"
Indeed the passage seems to carry within itself its own condemnation so
entirely, that what we have before alleged, both of internal and
external evidence, may appear superfluous. Surely the conceit of a
preacher of God's word addressing an angel, (which of them he thus
individually addresses does not appear; for he says not "My Angel," as
though he were appealing to one whom he regarded as his guardian, the
view gratuitously suggested in the marginal note of the Benedictine
editor, "the invocation of a guardian angel,") and bidding some one
angel, as a sort of summoner, to go and call to himself all the angels
of heaven to come in one body, and instruct those who are in error, is,
even as a rhetorical apostrophe, as unworthy the mind of a Christian
philosopher, as it is in the light of a prayer totally inconsistent with
the plain sentiments of Origen on the very subject of angelic
invocation. Even had Origen not left us his deliberate opinions in works
of undoubted genuineness, such a {162} strange, incoherent, and childish
rhapsody could never be relied upon by sober and upright men as a
precedent sanctioning a Christian's prayer to angels; no one would rely
upon such evidence in points of far less moment, even were it
uncontradicted by the same witness.
* * * * *
SECTION VII.--ST. CYPRIAN.
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