1. As to the nature and attributes of angels. (_a_) They are created beings. _Ps. 148:2-5_—“_Praise ye him, all his angels.... For he commanded, and they were created_”; _Col. 1:16_—“_for in him were all things created ... whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers_”; _cf._ _1 Pet. 3:32_—“_angels and authorities and powers._” God alone is uncreated and eternal. This is implied in _1 Tim. 6:16_—“_who only hath immortality._” (_b_) They are incorporeal beings. In _Heb. 1:14_, where a single word is used to designate angels, they are described as “_spirits_”—“_are they not all ministering spirits?_” Men, with their twofold nature, material as well as immaterial, could not well be designated as “_spirits_.” That their being characteristically “_spirits_” forbids us to regard angels as having a bodily organism, seems implied in _Eph. 6:12_—“_for our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against ... the spiritual hosts_ [or “_things_”] _of wickedness in the heavenly places_”; cf. _Eph. 1:3_; _2:6_. In _Gen. 6:2_, “_sons of God_” =, not angels, but descendants of Seth and worshipers of the true God (see Murphy, Com., _in loco_). In _Ps. 78:25_ (A. V.), “_angels’ food_” = manna coming from heaven where angels dwell; better, however, read with Rev. Vers.: “_bread of the mighty_”—probably meaning angels, though the word “_mighty_” is nowhere else applied to them; possibly = “bread of princes or nobles,” _i. e._, the finest, most delicate bread. _Mat 22:30_—“_neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven_”—and _Luke 20:36_—“_neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels_”—imply only that angels are without distinctions of sex. Saints are to be like angels, not as being incorporeal, but as not having the same sexual relations which they have here. There are no “souls of angels,” as there are “_souls of men_” (_Rev. 18:13_), and we may infer that angels have no bodies for souls to inhabit; see under Essential Elements of Human Nature. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 258, attributes to evil spirits an instinct or longing for a body to possess, even though it be the body of an inferior animal: “So in Scripture we have spirits represented as wandering about to seek rest in bodies, and asking permission to enter into swine” (_Mat. 12:43; 8:31_). Angels therefore, since they have no bodies, know nothing of growth, age, or death. Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 133—“It is precisely because the angels are only spirits, but not souls, that they cannot possess the same rich existence as man, whose soul is the point of union in which spirit and nature meet.” (_c_) They are personal—that is, intelligent and voluntary—agents.