It does not at all appear that Isaiah sought, by this stroke of rhetoric, to establish the doctrine of the angels precipitated into hell. It was scarcely before the time of the primitive Christian church that the fathers and the rabbis exerted themselves to encourage this doctrine, in order to save the incredibility of the story of a serpent which seduced the mother of men, and which, condemned for this bad action to crawl on its belly, has ever since been an enemy to man, who is always striving to crush it, while it is always endeavoring to bite him. There seemed to be somewhat more of sublimity in celestial substances precipitated into the abyss, and issuing from it to persecute mankind. It cannot be proved by any reasoning that these celestial and infernal powers exist; neither can it be proved that they do not exist. There is certainly no contradiction in acknowledging the existence of beneficent and malignant substances which are neither of the nature of God nor of the nature of man: but a thing, to be believed, must be more than possible. The angels who, according to the Babylonians and the Jews, presided over nations, were precisely what the gods of Homer were--celestial beings, subordinate to a supreme being. The imagination which produced the one probably produced the other. The number of the inferior gods increased with the religion of Homer. Among the Christians, the number of the angels was augmented in the course of time. The writers known by the names of Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory I. fixed the number of angels in nine choirs, forming three hierarchies; the first consisting of the seraphim, cherubim, and thrones; the second of the dominations, virtues and powers; and the third of the principalities, archangels, and, lastly, the angels, who give their domination to all the rest. It is hardly permissible for any one but a pope thus to settle the different ranks in heaven. SECTION III. Angel, in Greek, is envoy. The reader will hardly be the wiser for being told that the Persians had their _peris_, the Hebrews their _malakim_, and the Greeks their _demonoi_. But it is perhaps better worth knowing that, one of the first of man's ideas has always been to place intermediate beings between the Divinity and himself; such were those demons, those genii, invented in the ages of antiquity. Man always made the gods after his own image; princes were seen to communicate their orders by messengers; therefore, the Divinity had also his couriers. Mercury, Iris, were couriers or messengers.