fect the passions and appetites of men, that it is hardly resolvable into any other reason, but that they are delivered up by God to be informed and acted by the Devil; who, having once obtained the possession of them, continually plies them with temptation, and never ceases urging and pressing them forward from one degree of wickedness to another, till at length he hath seared and hardened them into final and incurable impenitence. And this in particular was the case of Judas, who having long persisted in his thievery and sacrilege, notwithstanding all those warnings and admonitions our Saviour had given him to the contrary, was at length abandoned to that Devil to whose temptations he had been so obsequious; upon which it is said, that the Devil entered into him, Luke xxii. 3. and the Devil being in possession of him, immediately provokes and irritates him to the foulest and most horrible villainy that ever any mortal creature was guilty of; for so, John xiii. 2. we are told, that the Devil put it into the heart of Judas to betray Christ. But as yet, it seems, he was not totally abandoned to the Devil, who had only permission to make that black and dire proposal to him; after which our Saviour attempts, by the most pathetic persuasions, to prevent his compliance, Mark xiv. 21. notwithstanding which, the wretch being still enticed by his own covetousness to listen to that horrid suggestion, our Saviour having marked him out for a traitor, by giving him the sop, it is said again, that Satan entered into him; and upon this second entrance our Saviour gives him up for desperate; for, That thou doest, saith he, do quickly, John xiii. 27. As much as if he had said, Now I find the Devil has the full posses

sion of thee, and that henceforth there remains no more hope of reclaiming thee: go therefore and despatch thy wicked purpose as soon as thou pleasest. So that now, it seems, he was entirely delivered up to the Devil; who thereupon immediately hurries him to the execution of his black design.

IV. And lastly, Another instance of the ministry of evil spirits to Christ, is their executing his vengeance on incorrigible sinners in the other world. For since, as I have shewn before, our Saviour makes use of the power and malice of these evil spirits to correct and chasten men in this life, why may we not thence conclude, that he makes use of the same to plague and punish them in the life to come; especially considering that they bear the same malice to us in the other life that they did in this; for they tempt us to sin here for no other end but that they may make us miserable there; and therefore to be sure that same malice of theirs which excites them now to contribute all they can to our sin, will equally provoke them then to contribute all they can to our misery, and render them altogether as active in tormenting us in hell as they were in tempting us upon earth; and then, considering that spirits can act upon spirits, as well as bodies upon bodies, and that the more powerful any spirit is, the more vigorously it can act upon other spirits, we may be sure that those evil spirits, being angels by nature, are incomparably more powerful than the souls of men, and therefore can act upon them with unspeakably more force and vigour than one soul can on another: for the weaker any spirit is, the more passive it must necessarily be to those spirits that are stronger and more powerful; and therefore, by how much weaker wicked souls are

than wicked angels, by so much more passive must they be to their power, and consequently be so much more liable to be vexed and tormented by them and since in all probability the disproportion which nature hath made between the power of angels and souls is far greater than that which sin hath made between the power of one angel and another, we may reasonably conclude, that wicked souls are far more impressible by the power of wicked angels, than wicked angels are by the power of good angels; and therefore, since the good angels can make such violent impressions upon the wicked ones as they are not able to endure, but are still forced to fly before them, as oft as they encounter them, what intolerable impressions can wicked angels make upon wicked souls, when they are abandoned by God to their malice and fury! for though our souls are no more impressible by corporeal action than the beams of the sun are by the blows of a hammer, yet that they can feel the force of spiritual action we find by every day's experience: for so a thought, which is a spiritual action, if it be very horrible or dismal, doth as sensibly pain and aggrieve our souls as the most exquisite corporeal torment can our bodies. Now there is no doubt but evil spirits can suggest preternatural horrors to our minds, and repeat and urge them with such importunity and vehemence, as to render them most exquisitely painful and dolorous: of the truth of which we have a woful example in that miserable wretch Francis Spira, who, upon that woful breach he made in his conscience by renouncing his religion, notwithstanding he had received several kind admonitions from heaven to the contrary, was forsaken of God,

and delivered up alive into the hands of those dire tormentors of souls; whereupon, though he had not the least symptom of bodily melancholy, he was immediately seized with such an inexpressible agony of mind, as amazed his physicians, astonished his friends, and struck terror into all that beheld him; for he was so near to the condition of a damned spirit, that he verily believed hell itself was more tolerable than those invisible lashes that his soul endured without any intermission; and therefore he often wished that he were in hell, and as often attempted to despatch himself thither, in hope to find sanctuary there from those direful thoughts which continually preyed upon his soul. Now that these horrors were inflicted on him by a diabolical suggestion is evident, both by the impenetrable hardness and obstinacy of his mind against all the motives of repentance that accompanied them, and by the horrible blasphemies they frequently extorted from him. And if now in this life they have so much power to torment our minds, whenever God thinks it meet to let them loose upon us, what will they have hereafter, when our wretched spirits shall be utterly abandoned to their mercy, and they shall have a free scope to exert their fury on us, and glut their hungry malice with our torment and vexation! And since it is evident they do not want power, we may certainly conclude, even from that natural malignity that is in the temper of a devil, they do not want will, to plague and torture us in the other world. And this will and power of theirs our Saviour makes use of as the common executioner of his vengeance upon incorrigible sinners in the other life: for as soon as ever a wicked soul departs from its body, it is imme

diately consigned into the hands of those diabolical furies, who, like so many hungry hounds, seize it with infinite greediness, and fall a tearing and worrying it with horrible suggestions without any pause or intermission; and by continually recording its sins to it, and reproaching it with the folly of them, and putting it in mind of that dismal eternal futurity it must suffer for them, do incessantly sting and vex it with swarms of dire reflections and tormenting thoughts, which are the only instruments of torment that can fasten upon a soul. And hence, in Matth. xviii. 34. the devils, to whom the wicked servant was delivered up by his master for his cruelty toward his fellow-servant, are called tormentors, as being the ministers of our Saviour's just vengeance upon wicked and incorrigible offenders.

And thus having shewn at large, that the good and bad angels are the ministers of Christ, and wherein their ministry to him consists, I proceed to

the

III. Third sort of the ministers of Christ's kingdom, viz. the kings and governors of the world: for though there are many infidel kings in the world that know not Christ, and that never submitted themselves to his empire, but instead of that do openly defy and persecute his holy religion, yet these of right are subject to him, though in fact they are enslaved to the Devil, and he hath the disposal of their crowns and the command of their power, and doth actually employ and use it, even as he doth the power of the devils, in the prosecution of the righteous ends of his government. And though too many of those kings who, by their visible profession of Christianity, have actually submit