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regarded him as one of those celestial messen- LECT. II. gers of whom he had often read in the holy Scriptures; but, in the course of his interview with him, he ascertained from himself that he was the identical angel who had announced to Daniel the period of the seventy weeks, and the advent and death of Messiah. With the exception of Michael, who is designated one of the chief princes," (Dan. x. 13,) he is the only angel specified by name in the inspired volume. From the circumstance of his assuming the human form, and conversing familiarly as the messenger of God in that form, he was called, GABRIEL, i. e. "the man of God;" and it is in reference to this that Daniel further describes him as, THE MAN GABRIEL, (ch. ix. 21.) He describes himself as standing in the presence of God, by which is intimated the favour in which he was with the Most High, and his readiness to receive and execute Divine commands. On the present occasion he was not only commissioned to promise Zechariah a son, who should prepare the world for the appearance of the long-expected Messiah, but empowered miraculously to deprive him for a time of the use of speech, as a mark of the displeasure of God on account of his unbelief.

Six months afterwards the same exalted mes- And to Mary. senger was despatched to Nazareth, for the spe

cific

purpose of communicating to the Virgin

LECT. IL Mary the news that she was to be the mother of

.

our Lord. His appearance filled her with perturbation of mind, which he immediately proceeded to remove; and after delivering his message, and assuring her of the certainty of the promise which it contained receiving its fulfilment, he withdrew into the invisible world.

On comparing the instances of the actual appearance of angels, of which those we have just investigated are merely a specimen, the conviction is irresistibly forced upon the mind, that, upon such occasions, they assumed real, though not permanent, material bodies. Functions, proper to real bodies, are unequivocally ascribed to them. They became the subjects of real, not of imaginary vision. They spoke in audible language. They came into real and palpable contact with those to whom they were sent. They were recognised as real material objects, endowed with intelligence, not only by one, but by more persons at the same time. In short, the evidence in support of the conclusion at which we have arrived, is so full and satisfactory, that it is difficult to perceive how it can be resisted.

That angels are not, in their own nature, pure spirits, but are invested with tenuous, subtil bodies, is an opinion which was early imported from the Platonic school into the Christian Church. Most of the Fathers held that pure incorporeity is a property exclusively

distinctive of the Divine nature, and that all LECT. 11. other spirits have a corporeal vestment-thin, indeed, ethereal, and totally different from whatever belongs to the grossness of our material bodies, yet as completely distinguishing them from the absolutely incorporeal God, as those with which mankind are invested remove them to a distance from these celestial intelligences. So extensively did this tenet at length prevail, that at the seventh Ecumenical, or second Nicene council, held in the year 787, it was established as a point of orthodox belief. It was afterwards, however, called in question by many of the schoolmen, who adopted the opinion of Lombard, that the angels have no corpus proprium, i. e. no body of their own, but have it in their power to assume one, in order to become visible to men.* Several of the modern continental divines, as Reinhard, Döderlein, Ammon, and Bretschneider,† have revived the ancient dogma; and it has been thought by some that the admission of such thin, subtil bodies of fire or air, would facilitate our conceptions of the operations of angels within the sphere of the material world. But an impartial investigation of the various phenomena connected with their actual appearances as described in Scripture, shows that even if we

*

Knapp's Christian Theology, vol. i. pp. 430, 431.

Bretschneider's Handbuch der Dogmatik, vol. i. p. 597.

LECT. II. were to adopt this opinion, it would not advance us a single step in our knowledge of the subject, nor enable us to form, in any degree, a more satisfactory judgment respecting the mode in which those superior beings placed themselves in material contact with humanity. The production of those bodies or vehicles through which they held intercourse with men, was, so far as our acquaintance with material bodies goes, strictly miraculous; and it is difficult to conceive how pure spirituality on the one hand, or an ethereal corporeity of angelic nature on the other, in any way affects this undeniable fact of the case.

LECTURE III.

DIFFERENT MODES OF INSPIRATION— —(continued.)

HEB. I. 1, 2.

"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds."

IN the last Lecture a view was taken of the LECT. III. employment of angelic agency in revealing the will of God to his church; and several instances were adduced with a view to elucidate the manner in which it was rendered available for that end. There remains to be considered a transaction of a mixed character in the history of divine revelations, in which the angels are represented as having taken part-the giving of Promulthe law from Mount Sinai. In asserting that law from this transaction, so memorable in the history of the Hebrews, exhibits a mixed character, we do it on the ground that it consisted partly in the exercise of the mediatorial agency of the Logos,

gation of the

Sinai.

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