sume the regal character, or accept the honours due to the royal person, how unreasonable to infer from such an edict a prohi bition that suitable honour and respect should be paid to his magistrates? Of this nature is the relative honour paid by the Catholic Church to angels and saints. When, walking in the footsteps of those exalted characters, whose names are recorded in the Old Testament, she is said "to adore the angels of God," she venerates them as the special friends and servants of God, but gives not to them that supreme honour which is due to God alone.
True, we sometimes read that angels refused to be worshipped by men; [1] but the worship which they refused to accept was the supreme honour due to God alone: the Holy Spirit who says: "Honour and glory to God alone," [2] commands us also to honour our parents and elders; [3] and the holy men who adored one God only, are also said in Scripture to have " adored," that is supplicated and venerated, kings. If then kings, by whose agency God governs the world, are so highly honoured, [4] shall it be deemed unlawful to honour those angelic spirits, whom God has been pleased to constitute his ministers, whose services he makes use of not only in the government of his Church, but also of the Universe, by whose invisible aid we are every day delivered from the greatest dangers of soul and body? Are they not, rather, to be honoured with a veneration greater, in propor tion as the dignity of these blessed spirits exceeds that of kings? Another claim on our veneration is their love of us, which, as the Scripture informs us, [5] prompts them to pour out their prayers for those countries over which they are placed by Providence, and for us whose guardians they are, and whose prayers and tears they present before the throne of God. [6] Hence our Lord admonishes us in the Gospel not to offend the little ones, "be cause their angels in heaven always see the face of their Father who is in heaven." [7] Their intercession, therefore, we invoke, because they always see the face of God, and are constituted by him the willing advocates of our salvation. To this their invocation the Scriptures bear testimony Jacob invoked, nay compelled, the angel with whom he wrestled, to bless him, [8] declaring that he would not let him go until he had blessed him; and not only did he invoke the blessing of the angel whom he saw, but also of him whom he saw not: " The an gel," says he, " who delivered me out of all evil, bless these children." [9]
From these attestations we are justified in concluding, that to honour the saints " who sleep in the Lord," to invoke their intercession, and to venerate their sacred relics and ashes, far from diminishing, tends considerably to increase the glory of
