Page:Devotions - Donne - 1840.djvu/154

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thee seventy of the elders of Israel[1], to receive of that Spirit, which was upon Moses only before, such a portion as might ease him in the government of that people; though Moses alone had endowments above all, thou gavest him other assistants. I consider thy plentiful goodness, O my God, in employing angels, more than one, in so many of thy remarkable works. Of thy Son, thou sayest, Let all the angels of God worship him[2]; if that be in heaven, upon earth he says, that he couwld command twelve legions of angels[3]; and when heaven and earth shall be all one, at the last day, thy Son, O God, the Son of man, shall come in his glovy, and all the holy angels with him[4]. The angels that celebrated his birth to the shepherds[5], the angels that celebrated his second birth, his resurrection, to the Maries[6], were in the plural, angels associated with angels. In Jacob's ladder[7], they who ascended and descended, and maintained the trade between heaven and earth, between thee and us, they who have the commission, and charge to guide us in all our ways[8], they who hastened Lot[9], and in him, us, from places of danger and temptation, they who are appointed to instruct and govern us in the church here[10], they who are sent to punish the disobedient and refractory[11], that they are to be the mowers and harvestmen[12] after we are grown up in one field, the church, at the day of judgment, they that are to carry our souls whither they carried Lazarus[13], they who attend at the several gates of the new Jerusalem[14], to admit us there; all these who administer to thy servants, from the first to their last, are angels, angels in the plural, in every

  1. Num. xi. 16.
  2. Heb. i. 6.
  3. Matt. xxvi. 53.
  4. Matt. xxv. 31.
  5. Luke, ii. 13, 14.
  6. John, xx. 12.
  7. Gen. xxviii. 12.
  8. Psalm xci. 11.
  9. Gen. xix. 15.
  10. Rev. i. 20.
  11. Rev. viii. 2.
  12. Matt. xiii. 39.
  13. Luke, xvi. 22.
  14. Rev. xxi. 12.