considered there was a middle
race, [Greek: daimonia], neither in heaven, nor in hell; partially
fallen, capricious, wayward; noble or crafty, benevolent or malicious,
as the case might be. These beings gave a sort of inspiration or
intelligence to races, nations, and classes of men. Hence the action of
bodies politic and associations, which is often so different from that
of the individuals who compose them. Hence the character and the
instinct of states and governments, of religious communities and
communions. I thought these assemblages had their life in certain unseen
Powers. My preference of the Personal to the Abstract would naturally
lead me to this view. I thought it countenanced by the mention of "the
Prince of Persia" in the Prophet Daniel; and I think I considered that
it was of such intermediate beings that the Apocalypse spoke, in its
notice of "the Angels of the Seven Churches."

In 1837 I made a further development of this doctrine. I said to an
intimate and dear friend, Samuel Francis Wood, in a letter which came
into my hands on his death. "I have an idea. The mass of the Fathers
(Justin, Athenagoras, Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius,
Sulpicius, Ambrose, Nazianzen,) hold that, though Satan fell from the
beginning, the Angels fell before the deluge, falling in love with the
daughters of men. This has lately come across me as a remarkable
solution of a notion which I cannot help holding. Daniel speaks as if
each nation had its guardian Angel. I cannot but think that there are
beings with a great deal of good in them, yet with great defects, who
are the animating principles of certain institutions, &c., &c.... Take
England with many high virtues, and yet a low Catholicism. It seems to
me that John Bull is a spirit neither of heaven nor hell.... Has not the
Christian Church, in its parts, surrendered itself to one or other of
these simulations of the truth?... How are we to avoid Scylla and
Charybdis and go straight on to the very image of Christ?" &c., &c.

I am aware that what I have been saying will, with many men, be doing
credit to my imagination at the expense of my judgment--"Hippoclides
doesn't care;" I am not setting myself up as a pattern of good sense or
of any thing else: I am but giving a history of my opinions, and that,
with the view of showing that I have come by them through intelligible
processes of thought and honest external means. The doctrine indeed of
the Economy has