archdeacons, &c. with their courts and ministrations in them, have proved prejudicial and very dangerous to the church and commonwealth; they themselves having formerly held, that they have their jurisdiction or power of human authority, till of late they have claimed their calling immediately from Christ, which is against the laws of the kingdom, and derogatory to his majesty's states royal. And whereas the said government is found, by woeful experience, to be a main cause and occasion of many foul evils, pressures, and grievances, of a very high nature, to his majesty's subjects, in the consciences, liberties, and estates, as in a schedule of particulars, hereunto annexed, may in part appear. "We therefore most humbly pray and beseech this honourable assembly, the premises considered, that the said government, with all its dependencies, roots and branches, may be abolished, and all laws in their behalf made void, and that the government, according to God's word, may be rightly placed among us, and we, your honourable supplicants, as in duty bound, shall ever pray," &c." The schedule annexed to the petition contained twenty-eight grievances and pressures, the chief of which were, the bishops suspending and depriving ministers for non-conformity to certain rites and ceremonies; their discountenancing preaching; their claim of jure divino; their administering the oath ex-officio; the exorbitant power of the high commission with their innovations. Neal. No. 1. 1 CORINTHIANS xii. 10. « To another discerning of spirits." The Swedenborgians suppose, that every man is in continual association with angels and spirits; and that without such association he could not possibly think, or exert any living faculty. It is insisted farther, that man, according to his life in the world, takes up his eternal abode, either with angels of light, or with the spirits of darkness: with the former, if he is wise to live according to the precepts of God's holy word; or with the latter, if, through folly and transgression, he rejects the counsel and guidance of the Most High. "The Lord was graciously pleased to manifest himself to me, his unworthy servant, in a personal appearance in the year 1743, to open in me a sight of the spiritual world, and to enable me to converse with spirits and angels; and this privilege has continued with me to this day." The Shakers, as well as the Swedenborgians, believe that they have a correspondence with angels, the spirits of the saints, and their departed friends. This they attempt to prove from 1 Cor. xii. 8. 10. See Rathbone, Taylor, and West's Account of the Shakers, and Janson's Stranger in America. Charles Wesley has thus expressed himself upon the ministry of angels. "By these perfections, strength, and wisdom, they are well able to preserve us either from the approach (if that be more profitable for us), or in the attack of any evil. 66 By their wisdom they discern whatever either obstructs or promotes our real advantage: by their strength they effectually repel the one, and secure a free course to the other. By the first, they choose means conducive to these ends; by the second, they put them in execution. "One particular method of preserving good men, which we may reasonably suppose these wise beings sometimes choose and by their strength put in execution, is the altering some material cause that would have a pernicious effect; the purifying (for instance) tainted air, which would otherwise produce a contagious distemper," &c. &c. Jacob Behmen's books made some proselytes in England during the great rebellion. Dr. Pordage and his family were of this sect; who lived together in community, and pretended to hold visible and sensible communion with angels, whom they sometimes saw and sometimes smelt. Calamy's Life of Baxter. 1 CORINTHIANS xii. 11. "But that one and the same Spirit worketh in you all these operations according to his pleasure, distributing to every man his proper gifts?". Belsham's Translation. "The Apostle, in this passage, applies personal terms and characters to the Holy Spirit. So like wise did our Lord, when discoursing upon those miraculous gifts and powers, which his Apostles should receive. But we are not to infer from this language of personification, that the Holy Spirit is an intelligent agent, distinct from God himself. It is the power of God personified. And when the Apostle saith, that the Holy Spirit distributes his gifts as he will, he no more intends to assert the personality of the Holy Spirit than of the wind, when he says, 'The wind bloweth where it willeth,' John iii. 8; or, the personal existence of charity, when he says, ' Charity hopeth all things,' 1 Cor. xiii. 7." Belsham. 1 CORINTHIANS Xii. 13. "Baptized into one body" (See Notes on Matt. iii. 11. and Matt. xxviii. 19.), 1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 1. "Tongues of Angels." From this and the like passages, some of the fathers, so far from supposing angels altogether incorporeal, ran into the other extreme, and concluded them to be altogether corporeal, i. e. to be all body and nothing else. On the other hand, several of the fathers plainly asserted, that both devils and angels consisted of soul and body-incorporeal and corporeal substance joined together. St. Austin, Claudianus, Mamertus, Fulgentius, Joannes Thessalonicensis, and Psellus, who philosophiseth much concerning this. Cudworth, p. 812. (See Note on Matt. xxv. 41.) 1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 9, 10. "We know in part, and prophesy in part, when that which is perfect No. 1. is come," &c. (MANES.) Manes, who was born in Persia, A.D. 240, and was the founder of the sect of Manichæans, which, in six centuries afterwards, threatened even to overturn the empire of Constantinople, concluded from these words of St. Paul, that the Christians were still in expectation of the Comforter; and he flattered himself, that by assuming the title, he might gain credit to his doctrine. Accordingly he announced, that he was the Apostle of Jesus, the comforter promised by him. The eloquence and gravity of Manes, together with the simplicity of his manners, imposed upon multitudes: but at last, Varanes I. King of Persia, put him to death. Manes pretended, that in subjection to the Most High God, there are two eternal principles of light and darkness, from which all things proceed. God, happy and benevolent, is the Ruler of light; and Matter and Demon, unhappy and malignant, the ruler of darkness. After some ages, Demon perceiving that there was light in the universe, deter R |