is considered as of the first importance, and he who made light of it would forfeit with them all credit for piety. Among the Unitarians it is the reverse. Mr. Belsham, who seems to affect the character of their leader, has written vehemently against the observance of a Sabbath, denouncing it as one of the most pernicious of popular errors; and has lost no reputation by it.

Another of their principal writers has denounced public worship. In short, it is not easy to conjecture where these attacks will end, and whether they will suffer any of the institutions of Christianity to remain unassailed.

IV. But it is time to advert to another part of the system of modern Unitarianism, which, in my humble opinion, is pregnant with more mischief and danger than any of those we have just mentioned. I mean the fatalism and materialism with which, since Dr. Priestley's time, it is almost universally incorporated. The first Socinians were so jealous of every opinion which might seem to infringe on the freedom of the human will and man's accountability, that they denied that the foreknowledge of God extended to human volition and contingent events. They carried Pelagianism to its utmost length. The modern Socinians have been betrayed into the contrary extreme. They assert, not only that the foreknowledge of the Deity is extended to every sort of events, but that he has connected the whole series of them in an indissoluble chain of necessity; that the Deity is the efficient cause of all that takes place, of evil volitions as well as good; that he is, properly speaking, the only agent in the universe; that moral evil is his production, and his only; and that, strictly speaking, no one can be said to be accountable for any of his actions, since they were the inevitable result of necessary laws, and could not possibly have been otherwise than they were; that the human mind is a machine governed by principles to whose operations it is perfectly passive.

Who does not see, that upon this theory the distinction between virtue and vice, innocence and guilt, is annihilated, and the foundation of rewards and punishments in a future world completely subverted? Agreeably to this, Dr. Priestley declares, in his treatise on this subject, that a perfect necessitarian in other words, a philosopher of his own stamp, has nothing to do with repentance or remorse. Let these views of human nature prevail universally, and a frightful dissoluteness of manners, and a consequent subversion of the whole fabric of society, must infallibly ensue.

Alarming as these principles are, they form but one portion of the perilous innovations introduced by the sect of modern Unitarians. With the dangerous speculations already recited they connect the following: that the nature of man is single and homogeneous, not consisting of two component parts or principles, body and soul, matter and spirit, but of matter only; that the soul is the brain, and the brain is the soul; that nothing survives the stroke of dissolution, but that at the moment the thinking powers of man are extinguished, all the elements of his frame are dissolved, his consciousness ceases, to be restored only at the period of the final resurrection.

From these premises it seems to be a necessary inference, that the nope of a future state of existence is entirely delusive; for, if the whole man perishes, if all that composes what I call myself is dissipated and scattered, and I cease to exist for ages as a sentient and intelligent being, personal identity is lost, and being once lost, it is impossible to conceive it ever restored without the greatest absurdity. Thus the very subject of a future life, the very thing of which it is affirmed, perishes from under us, on the Unitarian hypothesis; and a future state can be predicated of any man only in a lax and figurative

sense.

Matter is incessantly liable to mutation; the matter of which our bodies are composed is so eminently so, that it is generally thought by physiologists that every particle of which it is constituted disappears, and is replaced by fresh accession in the course of about seven years. Let it be admitted, then, that the constitution of human nature is homogeneous, or, in other words, that it consists of matter only, and it will necessarily follow, that in the course of forty-nine years the personal identity has been extinguished seven times, and that seven different persons have succeeded each other under the same name. Which of these, let me now ask, will be rewarded or punished in another life?

Such are the moral prodigies which disfigure the system of modern Unitarianism; such the hopelessness of reconciling it with human accountability, and the dispensation of rewards and punishments in the world to come.

V. The unexampled deference it displays to human authority. This may excite surprise, because there is nothing which its abetters pro claim [with] such loud and lofty pretensions as their unfettered freedom of thought, their emancipation from prejudice, and their disdain of human prescription. They, and they only, if we believe them, have unfurled the banners of mental independence, have purged off the slough of obsolete opinion and implicit faith, and shine forth in all the freshness, vigour, and splendour of intellectual prowess.

VI. Their rage for proselytism, difficult to be accounted for on their principles.

VI.

ON ANGELS.

HEB. i. 14. Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?

In this part of the Epistle, St. Paul is engaged in establishing the superiority of our Lord Jesus Christ to angels: of this he adduces various proofs out of the ancient Scriptures: the title of Son, by which

he [God] addresses the Messiah; the command he issues, when he brings him into the world, that all the angels of God should worship him: "He maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a flame of fire: but of the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever." Nor did he ever say to the most exalted of these, "Sit on my right until I make thine enemies thy footstool." He then brings in the words of the text, "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?"

As this is one of the most clear and precise accounts we meet with in the sacred volume of the nature and offices of angels, it may form a proper basis for a few reflections on that subject. This account embraces two particulars :

I. They are ministering spirits.

II. They are sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation.

I. They are spirits. They have not those gross and earthly bodies which we possess; sluggish, inactive, and incapable of keeping pace with the nimble and more rapid movements of the mind." Who maketh his angels spirits: his ministers a flame of fire." They resemble fire in the refined subtilty of its parts, and the quickness and rapidity of its operations. They move with an inconceivable velocity, and execute their commission with a despatch of which we are incapable of forming any [adequate] apprehension.

St. Paul styles them angels of light, probably not without a view to the ease with which they transport themselves to the greatest distances, and appear and disappear in a moment. From their being called spirits, it is not necessary to conclude that they have no body, no material frame at all: to be entirely immaterial is probably peculiar to the Father of spirits, to whom we cannot attribute a body without impiety, and involving ourselves in absurdities. When the term spirit is employed to denote the angelic nature, it is most natural to take it in a lower sense, to denote their exemption from those gross and earthly bodies which the inhabitants of this world possess. Their bodies are spiritual bodies, "for there is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body;" the latter of which the righteous are to receive at the resurrection, who are then to be made equal to the angels.

The passage just before adduced seems to exclude the idea of the utter absence of matter: "who maketh his angels spirits: his ministers a flame of fire."

2. These spirits are very glorious. They occupy a very exalted rank in the scale of being, and are possessed of wonderful powers. They are celebrated by the Psalmist as "those who excel in strength." To this it may be objected, that David in describing man, represents him as made a little lower than the angels: it should, İ apprehend, be rendered, "for a little time lower than the angels," that is, during the time he [the Son of God] condescended to become incarnate. Their great power is sufficiently manifest from the works they have performed by divine commission: the destruction of the first-born of Egypt; the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah; the

destruction of 180,000 men in Sennacherib's army. One angel destroyed 70,000 men, by bringing a pestilence, when David numbered the people of Israel.*

Their appearance was such as to fill the greatest of prophets with consternation and horror. “And there remained no more strength in me,† and my comeliness was turned into corruption, and I retained no strength."

With ease an angel rolled away the stone, a large fragment of rock, laid at the door of our Saviour's sepulchre and at the sight of him the Roman guard trembled, and became as dead men.

"After these things, I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great power, and the earth was lightened at his glory."

3. They are not less distinguished for moral excellence than by the possession of great natural powers. The usual denomination given them in the Scriptures is, "holy angels." They consist of such spirits as stood fast in their integrity, when many of their associates involved themselves in ruin by wilful rebellion. They are styled by St. Paul "elect angels," who are confirmed in a state of happiness by being, along with the church, reduced under one Head, the Lord Jesus Christ. Their confirmation in a state of obedience and felicity is owing (there is every reason to conclude) to their union with him, and their being included in an eternal choice of special election and favour.

They are Christ's holy angels. To this mystery there are several allusions in the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians: "Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself: that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth." II. They are ministering spirits. Their employment and office is to minister in the presence of God. Their habitation is heaven, that is, the place where God has fixed his throne and manifests his glory. They are emphatically described by this circumstance, "The angels that are in heaven." There is, doubtless, a place in the immense dominions of the Deity where God is beheld in his glory, and where he is worshipped with the highest forms of love and adoration. "Swear not at all; neither by heaven, for it is God's throne," &c.‡ Thither Jesus ascended when he left our world; there he sits on the right-hand of the Majesty on high; and there it is that the holy angels reside, as their fixed habitation. From thence it was the rebellious spirits were expelled, "who kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation."§ "Bless the Lord, all ye his angels, that excel in strength; that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his that do his pleasure."||

Their employment is to minister to God in the exalted services of the celestial temple. This is the proper business and happiness of heaven, and in this the holy angels are habitually employed. To contem

* 2 Sam. xxiv. 15. ↑ Dan. x. 8.

+ Matt. v. 34.

§ Jude 6.

Ps. ciii. 21.

plate the perfections, to celebrate the praises of the Great Eternal; to bow before him in lowly prostrations, and to render him the honour due unto his wonderful works in nature, providence, and grace, is their proper employ. As more of God is conspicuous in the mystery of redemption than in any other work, this will occupy a proportionable part in their praises. "And I beheld," saith St. John," and heard the voice of many angels around the throne, and around the four living creatures, and around the four-and-twenty elders, and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying, with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing."

It is not for us to conceive in what particulars the services of heaven consist, after what manner the glorious Supreme will display himself, and [by] what forms of adoration he will be praised. These mysteries are hid from us; "for who hath ascended up into heaven?" Yet we may be certain they will be in the highest degree pure, spiritual, and sublime; the noblest exercise of the most exalted faculties on the greatest and best of Beings.

The term ministering spirits (rougyika) [used] here, signifies that species of services which is employed in sacred things. It is true, St. John declares that in the New Jerusalem he saw no temple, for a temple implies a building appropriated to the worship of God, in contradistinction to the secular purposes to which other edifices are applied. In this sense there will be in heaven no temple, because the whole of those blessed regions will be filled with the immediate presence of God, and so be a temple. There was no room for a separation of any part to a sacred and religious use, when all was sacred. The reason St. John assigns for this circumstance sufficiently explains his meaning: "And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God and the Lamb are the temple thereof."

On that immediate presence which fills the heavenly world, the angels are constant attendants; they continually stand before the Divine Majesty.

The most exact representation of the heavenly world (considered as a place) that was ever given to men, was the ancient tabernacle, formed after the pattern given in the Mount.* The mercy-seat was attended with two cherubim, and the two curtains which formed the tabernacle were filled with figures of cherubim; "With cherubim of cunning work shalt thou make them,"t

In the visions of the ancient prophets, when a glimpse of heaven was given, every appearance of God was attended with creatures of an angelic order. "A fiery stream issued forth, and came forth from before him; thousands of thousands ministered unto him, ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.”—(Daniel.) See also Isaiah: "In the year king Uzzah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the