at their head, presents so entirely the plain common-sense view of the case to our minds, that all the subtilty of casuists, and all the ingenuity of modern refinements, will never be able to substitute any other in its stead.  “The angel (such are the words of that ancient defender of the true faith), in the Apocalypse, forbids John, when desiring to worship him, saying, ’See thou {56} 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.’  Therefore, to be the object of worship belongs to God only; and this even the angels themselves know:  though they surpass others in glory, but they are all creatures, and are not among objects of worship, but among those who worship the sovereign Lord.” [Athan.  Orat. 2.  Cont.  Ar. vol. i. p. 491.] To say that St. John was too fully illuminated by the Holy Spirit to do, especially a second time, what was wrong; and thence to infer that what he did was right, is as untenable as to maintain, that St. Peter could not, especially thrice, have done wrong in denying our Lord.  He did wrong, or the angel would not have chided and warned him.  And to say that the angel here forbade John personally to worship him, because he was a fellow-servant and one of the prophets; and thus that the prohibition only tended to exalt the prophetic character, not to condemn the worship of angels, is proved to be also a groundless assumption, from the angel’s own words, who reckons himself as a fellow-servant with not St. John only, but all those also who keep the words of the book of God,—­thus equally forbidding every faithful Christian to worship their fellow-servants the angels.  They are almost the last words in the volume of inspired truth, and to me, together with those last words, they seem with “the voice of a great multitude, and of many waters, and of mighty thunderings,” from the very throne itself of the Most High, to proclaim to every inhabiter of the earth, Fall down before no created being; adore no created being; pray to, invoke, call upon no created being, whether saint or angel:  worship {57} and adore God only; pray to God only.  Trust to his mercy; seek no other mediator or intercessor than his own only and blessed Son.  “He who testifieth these things saith, Surely, I come quickly.  Amen.  Even so, come, Lord Jesus.  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.  Amen.” [Rev. xxii. 20, 21.]

Thus the New Testament, so far from mitigating the stringency of the former law, so far from countenancing any departure from the obligation of that code which limits religious worship to God alone, so far from suggesting to us invocation to sainted men, and to angels as intercessors with the eternal Giver of all good, reiterates the injunction, and declares, that invocation in order to be Christian must be addressed to God alone; and that there is one and only one Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of his Father, a merciful High Priest sympathizing with us in our infirmities, ever making intercession for us, able to save to the uttermost those who come unto God through Him.