Page 18 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

12 NOTES ON EZEKIEL.

©ye is single. If Christ’s glory had been before them,
not the church’s (that is, their own), they would have
made room for His relation to others as well as to
themselves. They need not deny the old, because they
believe the new. Had the national judgment of
Israel been seen at the beginning of the prophecy,
and their restoration at the end, the ancient fathers
and the modern divines could not have dreamt of
interpreting the four cherubim as the evangelists,
or as a description of Christ’s redemption work, or of
God’s glory in the church, or as the four seasons of
the year or the four quarters of the globe, or the four
cardinal virtues or the four passions of the soul, or
the four faculties of the mind, or whatever other con­
jectures men have indulged in. A more plausible but
very imperfect view is that of Calvin who takes them
as angels, and four in relation to the various questions
of the world, each with four heads, angelic virtue being
thus proved to reside in all, and God shewn to work
not only in man and other animals but throughout
inanimate things. He takes it therefore as a vision
of God’s empire administered by angels everywhere,
all creatures being so impelled as if joined with the
angels and as if the angels comprehended within them­
selves all elements in all parts of the world.
As to the four cherubs then, they were composite
figures. “ And every one had four faces, and every
one had four wings. And their feet were straight
feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a
calf’s foot: and they sparkled like the colour of bur­
nished brass. And they had the hands of a man
under their wings on their four sides; and they four