that are “nowhere”; that is to say, that seeming to be “somewhat,” are “nothing.” But if corporeal be taken in the most vulgar manner, for such substances as are perceptible by our external senses; then is substance incorporeal, a thing not imaginary, but real; namely, a thin substance invisible, but that hath the same dimensions that are in grosser bodies.
By the name of “angel,” is signified generally, a “messenger”; and most often a “messenger of God”; and by a messenger of God is signified, anything that makes known His extraordinary presence; that is to say, the extraordinary manifestation of His power, especially by a dream or vision.
Concerning the creation of “angels,” there is nothing delivered in the Scriptures. That they are spirits, is often repeated: but by the name of spirit, is signified both in Scripture and vulgarly, both amongst Jews and Gentiles, sometimes thin bodies: as the air, the wind, the spirits vital and animal of living creatures; and sometimes the images that rise in the fancy in dreams and visions; which are not real substances, nor last any longer than the dream or vision they appear in; which apparitions, though no real substances, but accidents of the brain; yet when God raiseth them supernaturally, to signify His will, they are not improperly termed God’s messengers, that is to say, His “angels.”
And as the Gentiles did vulgarly conceive the imagery of the brain, for things really subsistent without them, and not dependent on the fancy, and out of them framed their opinions of “demons,” good and evil; which because they seemed to subsist really, they called “substances”; and, because they could not feel them with their hands, “incorporeal”: so also the Jews upon the same ground, without anything in the Old Testament that constrained them thereunto, had generally an opinion, except the sect of the Sadducees, that those apparitions which it pleased God sometimes to produce in the fancy of men, for His own service, and therefore called them His “angels,” were substances, not dependent on