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 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