The worship of angels, which the Jews brought from Chaldea, was early introduced into the Christian Church. In the fourth century the council of Laodicea published a decree against places of worship dedicated to angels under names which the Church did not recognise. But neither warning nor council seems to have had power to modify the popular creed, countenanced as it was by high authority. All the Fathers are unanimous as to the existence of angels good and evil. They hold that it is evermore the allotted task of good angels to defend us against evil angels, and to carry on a daily and hourly combat against our spiritual foes: they teach that the good angels are worthy of all reverence as the ministers of God and as the protectors of the human race; that their intercession is to be invoked, and their perpetual, invisible presence to be regarded as an incitement to good and a preventive to evil. This, however, was not enough. Taking for their foundation a few Scripture texts, and in particular the classification of St. Paul, the imaginative theologians of the middle ages ran into all kinds of extravagant subtleties regarding the being, the nature, and the functions of the different orders of angels. Except as far as they have been taken as authorities in Art, I shall set aside these fanciful disquisitions, of which a mere abstract would fill volumes. For our present purpose it is sufficient to bear in mind that the great theologians divide the angelic host into three hierarchies, and these again into nine choirs, three in each hierarchy: according to Dionysius the Areopagite, in the following order: 1. Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. 2. Dominations, Virtues, Powers. 3. Princedoms, Archangels, Angels. The order of these denominations is not the same in all authorities: according to the Greek formula, St. Bernard, and the Legenda Aurea, the Cherubim precede the Seraphim, and in the hymn of St. Ambrose they have also the precedence—_To Thee, Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry_, &c.; but the authority of St. Dionysius seems to be admitted as paramount, for according to the legend he was the convert and intimate friend of St. Paul, and St. Paul, who had been transported to the seventh heaven, had made him acquainted with all he had there beheld. Desire In Dionysius so intensely wrought That he, as I have done, ranged them, and named Their orders, marshall’d in his thought; ... For he had learn’d Both this and much beside of these our orbs From an eye-witness to Heaven’s mysteries. DANTE, _Par._ 28.