What tongue can express, what thought conceive, the admirable beauty, the exact order, the numberless multitude of this heavenly host? The inexhaustible source of joy springing from the beatific vision; the fervent love which ministers delight without torment; the ever-growing desire, which rises with their satisfactions, and the grateful satisfactions, which crown that desire; a desire always eager, and never uneasy, always full, and never cloyed: the blessedness derived down to them, by their inseparable union to the fountain of all bliss; the light communicated to them from the original light; the happy change into an immutable nature, by seeing the immutable God as he is, and being transformed into the likeness of him they see?
But, how, alas! should we hope to comprehend the divinity and bliss of angels so far above us, when we feel ourselves unable to find out the nature and perfection of our very soul within us? What sort of being must this be, which inspires a lump of dead flesh with life and activity, and yet, when most desirous so to do, cannot confine its thoughts to holy exercises? What a mixture of power and impotence is here? How great, and yet how poor and little is this principle, which dives into the secrets of the most high, searches the deep things of God, and expands itself to celestial objects, at the same time that it is forced to employ its talent in the invention of useful arts, and to serve the necessities of a mortal life? What sort of creature is this, that knows so much of other things, and so little of itself; so ingenious in matters abroad, so perfectly in the dark to what is done at home? Specious but very disputable notions have indeed been advanced concerning the origin of our soul; but all we know of it, amounts at last to this; that it is an intellectual Spirit, created by the Almighty power of its divine maker, endued with such an immortality as he was pleased to qualify it for; enlivening and sustaining a body subject to change, corruption, and death, and liable to all the unequal affections of fear and joy, and every turbulent passion, that in their turns exalt and depress, enlarge or contract its power.
And what an amazing thing is this now! The more we attend to it, the more we shall find ourselves lost in wonder. When we read, or speak, or write of God, the great creator of the universe, we can distinguish ourselves clearly and distinctly, though at the same time his perfections be too vast, for our words to express, or our minds to comprehend; the subject, not of an adequate conception, but of an awful astonishment.
But when we descend lower, and treat of angels and created spirits, of souls united to bodies, and beings of the same level with, or a condition inferior to our own; we are not able to support our ideas with proofs so incontestable; and find it impracticable to satisfy ourselves or others in the enquiries concerning them.
Why then should we, to so very little purpose, hover uncertainly about these lower regions, and spend our time and pains in groping in the dark? No, let our minds rather enlarge their thoughts, and take a nobler range; let them leave all created objects behind, and run, and mount, and fly aloft: and, taking faith to the assistance of reason, fix their eyes, with the utmost intenseness our nature will bear, upon the Creator, the Universal Cause.
Yes, I will make a ladder, like that of Jacob’s, reaching from earth to heaven, and as by rounds, go up from my body to my soul, from my own soul to that eternal Spirit that made it; who sustains, preserves it always with me, about me, above me; thus skipping over all the intermediate stages of beings, and re-uniting my own soul to Him from whom it came, and in whose image it was created.
Whatever bodily eyes can discern, whatever leaves impressions upon my imaginative faculty, shall be resolutely set out of the way, as a hinderance to that more abstracted contemplation, which my mind is desirous to indulge.
A pure and simple act of the understanding, is that which must carry me up, and boldly soar at once to the Creator of angels, and souls, and of all things.
And happy is that soul, which, refusing to be detained by low and viler objects, directs its flight to the noblest and most exalted, and, like the eagle, builds its nest in the top of the rocks, and keeps its eye steady upon the Sun of righteousness; for no beauty is so charming, no pleasure so transporting, as that with which our eyes and mind are feasted, when our greedy sight and eager affections are determined to our God and Saviour, as to their only proper center; when, by a wondrous mystical, but true and spiritual act of vision, we see him who is invisible; behold a light far different from this which chears our senses, and taste a pleasure infinitely sweeter than any this world and its joys can afford; for this is a short and insincere pleasure; this is a dim and feeble light, confined to a narrow space, always in motion from us, and in few hours put out by constant returns of darkness: these are enjoyments which the great Creator hath distributed to brutes, nay, to the vilest of insects, in common with mankind; and therefore let us thirst and aspire after such as are truly divine; for what even swine and worms share with us, cannot deserve the name of light and pleasure, but, in comparison of those more refined, are to be esteemed no better than pain and night.
Now to God the Father, &c.