_Direct._ I. Be satisfied in knowing so much of angels as God in nature and Scripture hath revealed; but presume not to inquire further, much less to determine of unrevealed things. That there are angels, and that they are holy spirits, is past dispute; but what number they are, and of how many worlds, and of what orders and different dignities and degrees, and when they were created, and what locality belongeth to them, and how far they excel or differ from the souls of men, these and many other such unnecessary questions, neither nature nor Scripture will teach us how infallibly to resolve. Almost all the heretics in the first ages of the church, did make their doctrines of angels the first and chief part of their heresies; arrogantly intruding into unrevealed things, and boasting of their acquaintance with the orders and inhabitants of the higher world. These being risen in the apostles' days, occasioned Paul to say, Col. ii. 18, "Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility, and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind." _Direct._ II. Understand so much of the ministry of angels as God hath revealed, and so far take notice of your communion with them; but affect not any other sort of communion.[190] I shall here show how much of the ministry of angels is revealed to us in Scripture. 1. It is part of the appointed work of angels, to be ministering spirits for the heirs of salvation, Heb. i. 14.[191] Not ministers or servants of the godly, but ministers of God for the godly: as the shepherd is not a servant of the sheep, but for the sheep. It is not an accidental or occasional work which they do extraordinarily; but it is their undertaken office to which they are sent forth. And this their ministry is about the ordinary concernments of our lives, and not only about some great or unusual cases or exigents, Psal. xxxiv. 6, 7; xci. 11, 12. 2. It is not some, but all the angels that are appointed by God to this ministration. "Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth," &c. Heb. i. 1, 4. Mark here, that if you inquire whether God have any higher spirits, that are not employed in so low an office, but govern these angels, or if you inquire whether only this world be the angels' charge, or whether they have many other worlds also (of viators) to take care of; neither nature nor Scripture doth give you the determination of any of these questions; and therefore you must leave them as unrevealed things (with abundance more with which the old heretics, and the popish schoolmen, have diverted men's minds from plain and necessary things). But that all the angels minister for us, are the express words of Scripture.