A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures

First, Their Natures were more excellent than ours. They were glorious Spirits, the top and cream of the Creation we Clods of Earth, the Lees and Dreg• of Nature, our Souls, the only part by ⟨p. 27⟩which we claim Kin to Angels, even they are of a younger House, and of a more Ignoble Extract; how are they debased by being confined to these Lumps of Flesh, which, with much ado, they make a shift to drag with them up and down the Earth, rather as Fetters of their Bondage, than Instruments of their Service: nay, so low sunk are we in this slime of matter, that we have not Excellency enough so much as to conceive what a pure Heavenly Orient Substance a Spirit is. And yet such as we are, Dust and Filth, hath God gathered up into his own Bosom; though he hath disbanded whole Legions of Angels, and sent them down into Hell.

First, Their Natures were more excellent than ours. They were glorious Spirits, the top and cream of the Creation we Clods of Earth, the Lees and Dreg• of Nature, our Souls, the only part by ⟨p. 27⟩which we claim Kin to Angels, even they are of a younger House, and of a more Ignoble Extract; how are they debased by being confined to these Lumps of Flesh, which, with much adoe, they make a shift to drag with them up and down the Earth, rather as Fetters of their Bondage, than Instruments of their Service: nay, so low sunk are we in this slime of matter, that we have not Excellency enough so much as to conceive what a pure Heavenly Orient Substance a Spirit is. And yet such as we are, Dust and Filth, hath God gathered up into his own Bosome; though he hath disbanded whole Legions of Angels, and sent them down into Hell.

In these Natures of ours hath the Son of God Revealed, or rather hid himself: Even he who thought it no Robbery to be equal with God, thought it no scorn to become lower than Angels. He took not on him the Nature of Angels, but the Seed of Abraham.