'Great instruments of the Divine Providence': Bishop Bull on the holy angels

As Michaelmas (the first high festival of Autumn) approaches, it is appropriate to consider sermons from Bishop Bull (d.1710) on the angels. The first of these sermons is entitled 'The Existence of Angels', on the text Hebrews 1.14. The sermon opens by counselling against excessive speculation, as seen in the famous Concerning the Celestial Hierarchy. We can rather easily detect Bull's thoughts on the author's lack of modesty in describing the angelic realms:

wherein the author speaks so sublimely, so punctually, with so much assurance of the things above, as if he had himself surveyed the heavenly mansions, and, as a learned man expresseth it, taken an exact inventory of all that is there.

Then came "the schoolmen":

Nor have these men been contented with the speculations of that author, but have ventured farther, and raised many more curious and fruitless inquiries concerning angels, than he ever dreamt of. It must needs disgust a sober man to read the many nice and idle questions they have started, and taken a great deal of pains to resolve, especially concerning the knowledge of angels. Methinks men that know so little of themselves, and are so unable to give a certain account of the operations of their own inward faculties of understanding, willing, and remembering, nay, of the very perceptions they have of things by their outward senses, should be more modest, and not dare so confidently to discourse of those sublimer beings, or to tell how and what they do or can know.

If a lack of modesty is evident in the speculations and excesses of 'Dionysius the Areopagite' and the Schoolmen, Bull then turns to the pretended modesty of those who refuse any recognition of the holy angels:

Wherefore others, out of a dread and abhorrence of such presumption, have run themselves into the contrary extreme, and can scarce endure any professed discourse of angels, or let it pass, without the censure of vain and dangerous curiosity. And this their folly they call prudence, modesty, and humility, and endeavour to justify it by the authority of an old threadbare maxim, (the common shelter of dulness, stupidity, and negligence about divine things,) "Those things that are above us, do not at all concern us." I will not undertake to make comparisons between this and the other extreme; but of this I am certain, that the ill consequences of the latter extreme are very great.

If excessive, immodest speculation about the angelic host leads to "curious and fruitless inquiries concerning angels", the reaction of a pretended modesty results in a denial of the angelic ministry:

For by this conceit, the most noble part of the creation is hid from our eyes, and banished out of the bounds and limits of the Christian philosophy. By this pretence, the majesty of the Divine empire, to which so many millions of glorious creatures are subject, is lessened and depressed; and men must needs think too highly of themselves, and too meanly of the great and glorious God, if they are not minded sometimes of those more excellent beings that are between God and themselves, "who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth." By this means we must be ignorant of the great instruments of the Divine Providence over us, and deprived of the comfort we might receive from the knowledge of them in the time of our distress and danger. Hereby the best patterns of virtue, which God hath set before us, (next to the example of His most holy Son,) are removed out of our sight; nor can we, with a right understanding, say that our daily petition, "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven;" viz . by the holy angels.

Against immodest speculation and pretended modesty, Bull points to the holy Scriptures to guide us away from "both the extremes" - for in the Scriptures we have revealed what is sufficient regarding the ministry of the holy angels:

But to avoid both the extremes mentioned, our only way will be to keep close to the Holy Scriptures, and to admit only of such speculations concerning this matter, as are plainly taught us by divine Revelation. And a brief summary of the doctrine of Scripture, concerning the holy angels, we have in the short text I have read: "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?"

Bull's emphasis on the sufficiency of Scripture's teaching on the ministry of angels echoes that of Bullinger and Calvin. Here, in other words, is a Reformed Catholic understanding of the holy angels, itself indicative of the theological identity of 18th century Anglicanism. What is more, Bull reminds us of how a Protestant theology can speak with joyful confidence of the angels.