departure hence, and supplicating them to intercede with the true God in his behalf:  and on this difference Roman Catholic writers have maintained the total inapplicability of this incident to the present state of things.  But, surely, if any such prayer to departed saints had been familiar to their minds, instead of repelling the religious address of the inhabitants of Lystra at once and for ever, they would have altered the tone of their remonstrance, and not have suppressed the truth when a good opportunity offered itself for imparting it.  And, supposing that it was part of their commission to announce and explain the invocation of saints at all, on what occasion could an explanation of the just and proper invocation of angels and saints departed have been more appropriate in the Apostles, than when they were denouncing the unjustifiable offering of sacrifice to themselves while living?  But whether the more appropriate place for such an announcement were at Lystra, in Corinth, at Athens, or at Rome, it matters not; nor whether it would have been more advantageously communicated by their oral teaching, or in their epistles.  Doubtless, had the Apostles, by their example or teaching, sanctioned the invocation of saints and angels, in the course of fifty years or more after our blessed Saviour’s resurrection, it would infallibly have appeared in some page or other of the New Testament.  Instead of this the whole tenor of the Holy Volume breathes in perfect accordance with the spirit of the apostolical remonstrance at Lystra, to the fullest and utmost extent of its meaning, “We preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities to serve the living God.” {55}

Of the other instance, it well becomes every Catholic Christian to ponder on the weight and cogency.  John, the beloved disciple of our Lord, when admitted to view with his own eyes and hear with his mortal ears the things of heaven, rapt in amazement and awe, fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed him these things. [Rev. xxii. 8, 9.] If the adoration of angels were ever justifiable, surely it was then; and what a testimony to the end of the world would have been put upon record, had the adoration of an angel by the blessed John at such a moment, when he had the mysteries and the glories of heaven before him, been received and sanctioned.  But what is the fact?  “Then saith he to me, See thou do it not.  I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them who keep the sayings of this book.  Worship God.”  I cannot understand the criticism by which the conclusiveness of this direct renouncement of all religious adoration and worship is attempted to be set aside.  To my mind these words, uttered without any qualification at such a time, by such a being, to such a man, are conclusive beyond gainsaying.  The interpretation put upon this transaction, and the words in which it is recorded, and the inference drawn from them by a series of the best divines, with St. Athanasius