“The army of the other good angels accompanying and assimilated, we reverence and worship, honouring them in reason and truth.”

“The Prophetic Spirit we reverence and worship, honouring him in reason and truth.”

Is it possible to conceive that any Christian would thus ascribe the same religious worship to a host of God’s creatures, which he would ascribe to God, as god?  “We are accused,” said Justin, “of being atheists, of having no God.  How can this be?  We do not worship your false gods, but we have our own most true God.  We are not without a God.  We have the Father, and the Son, and the Good Angels, and the Holy Spirit.”  If Justin meant that they honoured the good angels, but not as god, that would be no answer to those who called the Christians atheists.  The charge was, that “they had no God.”  The answer is, “We have a God;” and then Justin describes the God of Christians.  Can the army of angels be included in that description?  If they are, then they are made to share in the adoration, worship, homage, and reverence of the one only God Most High; if they are not, then Justin does not answer the objectors[35].

[Footnote 35:  And surely if Justin had intended to represent the holy angels as objects of religious worship, he would not so violently have thrust the mention of them among the Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity, assigning to them a place between the second and third Persons of the eternal hypostatic union.] {109}

To evade this charge of impiety, some writers (among others, M. Maran, the Benedictine editor of Justin,) have attempted to draw a distinction between the two verbs in this passage, alleging that the lower degree of reverence expressed by the latter applies to the angels; whilst the former verb, implying the higher degree of worship, alone relates to the Godhead.  But this distinction rests on a false assumption; the two words being used equally to convey the idea, of the highest religious worship[36].

[Footnote 36:  For example, the first word ([Greek:  sebometha]), “we reverence,” is used to mean the whole of religious worship, as well with regard to the true God, as with reference to Diana [Acts xviii. 7. 13; xix. 27.]; whilst the second word ([Greek:  proskunoumen]), “we worship,” is constantly employed in the same sense of divine worship, throughout the Septuagint [Exod. xxxiv. 14.  Ps. xciv. (xcv.) 6.  I Sam. (1 Kings) xv. 25. 2 Kings (4 Kings) xvii. 36.  Heb. i. 6.], (with which Justin was most familiar,) and is used in the Epistle to the Hebrews to signify the worship due from the angels themselves to God, “Let all the angels of God worship him.”  The very same word is also soon after employed by Justin himself (sect. xvi. p. 53) to mean the whole entire worship of the Most High God:  “That we ought to worship ([Greek:  proskumein]) God alone, Christ thus proves,” &c.  Moreover, the word which Justin uses at the close of the sentence,