CHAPTER XVI. l07 to the pure intellect, which learns by degrees to take in such ideas as these and to Adore its Creator with new and sublime devotion. And not only are we taught to form juster ideas of the great God by these methods, but this enlargement of the Mind carries us on to nobler conceptions of his intelligent creatures. The mind that deals only in vulgar and common ideas, is ready to imagine the nature and powers of man to cóme something too near to God' his maker, because-we do not see or sensibly edit- verse with any beings superior to ourselves. But when the soul has obtained agreater amplitude of thought, it will net then ïm mediately pronounce every thing to be God which is aboveman. It then learns to suppose' there may be as many various ranks of beings in the invisible world in a constant gradation superior to us, as we ourselves are superior to all the ranks of being he; heath us in this visible world ; even though we descend down- ward far below the ant And the worm, the snail and the oyster, to the least and to the dullest Animated atoms which are discovered us by microscopes: By this means we shall be able to suppose what prodigious power angels, whether good or bad, must be furnished with, and prodigiousknowledge in order to oversee the realms of Per- sia, and Grmcia of old, 'or if any such superintend the affairs of Great- Britain, France, Ireland, Germany, &c. in our days;, what pówèr and speed is necessary to destroy one hundred eighty-five thousand armed men in one night in the Assyrian eattip Of Sennacherib, and all the first-born in the land of Egypt in another, both whichare attributed to an angel. By these steps we shall ascend to forni more just ideas of the knowledge and grandeur,' the power and glory of the Man Jesus Christ, whö is intimately united to 'God, and is ode With' Aim. 'lloubtless he it furnished with superior powers to all-the angels in heaven;''becausë fie is employed in superior werk, and appointed to' be the sóvereign Lord of all the 'visible acid invisi- ble worlds. It is his human nature, in which the GOdhead dreells bodily, that'is advanced to these honours And tó this empire ; And perhaps there is little or nothing in the góvernment of the' kingdoms Of nature, and grace, but what is transacted by the Man Jesus, inhabited by the divine powerand wisdom, 4nd em- ployed as a medium or conscious instrument of this extensive gubernation: IL I proceed now to consider the next thing wherein the . capacity or amplitude of themind consists, and that is, when the mind is free to receive new and strange ideas and propositions Upon just evidence Without 0iny great surprise or aversion. Those who confine themselves within the circle of their own hereditary ideas and opinions, and who never give tlieniselvet
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