DIALOGUE VIII. OF INVOCATION OF SAINTS AND ANGELS. PHILODOX. "THAT it is lawful and profitable to invoke angels is plain, from Jacob's asking and obtaining the angel's blessing with whom he had mystically wrestled; and invoking his own angel to bless Joseph's sons."* ORTHODOX. If to ask the blessing of an angel present, infers that it is lawful and profitable to invoke them absent, it follows, that we may lawfully and profitably invoke our parents, pastors, &c. from whom we are wont to implore benediction. We are told, that a zealous lay-advocate of the Romanists implored the blessing of a late pious Protestant bishop; and whatever his own Church may think of his orthodoxy herein, who shall censure the feeling which dictated the act? Yet I doubt whether this gentleman proceeds upon his principles, and invokes the spirit of the departed prelate. That the angel whom Jacob invoked to bless his * End of Controversy, L. XXXIII. grandsons, was no created angel, but the Lord himself, the "Angel of the covenant", is implied in the terms of the invocation, which is addressed to a single personage: "God, before whom my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, did walk; the God who fed me all my life long unto this day; the angel who redeemed me from all evil; bless the lads."-Is it not evident that the God before whom his fathers walked, who had fed him during life, was the Angel who redeemed him from all evil; even He who has been through every age the omnipresent Preserver and Redeemer of his people. This is the unanimous exposition of the Hebrew and Catholic Church. "That Angel", say the Rabbin," is the Redeemer, who is found in every redemption that is in the world :-the Shechinah, who always walks with man, and never departs from him."* And thus the champion of truth, St. Athanasius, announces the orthodox opinion: "Jacob did not couple one of the created natural angels with God who created them; nor, leaving "God who fed" him, did he ask a blessing from an angel upon his grandsons; but by naming him "that redeemed * Quoted in Dr. J. P. Smith's Testimony to the Messiah, Vol. I. p. 345. This learned and able author, who carries caution almost to the verge of excess, hesitates not an instant to adopt the orthodox view of such passages as the above. him from all evil", he shewed that it was not any one of the created angels, but the Word of God, whom he coupled with the Father, and prayed to*. "I have often wondered", says Allix, "how it came to pass, that most of the divines of the Church of Rome, who would seem to have the greatest veneration for antiquity, should so much despise it in this question, wherein the ancient Jewish and Christian Church do agree." This erudite, but not always conclusive, writer, must have forborne to "wonder" when he considered how little Catholic tradition, opposed to the all-absorbing infallibility of the Church, avails with Roman divines. I am not aware of more than three instances in the scripture of religious service paid to created beings all occur in the New Testament; and all alike are reprehended. The first is, the homage of Cornelius to St. Peter‡; the others, of St. John to the Apocalyptic Angel §. PHILODOX. "But if the mere act was forbidden, then the three angels who allowed Abraham to bow him * Orat. 4. Cont. Arian. + Diss. at the end of Test. of Jewish Ch. + Acts, x. § Rev. xix. and xxi. self to the ground before them, were guilty of a crime." * ORTHODOX. Were we to answer, that of these "three angels", one was that Jehovah before whom the patriarch pleaded for guilty Sodom, the sacred narrative and Catholic tradition would vindicate the exposition. We are not, however, disputing of "the mere act”; but of the intent. External signs of homage may or may not be religious. Bowing, prostrating, kneeling, &c. are tokens alike of civil respect, of moral reverence, or of religious worship. Both the former were due from Cornelius to St. Peter. If we could suppose that the humility of the apostle declined an excess of outward testimony from the grateful centurion; yet his language will shew that the homage paid was religious. "Stand up: I myself also am a man." To whom was civil or moral respect due, if not to "man"? The repulse proclaims the nature of the action. It was religious service; not supreme, for Cornelius knew that Peter was only an ambassador of God, but relative; the same in kind and degree with that paid by Romanists to the saints. This derives added force from the error of St. John. He did not, as they pretend, mistake the *Gen. xviii. angel for Christ; and so adore him with supreme worship. He had beheld Christ at the opening of his vision. The angel in whose presence he stood, he knew to be one of the "seven angels"; he had held a long converse with him, which closed by the celestial messenger inviting him to the marriagesupper of the Lamb; therefore he could not mistake him for the Lamb. But, in his ecstatic rapture, he paid him a reverence bordering on religious service. The angel shrank from it: "See thou do it not: I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren. Adore God": as they translate the words. And when the beloved disciple forgot the monition, and offered again the like service, he was again rejected with the same reproof. PHILODOX. In adverting to the respect paid to the saints, you must allow that more than ordinary reverence and honour are due to the blessed virgin. ORTHODOX. All reverence and honour which intrench not upon the incommunicable glory of the Godhead are her due. But to ascribe to her that glory, is not to honour but to dishonour this "lowly handmaid" of the Lord. |