(39) Here mine eyes saw their dwellings with His righteous angels, And their resting-places with the holy. And they petitioned and interceded and prayed for the children of men, And righteousness flowed before them as water, And mercy like dew upon the earth: Thus it is amongst them for ever and ever.

(3) All angels and all souls, although they be confirmed and adorned with grace and with virtues, for the which they be above thee in cleanness, nevertheless, yet they be but even with thee in nature.

(47) In those days the holy ones who dwell above in the heavens Shall unite with one voice And supplicate and pray [and praise, And give thanks and bless the name of the Lord of Spirits] On behalf of the blood of the righteous which has been shed, And that the prayer of the righteous may not be in vain before the Lord of Spirits, That judgement may be done unto them, And that they may not have to suffer for ever.

(1) AND right as the meditations of them that continually work in this grace and in this work rise suddenly without any means, right so do their prayers. I mean of their special prayers, not of those prayers that be ordained of Holy Church. For they that be true workers in this work, they worship no prayer so much: and therefore they do them, in the form and in the statute that they be ordained of holy fathers before us. But their special prayers rise evermore suddenly unto God, without any means or any premeditation in special coming before, or going therewith.

(86) thus the holy Angels do one towards another; when an Army or Company of one Kingdom comes to the other, or when the Army or Company of one princely Quality comes to an Army or Company of another princely Quality, there is nothing but mere loving Entertainment, saluting and embracing Reception; a very gracious, amiable and blessed Discourse and friendly Respect; a very gracious, amiable, blessed and loving Walking, and Playing together; a most chaste and humble Exercise; a friendly Kissing, and leading one another up and down: here begins the lovely Choir and set Dancing.

(15) For all the angels of the presence and all the angels of sanctification have been so created from the day of their creation, and before the angels of the presence and the angels of sanctification He hath sanctified Israel, that they should be with Him and with His holy angels.

(75) So now you understand that this Angel is greater than any Angel in Heaven, for he has a heavenly human Body, and has a human Soul, and has the eternal heavenly Bride, the Virgin of Wisdom, and has the holy Trinity; and we can truly say, [he is] a Person in the holy Trinity in Heaven, and a true Man in Heaven, and in this World, an eternal King, a Lord of Heaven and Earth.

(18) The question arises: But what then does the sanctified heart pray for? I answer that when truly sanctified, it prays for nothing, for whosoever prays asks God to give him some good, or to take some evil from him. But the sanctified heart desires nothing, and contains nothing that it wishes to be freed from. Therefore it is free of all want except that it wants to be like God. St Dionysius commenting on the text, "Know ye not that all run, but one receiveth the prize?" says "this running is nothing else than a turning away from all creatures and being united to the Uncreated." When the soul gets to this point, it loses its own distinctiveness, and vanishes in God as the crimson of sunrise disappears in the sun. To this goal only pure sanctification can arrive.

(2) And the third and most perfect species of prayer is the seal of ineffable union with the divinities , in whom it establishes all the power and authority of prayer; and thus causes the soul to repose in the Gods, as in a never failing port. But from these three terms, in which all the divine measures are contained, suppliant adoration not only conciliates to us the friendship of the Gods, but supernally extends to us three fruits, being as it were three Hesperian apples of gold. The first of these pertains to illumination ; the second , to a communion of operation ; but through the energy of the third , we receive a perfect plenitude of divine fire . And sometimes, indeed, supplication precedes ; like a precursor preparing the way before the sacrifice appears. But some times it intercedes as a mediator ; and sometimes accomplishes the end of sacrificing . No operation, however, in sacred concerns, can succeed without the intervention of prayer.

(85) Thou seest, also, how Heaven is in a holy Man, and that every where, wheresoever thou standest, goest or liest, if thy Spirit does but qualify or co-operate with God, then as to that Part, thou art in Heaven, and thy Soul is in God. Therefore also says Christ; 'My Sheep are in my Hands, no Man can pull them away from me.' [b John 10.]

(2) Farther still, having said “ that pure intellects are inflexible , [i. e. not to be changed or altered ] and unmingled with sensibles ,” you doubt, “ whether it is requisite to pray to them .” But I think it is necessary to pray to no others than these. For that in us which is divine, intellectual, and one, or intelligible, if you are willing so to call it, is most clearly excited in prayer; and, when excited, vehemently seeks that which is similar to itself, and becomes copulated to perfection itself. But if it should appear to you to be incredible, that an incorporeal nature can be capable of hearing sounds, and it should be urged by you, that for this purpose the sense of hearing is requisite, that it may apprehend what is said by us in prayer; you willingly forget the excellency of primary causes, which consists in both knowing and comprehending in themselves at once the whole of things. The Gods, therefore, do not receive prayers in themselves, through any corporeal powers or organs, but rather contain in themselves the energies of pious invocations; and especially of such as, through sacred ceremonies, are established in, and united to, the Gods. For then, in reality, a divine nature is present with itself, and does not communicate with the intellectual conceptions in prayer, as different from its own.

(84) so the holy Angels move, walk, or converse in all the three Kingdoms, one among another, whereby they conceive, or receive their Conceptions, one from the other; that is, from the other's Beauty, comely Form, Friendliness, Courtesy and Virtue, every one receives his highest Joy, and yet each keeps his natural Seat or Place, in which he is become a Creature, for his own Propriety.

(112) And all holy Angels, together with all holy Men, will eternally triumph above them, below them, and round about them, and for great Joy, Delight, and Pleasantness, sing of God's Holiness, of their royal Kingly Government or Regimen, and of the gracious, amiable, blessed Fruit of the heavenly Spring or Vegetation; and that will go forth according to the Qualities of the seven Spirits of God, in many various Voices.

(2) Now all Angels are interpreters of those above them, the most reverend, indeed, of God, Who moves them, and the rest, in due degree, of those who have been moved by God. For, to such an extent has the superessential harmony of all things provided for the religious order and the regulated conduct of each of the rational and intellectual beings, that each rank of the Hierarchies, has been placed in sacred order, and we observe every Hierarchy distributed into first, and middle, and last Powers. But to speak accurately, He distinguished each Division itself, by the same Divine harmonies; wherefore the theologians say that the most Divine Seraphim cry one to another, indicating distinctly, as I think by this, that the first impart their knowledge of divine things to the second.

(4) He who said this, used to affirm, that this vision was shewn to the Theologian, through one of the holy and blessed Angels set over us, and that from his illuminating direction, he was elevated to that intellectual contemplation in which he saw the most exalted Beings seated (to speak symbolically) under God, and with God, and around God, and the super-princely Eminence elevated unspeakably above them and all, seated on high in the midst of the superior Powers. The Theologian then learned, from the things seen, that, as compared with every super-essential pre-eminence, the Divine Being was seated incomparably above every visible and invisible power, yea, even that It is exalted above all, as the Reality of all things, as Absolute--not even like to the first of created Beings;--further also, that It is source and essentiating Cause, and unalterable Fixity of the undissolved continuance of all things, from, Which is both the being and the well-being of the most exalted Powers themselves. Then he revealed that the Godlike powers of the most holy Seraphim, themselves, whose sacred appellation signifies the Fiery, concerning which we shall shortly speak as best we can, conducted the elevations of the empyrean power to the Divine likeness. And, the holy Theologian, by viewing the description of free and most exalted elevation of the sixfold wings to the Divine Being in first, middle, and last conceptions, and further, their endless feet and many faces, and their extended wings--one under their feet, and the other over their faces, as seen in vision, and the perpetual movement of their middle wings--was brought to the intelligible knowledge of the things seen, since there was manifested to him the power of the most exalted minds for deep penetration and contemplation, and the sacred reverence which they have, supermundanely, for the bold and courageous and unattainable scrutiny into higher and deeper mysteries; and of the incessant and high-flying perpetual movement of their Godlike energies in due proportion. But he was also taught the hidden mysteries of that supremely Divine and much esteemed Hymn of Praise--whilst the Angel who formed the vision imparts, as far as possible, his own sacred knowledge to the Theologian. He also taught him this, that the participation, as far as attainable, in the supremely Divine and radiant purity, is a purification to the pure however pure; and it being accomplished from the very Godhead by most exalted causes, for all the sacred Minds by a superessential hiddenness, is in a manner more clear, and exhibits and distributes itself, in a higher degree, to the highest powers around It; but with regard to the second, or us, the lowest mental powers, as each is distant from, as regards the Divine likeness, so It contracts its brilliant illumination to the single unknowable of its own hiddenness. And it illuminates the second, severally, through the first; and, if one must speak briefly, it is firstly brought from hiddenness to manifestation through the first powers. This, then, the Theologian was taught by the Angel who was leading him to Light--that purification, and all the supremely Divine operations, illuminating through the first Beings, are distributed to all the rest, according to the relation of each for the deifying participations. Wherefore he reasonably attributed to the Seraphim, after God, the characteristic of purification by fire. There is nothing, then, absurd, if the Seraphim is said to purify the Prophet. For, as God purifies all, by being cause of every purification, yea, rather (for I use a familiar illustration) just as our Hierarch, when purifying or enlightening through his Leitourgoi or Priests, is said himself to purify and enlighten, since the Orders consecrated through him attribute to him their own proper sacred operations; so also the Angel who effected the purification of the Theologian attributes his own purifying science and power to God, indeed, as Cause, but to the Seraphim as first-operating Hierarch; as any one might say with Angelic reverence, whilst teaching one who was being purified by him, "There is a preeminent Source, and Essence, and Worker, and Cause of the cleansing wrought upon you from me, He Who brings both the first Beings into Being, and holds them together by their fixity around Himself, and keeps them without change and without fall, moving them to the first participations of His own Providential energies (for this, He Who taught me these things used to say, shews the mission of the Seraphim), but as Hierarch and Leader after God, the Marshal of the most exalted Beings, from whom I was taught to purify after the example of God -- this is he, who cleanses thee through me, through whom the Cause and Creator of all cleansing brought forth His own provident energies from the Hidden even to us." These things, then, he taught me, and I impart them to thee. Let it be a part of thy intellectual and discriminating skill, either, to acquit each of the causes assigned from objection, and to honour this before the other as having likelihood and good reason, and perhaps, the truth; or, to find out from yourself something more allied to the real truth, or to learn from another; (God, of course, giving expression, and Angels supplying it;) and to reveal to us, the friends of Angels, a view more luminous if it should be so, and to me specially welcome.

(24) therefore has he created the Holy Angels out of himself, which are as it were little Gods, answerable to the Being and Qualities of the whole God, that in the Power they should act forth the Praise, and sing and sound forth in the Power, and increase the arising Joy from the Heart of God.

(67) now when thou worshippest or prayest to the holy God in his Heaven, then thou worshippest or prayest to him in that Heaven which is in thee, and that same God with his Light; and therein the Holy Ghost breaks through in thy Heart, and generates thy Soul to be a new Body of God, which rules and reigns with God in his Heaven. [Or new divine Body.]

(88) But when the Heart of God shows forth itself with its Clarity or Brightness, then there rises up the whole Host or Army of all the three Kingdoms of the Angels; and in this Rising up of the Heart of God the Man JESUS CHRIST is King and Chief. He leads the royal Chorus or Quire with all the holy Souls of Men till the last Judgment-Day. And then the holy Men are perfect Angels, and the wicked perfect Devils, and that in its Eternity.

(35) But if he gives himself up to the Obedience of God, and yields his Mind up into God, to strive against Malice and Wickedness, and the Lusts and Desires of the Flesh, also against all Unrighteousness of Life and Conversation, in Humility under the Cross, then the eternal Mind figures him in the Image of an Angel, who is pure, chaste, and virtuous, and he keeps this Image in the Breaking of the Body, and hereafter he will be married with the precious Virgin, the eternal Wisdom, Chastity, and paradisical Purity.