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| The Bodies Assumed by Angels Raise a Very Difficult, and Not Very Useful, Subject of Discussion.
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Chapter 59.—The Bodies Assumed by Angels Raise a Very
Difficult, and Not Very Useful, Subject of Discussion.
Further, who will tell with what
sort of bodies it was that the angels appeared to men, making
themselves not only visible, but tangible; and again, how it is
that, not through material bodies, but by spiritual power, they
present visions not to the bodily eyes, but to the spiritual eyes
of the mind, or speak something not into the ear from without, but
from within the soul of the man, they themselves being stationed
there too, as it is written in the prophet, “And the angel that
spake in me said unto me”1198
(he does not say, “that spake to
me,” but “that spake in me”); or appear to men in
sleep, and make communications through dreams, as we read in the
Gospel, “Behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a
dream, saying”?1199
For these methods of communication
seem to imply that the angels have not tangible bodies, and make it
a very difficult question to solve how the patriarchs washed their
feet,1200
and how it
was that Jacob wrestled with the angel in a way so unmistakeably
material.1201
To ask
questions like these, and to make such guesses as we can at the
answers, is a useful exercise for the intellect, if the discussion
be kept within proper bounds, and if we avoid the error of
supposing ourselves to know what we do not know. For what is the
necessity for affirming, or denying, or defining with accuracy on
these subjects, and others like them, when we may without blame be
entirely ignorant of them?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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