Concerning the creation of _angels_, there is nothing delivered in the Scriptures. That they are spirits, is often repeated: but by the name of spirit, is signified both in Scripture, and vulgarly, both amongst Jews and Gentiles, sometimes thin bodies: as the air, the wind, the spirits vital and animal of living creatures; and sometimes the images that rise in the fancy in dreams and visions; which are not real substances, nor last any longer than the dream, or vision they appear in; which apparitions, though no real substances, but accidents of the brain; yet when God raiseth them supernaturally, to signify his will, they are not improperly termed God’s messengers, that is to say, his _angels_. And as the Gentiles did vulgarly conceive the imagery of the brain, for things really subsistent without them, and not dependent on the fancy; and out of them framed their opinions of _demons_, good and evil; which because they seemed to subsist really, they called _substances_; and, because they could not feel them with their hands, _incorporeal_: so also the Jews, upon the same ground, without any thing in the Old Testament that constrained them thereunto, had generally an opinion, except the sect of the Sadducees, that those apparitions, which it pleased God sometimes to produce in the fancy of men, for his own service, and therefore called them his _angels_, were substances, not dependent on the fancy, but permanent creatures of God; whereof those which they thought were good to them, they esteemed the _angels of God_, and those they thought would hurt them, they called _evil angels_, or evil spirits; such as was the spirit of Python, and the spirits of madmen, of lunatics and epileptics: for they esteemed such as were troubled with such diseases, _demoniacs_. But if we consider the places of the Old Testament where angels are mentioned, we shall find, that in most of them, there can nothing else be understood by the word _angel_, but some image raised, supernaturally, in the fancy, to signify the presence of God in the execution of some supernatural work; and therefore in the rest, where their nature is not expressed, it may be understood in the same manner.