The Fountain of Life Opened

Secondly, It was a marvellous humiliation to the Son of God, not only to become a creature, but an inferior creature, a man, and not an Angel. Had he took the Angelical nature, though it had been a wonderful abasement to him; yet he had staid (if I may so speak) nearer his own home, and been somewhat liker to a God than now he appeared, when he dwelt with us. For Angels are the highest, and most excellent of all created Beings. For their nature, they are pure spirits: for their wisdom, Intelligences. For their dignity; they are called principalities, and powers. For their habitations, they are styled the Heavenly Host; and for their employment, it is to behold the face of God in Heaven. The highest pitch, both of our holiness and happiness in the coming world, is expressed by this, we shall be [Greek or Hebrew] equal to the Angels. Luk. 20.36. As man is nothing to God, so he is much inferior to the Angels. So much below them, that he is not able to bear the sight of an Angel, though in an humane shape, rendering himself as familiarly as may be to him. Judg. 13.22. When the Psalmist had contemplated the Heavens, and viewed the Celestial bodies; the glorious Luminaries, the Moon, and Stars which God had made: he cries out Psal. 8.5. what is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him! Take man at his best, when he came a perfect and pure piece out of his Makers hand, in the state of innocency; yet he was inferior to Angels. They always bare the image of God in a more eminent degree, than man, as being wholly spiritual substances, and so more lively representing God, than man could do; whose noble soul is immersed in matter, and closed up in flesh and blood: yet Christ chooseth this inferior order, and species of creatures, and passeth by the Angelical nature. Heb. 2.16. He took not on him the nature of Angels, but the seed of Abraham.

Secondly, It was a marvelous humiliation to the Son of God, not only to become a creature, but an inferiour creature, a man, and not an Angel. Had he took the Angelical nature, though it had been a wonderful abasement to him; yet he had staid (if I may so speak) nearer his own home, and been somewhat liker to a God than now he appeared, when he dwelt with us. For Angels are the highest, and most excellent of all created Beings. For their nature, they are pure spirits: for their wisdom, Intelligencies. For their dignity; they are called principalities, and powers. For their habitations, they are stiled the Heavenly Host; and for their imployment, it is to behold the face of God in Heaven. The highest pitch, both of our holiness and happiness in the coming world, is expressed by this, we shall be equal to the Angels.