Page:History of the Nonjurors.djvu/349

Rh worshipping the angels together with him, and making more mediators in religious worship than one? St. Athanasius in his discourse against the Arians (lib. iv.) having proved, that the angels waited on our Saviour and worshipped him, adds, "They adored him not because he was an higher order than themselves, but because he was a distinct, an uncreated nature." For if dignity and height of station were sufficient ground for adoration, all inferior angels should worship their Superiors. But it is not so,, for one creature is not to worship another. And after he has produced the instances of St. Peter forbidding Cornelius to worship him, Acts x, and the angels forbidding St. John, Rev. xix, he concludes "That God alone is to be worshipped." Athan. Cont. Arian, pp. 286, 394, ed. Paris. Epiphanius, reporting the heresy of those that worshipped the B. Virgin, argues thus, " Neither Elias, who was carried in a fiery chariot to heaven, and is now living, nor St. John, who was particularly favoured by our Saviour, nor any of the saints is worshipped. If God does not allow angels to be worshipped, much less the daughter of Joachim." Epiph. Hæres. 79. And elsewhere he declares "that no created being ought to be worshipped." To those we shall only subjoin one testimony from St. Augustine, who though a Latin Father, was a person of great character for piety and learning, and wrote in some part of the fourth and fifth centuries. This Father remarks, "that the angel in the Revelation forbid the paying him any worship, that he was the Apostle's fellow, and that God was only to be worshipped." Aug. De Dioct. Christiana, lib. i. cap. 33. To draw towards a conclusion. As some of these testimonies expressly discountenance religious applications to saints, so