those other authorities, which point particularly upon the angels, seem by more than parity of reason, to comprehend the faithful departed under the same direction. For if the angels, whom the Scriptures declare guardians and ministering spirits, to the heirs of salvation (Ps. xxxiv, Heb. i.) are not to receive application and worship, the consequence of this prohibition will come stronger upon the saints departed, because they have no such commission for protecting mankind, no such liberty for revisiting this world, at least that we know of, and therefore our reasons for address and acknowledgment must proportionably abate. As to the texts of Scripture produced for maintaining application to the saints departed, we conceive that the proof alleged falls short of conviction. For instance, King Hezekiah, as being delivered from Senacherib's army by David, though deceased, this passage seems plainly foreign to the argument. For the text only says that God promised to defend Jerusalem for his servant David's sake and for his own sake; but here is not the least mention, that the Jews made any application to David for his intercession, without which their Lordships' arguments can't bear. Their next citation from Acts xii, 5, where it is said that prayer was made without ceasing of the Church unto God for St. Peter; this proves no farther, than that one part of the Church militant prayed for another; neither does St. Paul's desiring the Romans to join with him in prayer to God, for his deliverance from the unbelieving, reach any further. Neither do we deny any such mediation. Farther, we are willing to grant that the saints departed intercede for the faithful upon earth: but this does by no means prove, that we are to address them for this purpose, both because we may
