Angels

 ANGELS were actually worshipped, in the proper sense of the word, by Gnostics and other heretics, who even ascribed to them a creative power; and certainly, to consider them the source of any good to man, and the acceptable channel intrinsically of approaching God, in derogation of our Lord's sole mediation, is idolatry. However, their presence in and about the Church, and with all of us individually, is an inestimable blessing, never to be slighted or forgotten; for, as by our prayers and our kind deeds we can serve each other, so Angels, but in a far higher way, serve us, and are channels of grace to us, as the Sacraments also are. All this would doubtless have been maintained by Athanasius had there been occasion for saying it. For instance, in commenting on Psalm 49, Deus Deorum, he says so in substance:

 "'He shall summon the heaven from above.' When the Saviour manifested Himself, He kindled in us the light of true religious knowledge: He converted that which had wandered; He bound up that which was ailing; as being the Good Shepherd, He chased away the wild beasts from the sheepfold; He gave His people sanctification of the Spirit, and the protection of Angelic Powers, and He set those over them through the whole world who should be holy mystagogues. 'He will summon,' He says, 'the Angels who are in heaven and the men on earth chosen for the Apostolate, to judge His people.' ... That with those mystagogues and their disciples Angels co-operate, Paul makes clear when he says, Heb. i. 14," etc., etc.

 If it be asked why, such being his substantial teaching, his language in particular passages of his Orations tends to discourage such cultus Angelorum as the Church has since his time sanctioned, I answer first that he is led by his subject to contrast the Angelic creation with our Lord the Creator; and thus, while extolling Him as Supreme, he comes to speak with disparagement of those who were no more than works of His hands. And secondly, the idolatrous honour paid to Angels by the heretical bodies at that time made unadvisable, or created a prepossession against, what in itself was allowable. Moreover, the Church, as divinely guided, has not formulated her doctrines all at once, but has taken in hand, first one, and then another. As to S. Athanasius, if he seemingly disparages the Angels, it is in order to exalt our Lord. He is arguing against the Arians somewhat in this manner: "You yourselves allow that the Son is the Creator, and, as such, the object of worship; but, if He be the Creator, how can He be a creature? how can He be only a higher kind of Angel, if it was He who created Angels? If so, He must have created Himself. Why, it is the very enormity of the Gnostics, that they ascribe creative power and pay divine honours to Angels; how are you not as bad as they?" Athanasius does not touch the question whether, as Angels and Saints according to him are ( impropriè ) gods (vid. next paragraph), so in a corresponding sense worship may ( impropriè ) be paid to them.

 "The sacred writer, with us in view, says, 'O God, who is like unto Thee?' and though he calls those creatures who are partakers ([ metochous ]) of the Word gods, still those who partake are not the same as, or like, Him who is partaken. For works are made, and make nothing," ad Afros 7. "Not one of things which come-to-be is an efficient cause," [ poietikon aition ], Orat. ii. § 21; ibid . § 2, iii. 14, and contr. Gent. 9 init. "Our reason rejects the idea that the Creator should be a creature, for creation is by the Creator." Hil. Trin. xii. 5. [ pos dunatai to ktizomenon ktizein? e pos ho ktizon ktizetai ]; Athan. ad Afros, 4 fin. Vid. also Serap. i. 24, 6, iii. 4; Orat. ii. 21.

 As to Angels, vid. August. de Civ. Dei xii. 24; de Trin. iii. 13-18; Damasc. F. O. ii. 3; Cyril in Julian. ii. p. 62. "For neither would the Angels," says Athan., Orat. ii. § 21, "since they too are creatures, be able to frame, though Valentinus, and Marcion, and Basilides think so, and you are their copyists; nor will the sun, as being a creature, ever make what is not into what is; nor will man fashion man, nor stone devise stone, nor wood give growth to wood." The Gnostics who attributed creation to Angels are alluded to in Orat. iii. 12; Epiph. Hær. 52, 53, 62, etc.; Theodor. Hær. i. 1 and 3. They considered the Angels consubstantial with our Lord, as the Manichees after them, seemingly from holding the doctrine of emanation. Vid. Bull. D. F. N. ii. 1, § 2, and Beausobre, Manich. iii. 8. "If, from S. Paul saying better than the Angels, they should therefore insist that his language is that of comparison, and that comparison in consequence implies oneness of kind, so that the Son is of the nature of Angels, they will in the first place incur the disgrace of rivalling and repeating what Valentinus held, and Carpocrates, and those other heretics, of whom the former said that the Angels were one in kind with the Christ, and Carpocrates that Angels are framers of the world." Orat. i. § 56.

 As to the sins incident to created natures, all creatures, says Athanasius, depend for their abidance in good upon the Word, and without Him have no stay. Thus, ad Afros 7, after, as in Orat. i. § 49, speaking of [ angelon men parabanton, tou de Adam parakousantos ], he says, "no one would deny that things which are made are open to change (Cyril. in Joan. v. 2), and since the Angels and Adam transgressed, and all showed their need of the grace of the Word, what is thus mutable cannot be like to the immutable God, nor the creature to the Creator." On the subject of the sins of Angels, vid. Huet. Origen. ii. 5; Petav. Dogm. t. iii. p. 73; Dissert. Bened. in Cyr. Hier. iii. 5; Nat. Alex. Hist. Æv. i. Dissert. 7.

 So far Athanasius says nothing which the Church has not taught up to this day; but he goes further.

 "No one," he says, Orat. iii. § 12, "would pray to receive aught from 'God and the Angels,' or from any other creature, nor would he say 'May God and the Angel give thee.'" Vid. Basil de Sp. S. c. 13 (t. ii. p. 585). Also, "There were men," says Chrysostom on Col. ii., "who said, We ought not to have access to God through Christ, but through Angels, for the former is beyond our power. Hence the Apostle everywhere insists on his teaching concerning Christ, 'through the blood of the Cross,'" etc. And Theodoret on Col. iii. 17, says: "Following this rule, the Synod of Laodicea, with a view to cure this ancient disorder, passed a decree against the praying to Angels, and leaving our Lord Jesus Christ." "All supp1ication, prayer, intercession, and thanksgiving is to be addressed to the Supreme God, through the High Priest who is above all Angels, the Living Word and God ... But Angels we may not fitly call upon, since we have not obtained a knowledge of them more than human." Origen. contr. Cels. v. 4, 5. Vid. also for similar statements Voss. de Idolatr. i. 9. These extracts are here made in illustration of the particular passage of Athan. to which they are appended, not as if they contain the whole doctrine of Origen, Theodoret, or S. Chrysostom, on the cultus Angelorum . Of course they are not really inconsistent with such texts as 1 Tim. v. 21, Eccl. v. 4.

 Elsewhere Athan. says that "the Angel who delivered Jacob from all evil," from whom he asked a blessing, was not a created Angel, but the Angel of great Counsel, the Word of God Himself, Orat. iii. § 12; but he says shortly afterwards that the Angel that appeared to Moses in the Bush "was not the God of Abraham, but what was seen was an Angel, and in the Angel God spoke," § 14; vid. Monitum Bened. in Hilar. Trin. lib. iv. Thus Athan. does not differ from Augustine, vid. infr. art. Scripture Passages, No. i., p. 266.

 As to the word "worship," as denoting the cultus Angelorum, worship is a very wide term, and has obviously more senses than one. Thus we read in one passage of Scripture that "all the congregation ... worshipped the Lord, and the king " [David]. S. Augustine, as S. Athanasius, Orat. ii. § 23, makes the characteristic of divine worship to consist in sacrifice. "No one would venture to say that sacrifice was due to any but God. Many are the things taken from divine worship and transferred to human honours, either through excessive humility or mischievous adulation; yet without giving us the notion that those to whom they were transferred were not men. And these are said to be honoured and venerated; or were worshipped, if much is heaped upon them; but whoever thought that sacrifice was to be offered, except to Him whom the sacrificer knew or thought or pretended to be God?" August. de Civ. Dei, x. 4. "Whereas you have called so many dead men gods, why are ye indignant with us, who do but honour, not deify the martyrs, as being God's martyrs and loving servants? ... That they even offered libations to the dead, ye certainly know, who venture on the use of them by night contrary to the laws ... But we, O men, assign neither sacrifices nor even libations to the martyrs, but we honour them as men divine and divinely beloved." Theodor. contr. Gent. viii. pp. 908-910. It is observable that incense was burnt before the Imperial Statues, vid. art. Imperial Titles . Nebuchadnezzar offered an oblation to Daniel, after the interpretation of his dream. Antichrist

 As the early Christians, in obedience to our Lord's words, were ever looking out for His second coming, and for the signs of it, they associated it with every prominent disturbance, external or internal, which interfered with the peace of the Church; with every successive persecution, heretical outbreak, or schism which befell it. In this, too, they were only following the guidance of our Lord and His Apostles, who told them that "great tribulation," "false prophets," disunion, and "apostasy" and at length "Antichrist," should be His forerunners. Also, they recollected S. John's words, "Omnis Spiritus qui solvit Jesum, ex Deo non est, et hic est Antichristus de quo audistis, quoniam, venit," etc. Hence "forerunner of Antichrist" was the received epithet employed by them to designate the successive calamities and threatenings of evil, which one after another spread over the face of the orbis terrarum .

 Thus we have found S. Athanasius calling Arianism "the forerunner of Antichrist," Syn. § 5, [ prodromos ], præcursor; vid. also Orat. i. §§ 1 and 7; Ap. c. Ar. fin.; Hist. Ar. 77; Cyr. Cat. xv. 9; Basil. Ep. 264; Hilar. Aux. 5, no distinction being carefully drawn between the apostasy and the Antichrist. Constantius is called Antichrist by Athan. Hist. Arian. 67; his acts are the [ prooimion kai paraskeue ] of Antichrist, Hist. Arian. 70, fin., 71 and 80. Constantius is the image, [ eikon ], of Antichrist, 74 and 80, and shows the likeness, [ homoioma ], of the malignity of Antichrist, 75. Vid. also 77. "Let Christ be expected, for Antichrist is in possession." Hilar. contr. Const. init., also 5. Speaking of Auxentius, the Arian Bishop of Milan, he says, "Of one thing I warn you, beware of Antichrist; it is ill that ... your veneration for God's Church lies in houses and edifices ... Is there any doubt that Antichrist is to sit in these? Mountains, and woods, and lakes, and prisons, and pits are to me more safe," etc., Contr. Auxent. 12. Lucifer. calls Constantius "præcursor Antichristi," p. 89; possessed with the spirit of Antichrist, p. 219; friend of Antichrist, p. 259. Vid. also Basil, Ep. 264. Again, S. Jerome, writing against Jovinian, says that he who teaches that there are no differences of rewards is Antichrist, ii. 21. S. Leo, alluding to 1 John iv. 10, calls Nestorius and Eutyches, "Antichristi præcursores," Ep. 75, p. 1022; again, Antichrist is whoever withstood what the Church has once settled, with an allusion to opposition to the see of S. Peter, Ep. 156, c. 2. Anastasius speaks of the ten horns of Monophysitism, Hodeg. 8 and 24; and calls Severus Antichrist, for usurping the judicial powers of the Church, ibid. p. 92. Vid. also Greg. I. Ep. vii. 33.

 The great passage of S. Paul about the [ apostasia ], 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2, is taken to apply to the Arians in Orat. i. § 8, cf. ad Ægypt. § 20, 21; but the Fathers more commonly refer it to the Oriental sects of the early centuries, who fulfilled one or other of those conditions which it specifies. It is predicated of the Marcionists by Clement, Strom. iii. 6. Of the Valentinians, Epiph. Hær. 31, 34. Of the Montanists and others, ibid. 48, 8. Of the Saturnilians (according to Huet), Origen in Matt. xiv. 16. Of apostolic heretics, Cyril. Cat. iv. 27. Of Marcionites, Valentinians, and Manichees, Chrysost. de Virg. 5. Of Gnostics and Manichees, Theod. Hær. ii. præf. Of Encratites, ibid. v. fin. Of Eutyches, Ep. Anon. 190 (apud Garner. Diss. v. Theod. p. 901). Pseudo-Justin seems to consider it fulfilled in the Catholics of the fifth century, as being Anti-pelagians, Quæst. 22; vid. Bened. note in loc. Besides Athanasius, no early author by whom it is referred to the Arians, occurs to the writer of this, except S. Alexander's Letter ap. Socr. i. 6; and, if he may hazard the conjecture, there is much in that letter like Athan.'s own writing. Vid. supr. art. Alexander .