The angel who appeared to Cornelius did not preach the gospel to him, but directed him to send for Peter. For though the glory and grace of the Saviour seems a fitter subject for an angel's powers than for the poor stammering tongues of sinful men, yet an angel could not preach experimentally, nor describe the warfare between grace and sin from his own feelings. And if we could suppose a minister as full of comforts and as free from failings as an angel, though he would be a good and happy man, I cannot conceive that he would be a good or useful preacher, for he would not know how to sympathise with the weak and afflicted of the flock, or to comfort them under their difficulties with the consolations wherewith he himself, in similar circumstances, had been comforted of God.
Selections from Wise Counsel, ed. Grant Gordon, p79-80
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