Acts ii. 2) the wind, that is there said to fill the house wherein the apostles were assembled on the day of Pentecost, is not to be understood for the Holy Spirit, which is the Deity itself; but for an external sign of God's special working on their hearts, to effect in them the internal graces, and holy virtues he thought requisite for the performance of their apostleship. God taken by CHAPTER XXXV. OF THE SIGNIFICATION IN SCRIPTURE OF AND SACRAMENT. The kingdom of THE Kingdom of God in the writings of divines, divines meta- and specially in sermons and treatises of devotion, phorically, but is taken most commonly for eternal felicity, after tures properly. this life, in the highest heaven, which they also in the Scrip call the kingdom of glory; and sometimes for the earnest of that felicity, sanctification, which they term the kingdom of grace; but never for the monarchy, that is to say, the sovereign power of God over any subjects acquired by their own consent, which is the proper signification of kingdom. To the contrary, I find the KINGDOM OF GOD to signify, in most places of Scripture, a kingdom 35. properly so named, constituted by the votes of the Part iii. people of Israel in peculiar manner; wherein they chose God for their king by covenant made with him, upon God's promising them the possession of the land of Canaan; and but seldom metaphorically; and then it is taken for dominion over sin ; (and only in the New Testament ;) because such a dominion as that, every subject shall have in the kingdom of God, and without prejudice to the sovereign. From the very creation, God not only reigned over all men naturally by his might; but also had peculiar subjects, whom he commanded by a voice, as one man speaketh to another. In which manner he reigned over Adam, and gave him commandment to abstain from the tree of cognizance of good and evil; which when he obeyed not, but tasting thereof, took upon him to be as God, judging between good and evil, not by his creator's commandment, but by his own sense, his punishment was a privation of the estate of eternal life, wherein God had at first created him and afterwards God punished his posterity for their vices, all but eight persons, with an universal deluge; and in these eight did consist the then kingdom of God. of the king After this it pleased God to speak to Abraham, The original and (Gen. xvii. 7, 8) to make a covenant with him in dom of God: these words, I will establish my covenant between me, and thee, and thy seed after thee in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God to thee, and to thy seed after thee; and I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. In this |