St. Michael is mentioned by his name as the patron of the Jews, and
is now taken by the Christians as the protector-general of our
religion. These tutelar genii, who presided over the several people
and regions committed to their charge, were watchful over them for
good, as far as their commissions could possibly extend. The
general purpose and design of all was certainly the service of their
great Creator. But it is an undoubted truth that, for ends best
known to the Almighty Majesty of Heaven, His providential designs
for the benefit of His creatures, for the debasing and punishing of
some nations, and the exaltation and temporal reward of others, were
not wholly known to these His ministers; else why those factious
quarrels, controversies, and battles amongst themselves, when they
were all united in the same design, the service and honour of their
common master? But being instructed only in the general, and
zealous of the main design, and as finite beings not admitted into
the secrets of government, the last resorts of Providence, or
capable of discovering the final purposes of God (who can work good
out of evil as He pleases, and irresistibly sways all manner of
events on earth, directing them finally for the best to His creation
in general, and to the ultimate end of His own glory in particular),
they must of necessity be sometimes ignorant of the means conducing
to those ends, in which alone they can jar and oppose each other--
one angel, as we may suppose (the Prince of Persia, as he is
called), judging that it would be more for God's honour and the
benefit of His people that the Median and Persian monarchy, which
delivered them from the Babylonish captivity, should still be
uppermost; and the patron of the Grecians, to whom the will of God
might be more particularly revealed, contending on the other side
for the rise of Alexander and his successors, who were appointed to
punish the backsliding Jews, and thereby to put them in mind of
their offences, that they might repent and become more virtuous and
more observant of the law revealed.
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