Dæmonologia Sacra; or, A Treatise of Satan's Temptations: In Three PartsGilpin, Richard
Religion
Dæmonologia Sacra; or, A Treatise of Satan's Temptations: In Three Parts
Gilpin, Richard
Devil -- Early works to 1800; Temptation -- Early works to 1800
Though this may fully satisfy us that angels excel in strength, yet the
Scripture suggests another consideration relating to the office and
employment of angels, where their commission shews not only a liberty
for the exercise of this power, but also doth imply such a power as
is fit to be commissionated to such acts. These invisible beings are
called thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, Col. i. 16. It is
indeed a task beyond a sober undertaking to distinguish these words,
and to set their true bounds and marks of difference. This Augustine
acknowledged;[79] yet may we hence conclude, [1.] That these words
imply a very great authority in angels; [2.] A power and strength
suitable to their employment, and that God furnished them with power
answerable to the work which he intended for them, in his moving the
heavens, and governing the world, &c. However, in some cases, God
works by instruments every way disproportionable to the service, ‘that
the excellency of the power might be of God,’ [2 Cor. iv. 7;] yet, in
the ordinary way of his working, he puts an innate, suitable force
in creatures, for the acts to be done by them; as there is an innate
power in the wind to blow, in the fire to burn, in herbs and plants for
medicinal uses. Thus may we conceive of angels, that God using them
as his host, his ‘ministers to do his pleasure,’ he hath endowed them
with an innate natural power for those great things which he doth by
them, which must not be supposed in the least derogatory to the power
of God, in his ways of mercies or judgments, seeing all the strength
of angels is originally from God. Hence is it that all the names of
angels which we read of in Scripture carry this acknowledgment in their
signification; Michael thus unfolds itself, ‘Who is like God;’ Gabriel
thus, ‘The glory of God and therefore may we suppose them not so much
the proper names of angels, but, as Calvin noteth, _Nomina ad captum
nostrum indita_, Names implying God’s great power in them.[80]
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