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born, tempted, falling, dying; to wit, by necessity or implication. Such is the most complex; or, as aforesaid, universal person, differing from Nature, or Being only by the relation of presence; as was also before observed. Any one may conceive the difference between a subject in possibility and in existence, or even in a train for existence; as the first will not only include the second, but all that may be added to it; and hence proceeds among such subjects as we are considering,

=2, A general sort of person, comprising all that either are, or have been, but not, that may or will be; as the person of angels, or, "the heavenly host" (Luke ii. 13), implying the general order or host, as it is called, of angels in being; or, "the person of men" (Mat. xxii. 16), implying the common run of mankind, not in nature, or possibility, however, but in fact and existence. Of this general, as well as of the preceding universal sort of person, we have an example in that apostrophe of the Psalmist to his Maker, "What is man that thou art mindful of him: and the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him lower than the angels, to crown him with glory and worship" (Ps. viii. 4, 5). In an inferior degree of complexity to this is

=3, The special person; which implies a class of beings, somewhat more particular than the preceding; as the holy angels, angels of light, angels of God, or the Lord, the angel of the Lord, the children of God, of the Lord, or of light; and the evil angels, angels of darkness, the devil and his angels, the wicked one, the children of the wicked, or of the wicked one, the children of the devil. And for special persons of the human being we have examples answering to either of the above mentioned, and derived from its root; as the good and the wicked, the just and the unjust, and men of every quality and condition, as well as in every relation of which they are susceptible; particularly the rich and the poor, two persons that are often contrasted, as in that beautiful clause of the Levitical law, "Thou shalt not respect the

person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty : (to which another person is also added) but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour" (Lev. xix. 15), The persons of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, are also objects of that admirable code (Deut. xxiv. 19, &c.).

Sometimes the sum or whole of a common person, like one of the forementioned, is referred to an individual in place of a kind; as Israel the people to Israel the patriarch; and his family and followers also to the same by himself before they were a people, as when he " said to Simeon and Levi, Ye have troubled me, to make me stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites and I being few in number, they shall gather themselves against me" &c. (Gen. xxxiv. 30). As we also read, on the contrary, of an unclean spirit in the Gospel, which was called Legion, because he was many in one (Luke viii. 30); and if not actually, at least by implication; as Pride, e. g. may be called a Demon of demons, or a hundred tempting in one; and making, so far, but one person, one special, consistent, and very indiscriminable

person.

=4, The fourth and last sort of person to be mentioned in the kingdom for such objects as will appear hereafter, is the proper or particular, i. e. the private mode of the subject or person; being presented in particular instances, as in Peter, and James, and John, in each of whom, all and every portion of the human being existed alike, and gave a very fair sample of the kind, or rather of what it was capable of; while, in common samples, perhaps, we shall have so many pounds of gravity, so many feet of extension, some few grains of good sense, and not enough of any other good principle to be very flattering to humanity. For every individual man is a combination of modes and materials taken out of the heap, and adjusted in a certain proportion, or within a general mode; being distinct enough here, but more so hereafter.

Yet, allowing for the difference to which subjects are liable in this respect, one man may serve, therefore, as a sample of the race; and so may one of another order of intellectual spirits, as of angels good and bad.

-2, It should be observed, that the foregoing are all instances of perfect persons, i. e. of whole or conclusive modes of this sort; but there are likewise instances of partial or inclusive; and that, as in others, so especially in the proper or particular sort now last mentioned: it being very common to intend only the corporeal presence of an individual when his person is proposed, a third part only for the whole. And hence, as we have ПIgórwov in Greek, to signify presence generally, so Προσωπον τοὺ σωματος in the New Testament, to denote the corporeal person, or presence in particular; being so used by St. Paul in a chapter that is replete with such distinctions (Cor. II. x.). But if the whole person may be presented by a part, one should think the spirit a worthier medium than the body; and to have a person, as it were, before our eyes in spirit, seems also by much the more satisfactory sight, as we may then conceive better both what he is, and what he is capable of. Though it must be owned that a man's spiritual presence is more likely to elude observation than his corporeal; as it happened by the spirit of Elisha, or his "heart" as it is said; when it went with Gehazi after Naaman, and he little suspected what a witness he had of his knavery (Kings II. v. 26), or as it happens by a Higher Presence that knaves think little, and honest men can never think enough of.

A man's memory, that he leaves behind him, on removing either to a distant part of the world, or clean out of it, is also a partial sort of person or presence, and may be called intellectual; or intellectual and spiritual, a more finished presence, when such memory is followed, or as we may say clothed, with affection. And as both in this and the former example, it appears that a person may be either a partial representation, or but partially represented; so, on the other hand, may it likewise present, not two in

tellectual beings certainly, but two kinds of intellectual being, or two degrees of the same at once; as the human and angelic, or even the human and divine. Indeed, it is as easy to conceive, how all these three natures may be presented in one individual, as how any two, or only one; also, how the same person may be at once a SAMPLE (if so familiar an expression is here allowable) not only of human and angelic being, but also of the divine; and consequently, present the same to each other simultaneously; v. g. men and angels to God, and God to angels and men—an object of love to all, and to the last mentioned natures, an object also of dependence, hope, and adoration.

But our earthly intercourse with corporeal beings is so clear and constant, and at the same time our observation of the incorporeal, so faint and rare, that we have hardly any conception of the personality, or particular presence of the latter. It would even look like a solecism to talk of an angel or spirit in this way. As if, e. g. speaking of angels, indefinitely, one should say, Raphael, or any other person; as we might say, Thomas, or any other person, in speaking of men: but we must say Raphael, or any other angel; unless we would rather go farther about, and say Raphael, or any other individual of the angelic host or kind. Thus, it would seem, as if men were the only persons to themselves; no persons of angels, nor spirits; no angel, no spirit, nor even the Deity himself could be a person, or individually presented. But a little consideration might be likely to teach us, that if intellectuals of a foreign race and constitution be no persons to us, they may be some to each other; also, how either of the forementioned natures, being equally spiritual, though not of equal degree, is tacitly regarded as a general person, or one of either, as a particular person immediately on being so presented, by the change of the pronoun from the material to the personal type in such languages as consult the meaning of nouns more than some in their etymology. For any sort of intellectual spirit, which takes the neuter pronoun in a

substantive state, will take the masculine in a transitive: and now it is personified, now it is an active being, now no longer It, but He. It comes partly of our using an ellipsis continually without heeding it, that human individuals are regarded as the only persons in the world: being every thing to themselves, and thinking little of any other intellectual class, it does not occur to them, to say, Thomas, or any other human person; but simply, Thomas, or any other person, as if there were not persons of any

other class or kind.

And what are those precious samples of humanity, that they should be considered, or consider themselves, however, as persons especially? Why, a person of this frail kind is like a bottle of air, a fugitive nature, secluded within limits that are impervious while they last, but easily broken. The bottle gives their mode: and as the column of air contained in a phial is to that without, so is the matter, spirit, and intellect of every such being to the sum of these elements, restrained and cut off from its sources at present, but ready to escape and reunite therewith on the first convenient occasion. The whole human race, therefore, individually taken, may be likened to an heap of bottles; the great mass broken and forgotten; each dead one being "like a broken vessel" (Ps. xxxi. 14), some comparatively sound, but none sealed, none lasting, none that will hold always. They are like the fumes evaporating from an empty vessel, till "the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. 'Ihen shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God, who gave it" (Eccles. xii. 6, 7). But who can tell how his own merely, much less all the bottles of the Lord are filled? We read of phials and vessels of wrath (Rom. ix. 22. Rev. xv.7, &c.); we have also felt the breaking of some of these phials in a most convulsive era; we daily meet with phials of malice and ignorance, by chance also with some of wisdom and benevolence. However it may be, they are all inflated by

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