502 EEMNaNTS OP TIME. granted that the cherubs represent angels, which are God's attendants, whose vigour and beauty are ever fresh and immor- tal, and angels, they say, always appear under the figure of men : and they suppose that in this form, multitudes of them were wrought in the curtains and veil, and all the parts of the tabernacle and temple, as intimating the presence of angels where God dwells. It is granted that cherubs represent angelic powers, attend- ing on the great God, but whether the form of a winged man were wrought on the curtains or veil is yet in doubt : and whe- ther this argument be sufficient to outweigh all that is said in favour of the shape of winged oxen, let the reader judge. This I think is remarkable, that though angels are always introduced speaking as men with a voice, and seraphs also speak, as Is. vi. 3, 6, 7. yet I do not find that cherubs ever spoke : and when Ezekiel tells us in so distinguishing a manner, they had the hands of a man under their wings ; Ezek. i. 8. it looks as if all the rest of their parts were not exactly those of a man, but of a creature which is not so much designed to perform rational or humane offices, since it appears there and in other places as some kind of living vehicle or divine equipage, rather than as a rational attendant on the majesty of God, exercising its intellec- tual powers. Perhaps we have not any place of scripture from which we can derive the complete figure of a cherub better than the first, and tenth, and forty-first chapters of Ezekiel ; for all the four animals in Ezekiel's vision, which are mentip,,ped Ezek. i. 5. and x.14. are several times called cherubs. If we enquire what their body or general figure was, the prophet says, it was the figure or likeness of a man ; Ezek. i. 5. But each of them had four faces, and each had four wings, ver. 6. Their legs were straight, probably like the fore legs of a calf or ox, or like that of a. man ; and their feet were cloven as an ox's foot, ver. 7. Under their wings they had the hands of a man on their four sides, ver. S. Each of them had the face of a man before, and this stood in the middle between the face of a lion on the right side and the face of an ox or a calf on the left -side ; and the face of an eagle perhaps was placed in the middle above them or behind, though it is not expressly said it was, behind, or above ; but it is probable the four faces looked four different ways. But here it must be observed, that what is called the face of an ox : Ezek. i. 10. is called the face of $a cherub, supposing them the same ; Ezek. x. 14. A cherub has also the feet of a calf or ox as before mentioned. So that a cherub appears upon the whole to be nearer to the figures of a winged ox and a man with wings, than to any other creature, for it has the hands,
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