d

the Testaments. When Manoah, the father of Samson, saw an angel, he worshipped him; and, in the Old Testament, it was esteemed lawful; for they were the lieutenants of God, sent with the impresses of his majesty, and took in his name the homage from us, who then were so much their inferiors. But when the man Christ Jesus was exalted, and made the Lord of all the angels, then they became our fellow-servants, and might not receive worship from any of the servants of Jesus, especially from prophets and martyrs, and those that are ministers of the testimony of Jesus.' And, therefore, when an angel appeared to St. John, and he, according to the custom of the Jews, fell down and worshipped him, as not yet knowing, or not considering any thing to the contrary; the angel reproved him, saying, " See thou do it not; I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God;" or, as St. Cyprian reads it, "worship Jesus." God and man are now only capable of worship; but no angel. God, essentially; man, in the person of Christ, and in the exaltation of our great Redeemer: but angels not so high, and, therefore, not capable of any religious worship. And this dignity of man St. Gregory explicates fully: “ Quid est, quod, ante Redemptoris adventum, adorantur ab hominibus [angeli] et tacent, postmodum verò adorari refugiunt?" "Why did the angels of old receive worshippings, and were silent; but, in the New Testament, decline it, and fear to accept it?" "Nisi quòd naturam nostram, quam priùs despexerant, postquam hanc super se assumptam aspiciunt, prostratam sibi videri pertimescunt; nec jam sub se velut infirmam contemnere ausi sunt, quam super se, viz. in Cœli Rege, venerantur:" "The reason is, because they, seeing our nature, which they did so lightly value, raised up above them, they fear to see it humbled under them; neither do they any more despise the weakness, which themselves worship in the King of Heaven." The same also is the sense of the gloss of St. Ambrose, Ansbertus, Haymo, Rupertus, and others of old; and Ribera, Salmeron, and Lewis of Granada of late: which being so plainly consonant to the words of the angel, and

b Judges, xiii.

d De Bono Patientiæ.

Revel. xxii. 9.

• Homil. 8. in Evangel.

consigned by the testimony of such men, I the rather note, that those who worship angels, and make religious addresses to them, may see what privilege themselves lose, and how they part with the honour of Christ, who in his nature relative to us is "exalted far above all thrones, and principalities, and dominions." I need not add lustre to this: it is like the sun, the biggest body of light, and nothing can describe it so well as its own beams: and there is not in nature, or the advantages of honour, any thing greater, than that we have the issues of that mercy which makes us fellow-servants with angels, too much honoured to pay them a religious worship, whose Lord is a man, and he that is their King, is our Brother.

4. To this, for the likeness of the matter, I add, that the Divine mercy hath so prosecuted us with the enlargement of his favours, that we are not only fellow-ministers and servants with the angels, and, in our nature in the person of Christ, exalted above them; but we also shall be their judges. And if this be not an honour above that of Joseph or Mordecai, an honour beyond all the measures of a man, then there are in honour no degrees, no priority or distances, or characters of fame and nobleness. Christ is the great Judge of all the world; his human nature shall then triumph over evil men and evil spirits; then shall the devils, those angels that fell from their first originals, be brought in their chains from their dark prisons, and once be allowed to see the light, that light that shall confound them; while all that follow the Lamb, and that are accounted worthy of that resurrection, shall be assessors in the judgment. "Know ye not," saith St. Paul," that ye shall judge angels f?" And Tertullian, speaking concerning devils and accursed spirits, saith: "Hi sunt angeli quos judicaturi sumus; hi sunt angeli quibus in lavacro renunciavimus;"" Those angels which we renounced in baptism, those we shall judge in the day of the Lord's glory, in the great day of recompenses." And that the honour may be yet greater, the same day of sentence that condemns the evil angels, shall also reward the good, and increase their glory: which because they derive from their Lord and ours, from their King and our elder Brother, the King of Glories,' whose glorious hands shall put the crown

upon all our heads, we, who shall be servants of that judgment, and some way or other assist in it, have a part of that honour, to be judges of all angels, and of all the world. The effect of these things ought to be this, that we do not by base actions dishonour that nature, that sits upon the throne of God, that reigns over angels, that shall sit in judgment upon all the world. It is a great indecency that the son of a king should bear water upon his head, and dress vineyards among the slaves; or to see a wise man, and the guide of his country, drink drunk among the meanest of his servants: but when members of Christ shall be made members of an harlot, and that which rides above a rainbow, stoops to an imperious whorish woman; when the soul that is sister to the Lord of angels, shall degenerate into the foolishness or rage of a beast, being drowned with the blood of the grape, or made mad with passion, or ridiculous with weaker follies; we shall but strip ourselves of that robe of honour, with which Christ hath invested and adorned our nature; and carry that portion of humanity, which is our own, and which God hath honoured in some capacities above angels,-into a portion of an eternal shame, and become less in all senses, and equally disgraced with devils. The shame and sting of this change shall be, that we turned the glories of the Divine mercy into the baseness of ingratitude, and the amazement of suffering the Divine vengeance. But I pass on.

5. The next order of Divine mercies that I shall remark, is also an improvement of our nature, or an appendage to it. For, whereas our constitution is weak, our souls apt to diminution and impedite faculties, our bodies to mutilation and imperfection, to blindness and crookedness, to stammering and sorrows, to baldness and deformity, to evil conditions and accidents of body, and to passions and sadness of spirit; God hath, in his infinite mercy, provided for every condition rare suppletories of comfort and usefulness, to make recompense, and sometimes with an overrunning proportion, for those natural defects, which were apt to make our persons otherwise contemptible, and our conditions intolerable. God gives to blind men better memories. For upon this account it is that Ruffinus makes mention of Didymus of Alexandria, who, being blind, was blest with a rare attention and singular memory, and by prayer, and hearing, and meditating,

and discoursing, came to be one of the most excellent divines of that whole age. And it was more remarkable in Nicasius Mechliniensis, who, being blockish at his book, in his first childhood fell into accidental blindness, and from thence continually grew to so quick an apprehension and so tenacious a memory, that he became the wonder of his contemporaries, and was chosen rector of the college at Mechlin, and was made licentiate of theology at Louvain, and doctor of both the laws at Cologne, living and dying in great reputation for his rare parts and excellent learning. At the same rate also God deals with men in other instances: want of children he recompenses with freedom from care; and whatsoever evil happens to the body is therefore most commonly single and unaccompanied, because God accepts that evil as the punishment of the sin of the man, or the instrument of his virtue or his security, and it is reckoned as a sufficient antidote. God. hath laid a severe law upon all women, that" in sorrow they shall bring forth children:" yet God hath so attempered that sorrow, that they think themselves more accursed, if they want that sorrow; and they have reason to rejoice in that state, the trouble of which is alleviated by a promise, that "they shall be saved in bearing children." He that wants one eye, hath the force and vigorousness of both united in that which is left him: and whenever any man is afflicted with sorrow, his reason and his religion, himself and all his friends, persons that are civil and persons that are obliged, run in to comfort him; and he may, if he will observe wisely, find so many circumstances of ease and remission, so many designs of providence and studied favours, such contrivances of collateral advantage, and certain reserves of substantial and proper comfort, that in the whole sum of affairs it often happens, that a single cross is a double blessing, and that even in a temporal sense it is better to go to the house of mourning' than of joys and festival egressions. Is not the affliction of poverty better than the prosperity of a great and tempting fortune? Does not wisdom dwell in a mean estate and low spirit, retired thoughts, and under a sad roof? And is it not generally true, that sickness itself is appayed with religion and holy thoughts, with pious resolutions and penitential prayers, with returns to God and to sober counsels? And if this be true, that God sends sorrow to cure sin, and affliction

be the handmaid to grace; it is also certain, that every sad contingency in nature is doubly recompensed with the advantages of religion, besides those intervening refreshments which support the spirit, and refresh its instruments. I shall need to instance but once more in this particular.

God hath sent no greater evil into the world, than that "in the sweat of our brows we shall eat our bread ;" and in the difficulty and agony, in the sorrows and contention of our souls, we shall work out our salvation.' But see how in the first of these God hath outdone his own anger, and defeated the purposes of his wrath, by the inundation of his mercy; for this labour and sweat of our brows is so far from being a curse, that without it, our very bread would not be so great a blessing. Is it not labour that makes the garlick and the pulse, the sycamore and the cresses, the cheese of the goats and the butter of the sheep, to be savoury and pleasant as the flesh of the roebuck, or the milk of the kine, the marrow of oxen, or the thighs of birds? If it were not for labour, men neither could eat so much, nor relish so pleasantly, nor sleep so soundly, nor be so healthful nor so useful, so strong nor so patient, so noble nor so untempted. And as God hath madé us beholden to labour for the purchase of many good things, so the thing itself owes to labour many degrees of its worth and value. And, therefore, I need not reckon, that, besides these advantages, the mercies of God have found out proper and natural remedies for labour; nights to cure the sweat of the day,-sleep to ease our watchfulness,-rest to alleviate our burdens, and days of religion to procure our rest: and things are so ordered, that labour is become a duty, and an act of many virtues, and is not so apt to turn into a sin as its contrary; and is therefore necessary, not only because we need it for making provisions for our life, but even to ease the labour of our rest; there being no greater tediousness of spirit in the world than want of employment, and an inactive life: and the lazy man is not only unprofitable, but also accursed, and he groans under the load of his time; which yet passes over the active man light as a dream, or the feathers of a bird; while the unemployed is a disease, and like a long sleepless night to himself, and a load unto his country. And therefore, although, in this particular, God hath been so merciful in this infliction, that from the sharpness of the curse a very great