Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

it? It is true, more time and pains in those exercises is required of the ministers of religion, than of others; but none are wholly exempted and excused from the duty; because all men are bound to be wise unto salvation, and to be so requires no small pains and industry. Ministers are to read that they may be able to teach; and you are to read that you may be capable of learning, or being taught. For unless there be a concurrent industry in the teacher and the disciple, the one teacheth in vain, because the other will never learn.

Be sure therefore daily to read the holy Scriptures, and those other good books you have or can procure, that may help you to understand them. And if any of you cannot read yourselves, (I hope there are very few, if any, in this congregation under so unhappy circumstances,) get some relation, friend, or neighbour to read to you; and they must be very uncharitable indeed, that will deny you that assistance. They that cannot read are concerned to double their diligence in hearing, and in a more careful attendance on all opportunities of instruction that shall be offered them in public, and in asking and seeking after instruction from their ministers in private, adding their daily and most earnest prayers to God for the assistance of his holy Spirit in the use of those means, and encouraging themselves with that promise of his, James i. 5. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

In a word, let none of you think or imagine divine wisdom and knowledge so cheap a thing, as to be obtained without labour and diligence. And re

[ocr errors]

member that it is worth your while and pains to learn the right way to heaven; for if you miss it, you are undone for ever.

Wherefore consider what I say, and the Lord give you understanding in all things.

To God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, be ascribed all honour and glory, adoration and worship, now and for ever. Amen.

SERMON XI.

THE EXISTENce of angels PROVED FROM REASON AS WELL AS SCRIPTURE, THEIR CREATION BY GOD, the fall of SOME OF THEM, THE NATURE OF THE HOLY ANGELS, THEIR

STATE AND CONDITION IN REFERENCE TO GOD.

HEBREWS i. 14.

Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?

THE subject-matter of my text, concerning the holy angels of God, hath suffered between two extremes, the bold presumptuous curiosity of some, and the desperate or supine carelessness and unconcernedness of others about it; some flying too high, others sinking too low; some thinking and speaking too much, others too little of those noble beings, which we call angels. St. Paul takes notice of some in his time, whose curiosity in this inquiry led them to a religious worship of angels, whom therefore he condemns, as intruding into those things which they had not seen, vainly puffed up by their fleshly minds, Col. ii. 18.

But to let these pass, about the end of the fourth century (as it is probably conjectured) there came forth a book under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, (the convert and disciple of St. Paul, of whom we read Acts xvii. 34.) entitled, Concerning the Celestial Hierarchy; wherein the author speaks so sublimely, so punctually, with so much assurance

of the things above, as if he had himself surveyed the heavenly mansions, and, as a learned man expresseth it, taken an exact inventory of all that is there. The book was either unknown to, or not much relied on, by the catholic doctors of the next ages, as appears by the sentiments and notions they had of the orders of angels, very different from the determinations of that author. But afterwards the schoolmen and others of the church of Rome, taking the book to be really his, whose name it bears, received all the groundless conjectures therein, as very truths, yea well nigh adored them as divine oracles. Nor have these men been contented with the speculations of that author, but have ventured farther, and raised many more curious and fruitless inquiries concerning angels, than he ever dreamt of. It must needs disgust a sober man to read the many nice and idle questions they have started, and taken a great deal of pains to resolve, especially concerning the knowledge of angels. Methinks men that know so little of themselves, and are so unable to give a certain account of the operations of their own inward faculties of understanding, willing, and remembering, nay, of the very perceptions they have of things by their outward senses, should be more modest, and not dare so confidently to discourse of those sublimer beings, or to tell how and what they do or can know.

Wherefore others, out of a dread and abhorrence of such presumption, have run themselves into the contrary extreme, and can scarce endure any professed discourse of angels, or let it pass, without the censure of vain and dangerous curiosity. And this their folly they call prudence, modesty, and humi

lity, and endeavour to justify it by the authority of an old threadbare maxim, (the common shelter of dulness, stupidity, and negligence about divine things,)" Those things that are above us, do not at "all concern us a" I will not undertake to make comparisons between this and the other extreme ; but of this I am certain, that the ill consequences of the latter extreme are very great.

For by this conceit, the most noble part of the creation is hid from our eyes, and banished out of the bounds and limits of the Christian philosophy. By this pretence, the majesty of the divine empire, to which so many millions of glorious creatures are subject, is lessened and depressed; and men must needs think too highly of themselves, and too meanly of the great and glorious God, if they are not minded sometimes of those more excellent beings that are between God and themselves, who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth, Job iv. 19. By this means we must be ignorant of the great instruments of the divine Providence over us, and deprived of the comfort we might receive from the knowledge of them in the time of our distress and danger. Hereby the best patterns of virtue, which God hath set before us, (next to the example of his most holy Son,) are removed out of our sight; nor can we with a right understanding say that our daily petition, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven, viz. by the holy angels. In a word, the great mistake of those, who would have the doctrine of angels passed over in silence, will plainly appear by the excellent uses of

a Quæ supra nos, nihil ad nos.

« AnteriorContinua »