Scotus Academicus, Tomus quartus: De Angelis

By the name angels we understand those intellectual natures midway between God and men: inferior indeed to God, but superior to men, whom the Gentile philosophers called Intelligences, Genii, secondary gods, Souls of the Heavens, and Separate Species. Although the name Angel, if you consider its etymology, is significative not of a certain nature but of an office, expressing the same as the Latin nuncius and legatus (messenger and envoy), from the Greek ἀγγέλλω, that is, I announce. Hence S. Augustine on Psalm 103.

Spirits, he says, are Angels; and while they are Spirits, they are not Angels; but when they are sent they become Angels: for Angel is the name of an office, not of a nature. Do you ask the name of this nature? It is Spirit. Do you ask its office? It is Angel.

S. Dionysius concurs, who in chapter 1 of De Caelesti Hierarchia says that those heavenly Spirits are called above all by the name of Angels, for this reason, that in them first dwells the divine illumination; and through them the revelations which surpass our nature are conveyed to us. And this ministry of the Angels holy Paul expressed to the Hebrews 1: All, he says, are ministering spirits sent to minister, etc. Hence Olympiodorus, chapter 1 on Job, says:

We may judge that any Angel exhausts the divine commands; and if any one of the Angels burns out with pious emulation of others, lest anything be commanded to others but all to himself alone: hence each of them, with most eager obedience, fulfills the command in a moment, so that almost without any delay he is again present to God, that thus he alone, if it were possible, might exhaust all the divine commands.

Wherefore Isaias in chapter 6 sees the Angels aflame with the charity of God and of men, standing before the throne of the Divinity and at the same time flying. They fly with utmost speed to carry out commands concerning the care of men; and at the same time they stand before the throne of God, that they may take up new commands, and so exhaust the divine mandates. Therefore, in a weighty saying, the Angels are said,

in Psalm 102, to do his word, to hear the voice of his words: for thus they burn with charity toward God, thus they are zealous from love of men, thus diligently they perform divine and human affairs, that scarcely sooner have they heard the divine commands than they have fulfilled them. — Moreover, regarding those heavenly Spirits thus employed and named, three things come to be discussed in the following Articles: of which the First will disclose the existence of the Angels and the reasons by which it is confirmed and proved; the Second will expound their nature; the Third, finally, will explain their number and order.

It is a wonder that among the Jews — that is, in that chosen race and the people most dear to God, instructed by so many oracles of the Prophets — some were found who had less understanding than even outsiders and Gentiles in divine and heavenly matters, denying that there is any spirit, or substance free of matter, as the holy Luke relates of the Sadducees, Act. 23. Who believe neither that there will be a resurrection, nor that there is an angel, nor a spirit; whereas the ancient Philosophers had this very truth as most certain, and Aristotle attained this knowledge by the very path of reasoning; for in the eighth book of the Physics and the twelfth of the Metaphysics he gathers the same by argument, chiefly from the agitation of the celestial orbs: he taught that substances free from all concretion with bodies, which he calls separate, preside over their revolutions, driving them on to perpetuity and governing them.

But it is far more astonishing that, even while the light of the Gospel shines, not only did many Heretics exist of old, but indeed even at this very time there are many such men of darkness, who *are so imbued and bewitched with the concept of corporeity that they can imagine no substance except a corporeal one; and what is said of angels and demons they interpret as nothing other than the excesses and aberrations of a phantasy and imagination wrongly disposed.*

Wherefore it is worthwhile in the present Article to persuade the existence of the angels by all the arguments that can be brought, of faith as well as of natural reasoning, so that it may no longer come into doubt for anyone; and then to unfold by whom, when, and where they were created.

Since the name "angel," according to its etymology, is a term of office, not of nature, it accordingly has a threefold attribution and signification: First, indeed, it befits all those who are deputed by God to fulfill some task; for, as Tertullian says in book adversus Iudaeos chapter 9., God has been accustomed to call Angels those whom he appointed as Ministers of his power; on which account Priests are called angels in Malach. 2.: The lips of the priest keep knowledge, because he is the angel of the Lord of hosts. Likewise S. John the Baptist in Matth. 11. is called by Christ the Lord the Angel of the Lord; according to that prophecy of Malachias 3.¹ Behold I send my Angel. While weighing these words

S. Chrysologus, serm. 127. 79., John, says he, is a school of virtues, a masterwork of life, a model of holiness, a rule of justice, a mirror of virginity... John greater than man, equal to the angels, summit of the law, voice of the apostles, silence of the prophets. S. Augustine had gone before in book 15. chapter 23. De Civitate Dei, where he writes: That there were even men called Angels of God, the same holy Scripture most abundantly bears witness; for of John too it is written: Behold I send my Angel etc. Hence Tertullian in the book contra Iudaeos, chapter 9., explaining the same prophecy of Malachias, says: Nor is it new for the Holy Spirit to call angels those whom God appointed as ministers of his power. *Indeed Christ the Lord himself in Isaiae 9., according to the version of the 70. Interpreters, is called the Angel of great counsel: and in Malach. 3. the Angel of the Testament: but by a term of office, not of nature, as Tertullian says in the book De Carne Christi chapter 14. For the same reason, those who are driven by the princes of demons so as to oppose men's salvation are called their angels. Thus Matth. 25.: Who is prepared with the Devil, and his Angels. Second, the stricter usage of this name designates only that intellectual, spiritual, complete substance, having no commerce with any earthly and material composition, whatever its status and order may be: on which account the word angel befits not only the blessed minds but also the most wretchedly lost demons. Third, finally, Theologists customarily use this name to signify those spiritual Intelligences which fill the third order in the last Hierarchy, and are deputed by God to the guardianship of men. But here we are speaking only of angels according to both the latter usages.

Note 2. Since there is a twofold genus of demonstration: namely one which they call a priori, by which an effect becomes known through its cause; another which they subname a posteriori, by which of course a cause appears through its effect; thence it is asked whether either one or both of these can persuade the existence of the angels. Now it is certain that it cannot be demonstrated a priori: since that demonstration gathers the existence of an effect from the existence of its productive cause, on account of the strict and necessary relation between the two: yet no cause can be assigned, nor devised, by which the angels would necessarily be said to exist: for that cause would be either intrinsic or extrinsic. But no intrinsic reason of necessarily existing can belong to them; since God alone has from himself and in himself the necessity of being, whereas the other beings from him are altogether contingent, and can be or not be. Likewise no extrinsic cause of this necessary production can be assigned; since God is the freest Maker of all beings outside himself, and can produce things at his nod and will, or leave them forever unproduced: therefore there remains only to weigh the question concerning a demonstration to be drawn from the effects of the angels, if any have been wrought by them.

Note 3. Three effects above all can be assigned from which the existence of the angels can be gathered: namely the motions of the Heavens, which Aristotle taught to be perpetually moved by Intelligences, book 1. De Caelo chapter 9.; likewise those stupendous works which are seen to be done by Magi: finally those marvelous deeds which we see done by the possessed and Energumeni, exceeding their powers. Now it is certain that the regulated motion of the Heavens is a weak argument for demonstrating the existence of the angels; both because several Philosophers contend not without reason that they are moved by their own form in regular fashion: then because there are far more Intelligences than Heavens; and therefore their existence cannot fittingly be inferred from the motion and number of the Heavens: finally because God himself can give the ordered motion to the Heavens, just as he gives the firm stability to the earth, per se. — There remains therefore to determine whether from either of the other two heads the existence of the angels can be evinced with sufficient force, so that no one possessed of reason can gainsay this truth. Therefore two things come to be determined in this Question: First, whether it is certain by faith that the angels exist: Second, whether the same can also be persuaded demonstratively by reason, or at least very probably.

First conclusion. — It is certain by faith that there exist spiritual natures superior to and more excellent than man, which we call angels.

And this is confirmed by innumerable texts of Scripture, both in the Old and in the New Testament. First, indeed, Scripture introduces them speaking with God and men about divine things and things surpassing sense, as is seen in Genesis 18., Judic. 2., Isa. 6., and almost throughout the books of Daniel, Tobias, and Apocalypse 2. and following; and therefore it indicates them to be endowed with intellect. Next, it affirms them to be subject to God, by whom they are sent into ministry; and that they praise, honor, adore him as their Lord and God. Heb. 1. vers. 14., Psal. 99. vers. 7., Daniel. 3. vers. 58., Apocal. 22. vers. 9. and elsewhere. Third, it asserts them to be superior to and more excellent than men, 2. Petr. 2. vers. 11. where of the evil angels it is said: Angels though greater in strength and power: and Psalm. 8.² You have made him a little less than the Angels, which is interpreted even of Christ himself considered according to human nature, and thus inferior to the angels, by S. Paulus Hebr. 2. vers. 9., S. August. in Tract. De Cantico novo chapter 7. Fourth, as often as Scripture extols men above others on account of some singular prerogative, so often it compares them with the angels as with more perfect beings. Thus 2. Regum chapter 14., the woman addressing David, says: You, my Lord the King, are wise, as the Angel of God has wisdom: thus Acts 6.: The Jews saw his face (Stephen's) as it were the face of an Angel: thus S. Paulus ad Galatas 4.: As an Angel of God you received me. — It is confirmed further by the fact that holy Scripture attributes various properties and actions to the angels which can fall only to a spiritual creature: one is to see God, Matthaei 18.: Their Angels always see the face of my Father who is in Heaven: another is to bless and praise God, which Scripture everywhere attributes to the angels. Thus Psalm. 148.: Praise him, all his Angels, praise him, all his Virtues. A third is to guard men. Thus Psal. 90. and Matth. 4.: God has commanded his Angels concerning you, to keep you: to which also pertains directing, defending, illuminating, teaching, instructing, and speaking to men, which holy Scripture certainly attributes to the angels many times, especially Exod. 23.: Behold I will send my Angel, who shall go before you, and keep you in the way, and bring you into the place which I have prepared: take heed to him, and hear his voice, etc. Finally, a fourth property of the angels is to be endowed with the faculty of free will, since they can sin and become worthy of punishment, as in fact befell the rebellious angels, according to that saying of 2. Petri 2.: God spared not the angels that sinned, etc.; all of which and similar things can be attributed only to an intellectual creature. Therefore that the angels exist is most certainly established out of

holy Scripture, and also by the consensus of all the holy Fathers, and the oracles of Councils, especially the Lateran Council under Innocent III., chapter Firmiter, where among other things it is said that God is the Creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporal; who created both natures, the spiritual and the corporeal, namely the angelic and the worldly.

Nor does it matter that some report that this Council indeed proposes and recounts these things by way of doctrine, but does not so determine and define them as matters of faith. That, I say, is no obstacle, both because the other things proposed in the same chapter are truly matters of faith: why then should not also the existence and spirituality of the angels be of faith? Add that although it recounts and proposes this by way of doctrine, it at least supposes this doctrine to have been approved and determined by the Church, and confirmed by innumerable oracles of Scripture and of the holy Fathers.

You will say. If the existence of the angels could be persuaded from the aforesaid texts of Scripture, especially because they signify that there is some spiritual creature superior to and more excellent than man: yet there is no such thing: which S. Augustine proves in the book De Quantitate Animae chapter 34.: Just as, he says, it must be confessed that the human soul is not God, so it must be presumed that nothing among all the things he created is nearer to God: and lower down he teaches that something is inferior to the soul of man, namely the soul of the brute, something its equal, such as an angel, but nothing better: and in book 3. De Libero Arbitrio, he says, Rational souls are unequal in office to the higher Powers, but equal in nature: and in lib. 83. qq. quaest. 54.: Nothing is better than the rational soul, except God: and he repeats the same in book 3. contra Maximinum chapter 25. where he seems to rebuke him for having said, The angels are greater than Christ according to the form of man. To him subscribes S. Bernardus in book 5. De Consideratione chapter 3.: God is Spirit (he says), and so are the angels, and they above you: but God is superior by nature, the angels by grace: therefore from the degree of a creature more excellent than men it is not rightly inferred that the angels exist.

I answer 1. The aforesaid Fathers do not impugn the existence of the angels, but assert it, as clearly appears from their cited words. Second, they can be benignly understood, either as meaning that nothing is nearer to God in the order of spiritual substance than the soul, since by this account it is equal to the angels: or that it does not befit the angels to be superior to men in the vision and fruition of God, or in other offices which they perform toward men, but only by a special benefit and grace of God, which he can certainly grant to men with similar liberality. Their meaning, therefore, is not that the angels are not more excellent than man in nature; since the royal prophet affirms that man was made a little less than the angels, Psal. 8., as was said above, and S. Peter testifies that the evil angels are greater than man in strength and power, 2. cap. 2. And Job. 41. says of Satan: There is no power upon earth that can be compared with him. As therefore he excels men in power, so also in perfection of nature. This very thing S. Augustine teaches in Tractate 110. where he gathers from the irremissible sin of the angels the excellence of their nature above men, That the guilt, he says, was judged the more damnable, the loftier the nature was: whence lib. 11. De Civit. Dei, cap. 5. he says: The angelic nature precedes all the other things which God created in dignity of nature; and therefore the former texts placed in the objection must be benignly expounded, lest S. Augustine seem to contradict himself. Add that in book 1. Retractationum chapter 26., reviewing the words of the aforementioned question 54., he seems to correct them: Where I said (he says) that what is better than every soul, that we call God; it ought rather to have been said, better than every created spirit.

You will insist. In every genus of things, that which has the character of end is far more excellent than that which does not obtain a like character: but in the genus of creatures man has the character of end, not so the angel; since all things are for men; indeed even the angels themselves, since all are ministering Spirits sent in ministry for the sake of those who receive the inheritance of salvation: therefore even according to natural things man is more excellent than the angel.

The Seraphic Doctor answers in 2. Dist. 1. q. 2. that something has the character of end in two ways: namely either to supply indigence, as a house for man; or to receive its influence; thus man is for God: but that which has the character of end in the latter way is nobler, not however that which has it in the former way; because since man needs all things, the angel none, except God; therefore all things are for man, but not for the angel, in token of which the angel was created at the beginning, man truly on the sixth day. Whence the angel can be said to be for man, and man for the angel: for, says the Seraphic Doctor in the same place, man has aptitude for falling frequently, and possibility of rising again: but the angel standing, permanence in standing, and falling, impossibility of rising again: therefore the angel standing sustains man, or human infirmity: and man rising again repairs the ruin of the angelic. Therefore in a way the angel is for man, and man in a way for the angel; and therefore they are equal according to ordination to an end; because each is ordained to eternal felicity. But they are unequal according to the dignity of nature, since the angel is wholly spiritual, while man is partly spiritual, partly corporeal.

Second conclusion. — The existence of the angels is sufficiently gathered from experience sought among Magi and Energumeni.

For many things are seen to be done daily, both by Magi and by Energumeni and the possessed, utterly exceeding their powers; and therefore to be referred back to some superior cause which moves them to accomplish such things: but this can be nothing other than an angel. Proof. if besides the angel any motive cause of their works could be assigned, it would be above all either God, or men themselves, or separated souls, or finally some irrational creatures inferior to men: but neither of these can be asserted.

Certainly not God, since by the Magi themselves many nefarious and most disgraceful things are perpetrated, prohibited by God, and most unworthy of God, to the ruin of men and to the hatred and injury of God himself. Moreover, at the invocation of the divine Numen the attempts of the Magi frequently vanish into smoke, and their witchcrafts are dissolved.

Similarly the possessed and Energumeni are sometimes healed by medicines and music, at least for some interval, as we read in 1. Regum c. 16., that whenever the evil Spirit of the Lord seized Saul, David took the harp, and struck it with his hand, and Saul was refreshed, and felt easier, for the evil spirit departed from him: which is surely a sign that the demon does not torment the possessed except by stirring up their corrupt humors, without using which he could neither vex them nor work such stupendous things in them: but if God were the maker of all these things, he would have no need of the humors of bodies; and consequently his effect could be hindered neither by medicine, nor by music, nor by any other corporeal remedy.

Add that those substances which the Magi use in accomplishing their witchcrafts are for the most part most filthy, most mendacious, and most shameless: since sometimes they accomplish their spells with toads and other such most base and horrible things, whereby they incite to the gravest crimes, to contempt and hatred of God, to blasphemies, to poisonings, and other similar things, which it would be a great crime to refer back to the most holy God.

Nor indeed can these things be referred back to men themselves: since many of their works far surpass human powers, for instance to bring forth answers about things asked from the presence of stones and statues, to represent absent things in mirrors and water, to reveal the most hidden secrets, to declare what is happening in the most remote places, to stir up storms in a moment, to leave a house with doors closed, and imprint footprints without any contact of the body: to speak foreign tongues acquired by no use and no discipline, and to perform other things of this kind; which Delrio reports most fully in the Disquisitione magica, and which can in no way be referred back to men themselves: and therefore they must be referred back to demons.

For, as Lactantius says in book 2. De Origine erroris chapter 15.

The whole art of the magicians and their power consist in the inspiration of these demons; by whom, when invoked, the sight of men is deceived with blinding illusions, so that they do not see the things that are, and think themselves to see the things that are not. These, as I say, are contaminated and lost spirits who wander over all the earth, and work the solace of their own perdition by the perdition of men. And so they fill all things with snares, frauds, and errors. For they cling to each individual man, and occupy all houses door by door; and thus they take the name of Genii. For in the Latin tongue demons are so interpreted. Men consecrate them in their innermost shrines, pour out wine to them daily, and knowingly venerate demons as though they were earthly gods, and as though they were repellers of the evils which they themselves bring about and inflict. And since they are thin and imperceptible spirits, they insinuate themselves into the bodies of men, and, secretly working in the inward parts, corrupt them, excite diseases, terrify their minds with dreams, shake their souls with frenzies, so that men, compelled by these evils, are driven to have recourse to their aid.

Nor, again, can all these works be attributed to irrational creatures: because the things we have mentioned are not done without the use of reason; for, for example, that an unlettered energumen should suddenly and fluently speak a foreign idiom, or tell of things far off and past, even the most hidden, disclosing all the circumstances, and likewise of any sciences and arts whatsoever, cannot happen without an intellectual substance, distinct from their own soul, which speaks through those men: for their soul of itself alone, or through any physical alteration of humors, nay, through the application of any non-intelligent physical cause, cannot attain such knowledge, which requires so great human study.

Add that what is wont to be done by the magicians, with certain small objects applied and words also uttered, manifestly exceeds all the power of words and of any corporeal substance whatsoever.

Moreover, the works of the magicians are done with reference to certain signs, and through pacts and covenants according to the will of those who use them: but signs move only the knowing powers, to which they signify something; pacts also and covenants look to intelligent causes. For things which lack intellect and reason know neither pacts, nor when one must act according to a pact. Add that those magical spirits choose, at the magicians' discretion, upon what they act. As when they send disease or sleep upon someone far removed and designated by the magicians, or represent his face in a mirror, leaving aside the intermediate persons, who equally, nay rather more, ought to be so affected, if this were done through natural and necessary causes without voluntary choice. For natural causes operate more upon bodies nearer and subject to themselves, and affect in the same way those things which are capable of the same effect, nor could they choose that, of many equally subject and capable things, they represent this rather than that, or afflict with disease or sleep. Therefore these stupendous works performed by the magicians and energumens cannot be referred back to the irrational creatures which they use.* *Convinced at length by these considerations and arguments, the most impious and audacious of the recent atheists, Machiavelli, admitted spiritual substances, that is, angels, as the authors of these stupendous effects. For in libro 1. disputationum, cap. 36., when he had said that great movements are wont to be predicted, both in cities and in provinces, and to be announced by certain signs or the presages of men, the same author afterwards writes thus:

As I will readily confess myself ignorant of the cause, so the thing itself, both from ancient and from new examples, must be acknowledged and confessed: that all great movements, whatever they be, which have happened to any city or to any Religion, are wont to be predicted and proclaimed either by diviners, or by some report, by prodigies, or by celestial signs.

From what source, however, those prodigies and celestial signs proceed, he could not otherwise explain, than by referring them to spirits. For when he had professed himself ignorant of the cause, he afterwards subjoins these things:

Unless perchance, with certain philosophers, we should judge it to be foretold that the air is full of spirits and intelligences, who, foreseeing future things and sympathizing with human misfortunes, announce them to men through signs of this kind, so that they may be able to prepare and fortify themselves against them in good time.

Which sufficiently shows that, since he was unwilling to have recourse to the supreme cause, he found none more fitting than the aerial spirits.*

But those stupendous and extraordinary events cannot be referred back to souls loosed from their bodies; both because the soul does not seem to have more natural power to move or change some body when it is loosed from the body than when it informs it; for the natural power of acting follows the natural condition of the agent: but the natural condition of the rational soul is that it be the form of the body, toward whose reunion, even when separated from it, it has an appetite, as a part toward its companion; and so its power does not seem greater outside the body than in the body, otherwise it would be far better for it to be separated from every body than to inform it, and so it would not desire union with it, since that union would be contrary to its nature, evidently depriving it of the outstanding power due to it; both because, although I do not judge the separated soul to be deprived of every motive power for the local motion of itself and of other things, God of course supplying what is lacking on the part of contact and of an organ, I would nevertheless not think it endowed with so great a power of understanding and moving as to be able to know the internal acts, at least of the imagination, which the magicians and energumens disclose with no external sign given; and also to move enormous weights which scarcely a hundred men could lift; and to shake huge houses and entire cities, and the very earth: as those spirits very often do when they are compelled to depart from the possessed bodies by the power of the prayers and exorcisms of the Church: and finally because those spirits, whenever they are pressed by the exorcists to betray their name, always confess themselves to be demons: who, then, will think them to be souls loosed from the body?

You will say 1. That although Aristotle teaches that besides the Intelligences moving the celestial orbs there are also others, he nevertheless does not admit demons, that is, evil angels: nay, in Sectione 3. problem. q. 1., speaking of those who are said to be stirred by the divine breath, or boil over with a lymphatic spirit, he asserts that this happens from a natural intemperament; so that those laboring under grave melancholy are able to accomplish all that we see performed by energumens.

I answer. that he wanders far from the truth, for besides that Plato in the Sympos.; Trismegistus in the Pimandro, and other princes of ancient philosophy confess that demons exist: it is certain that a man, infirm and weak, through any alteration made by melancholy or other humors, cannot speak skillfully in a foreign idiom previously unknown to him, nor report with certainty the things done afar off, nor accomplish the other things which energumens are wont to perform: and therefore it is necessary that the energumen be agitated by some Spirit which knows those things from elsewhere and can accomplish them.

You will insist. he who is called an energumen could have fallen into that temper of imagination with which the framers of foreign languages were affected when they called them into use and established them: and so, with no external spirit stirring him, he himself will be able to speak in a foreign idiom unknown to him before. Moreover, there can sometimes be such a defecation of the bilious humor and fiery vigor that, loosing the roughness and sluggishness of the organs, it leaves the mind free, and as it were released from the organs; by which it will come about that it discovers and lays open any truth inaccessible to the senses and previously unknown to it, as sometimes happens to those suffering a burning fever, who, while they suffer a wandering of the mind, sometimes utter wonderful things and express thoughts in an idiom previously unknown to them. Finally, it happens not rarely that energumens are more sharply tormented at certain periods of the Moon; which is surely an indication that they suffer only from a vitiated humor: and so from these things the argument for persuading the existence of the angels is slight, and almost none.

I deny the consequence. and to the first member of the insistence I say that any temper of the humors whatsoever has no commerce with the utterance and signification of any word whatsoever: since we form those words as we will, and receive through them the knowledge of what is signified, notwithstanding the varying temper of our humors; and so that utterance of the energumen in foreign idioms does not proceed from the affection of his humors. Add that the institutions of each idiom were many, and that at different times, now these, now those words being used to signify this or that; and consequently they had a varying temper of humors, which no man can reproduce. To the second part of the insistence, I say that the bond of the rational soul with the organs of the senses is so strict and tenacious that, unless it be either wholly loosed from the body, or God teach it divinely through ecstasy, it can perceive nothing without the benefit of the senses, as the continued experience of all men in every age testifies: for whatever physicians sometimes chant to the contrary about the feverish, everyone who is wont to visit the sick will deem a sheer fiction and an old wives' tale.

Finally, to the third part of the insistence, I reply that it ought not to seem a wonder that energumens are variously affected at the different periods of the Moon; for since the evil spirit sitting upon them torments them through a bitter affection of the humors, he more easily pours out his rage upon them when the humors either too much abound or too much fail.

Add that this is the accustomed cunning of the demons, that they lie hidden under other creatures, namely inasmuch as the bitterness of the disease is attributed not to themselves, but to some other external cause. Which S. Chrysologus elegantly indicates, Homil. 52., where, speaking of that lunatic whom Christ the Lord healed, he says:

The demon, as was his art, did not then wish to be seen, fitting the man's passions to the courses of the moon: he harassed the body at the moon's increments, so that what was of diabolical crime and fury might be believed to be of the moon. Thus he mocked men, circumvented the ignorant; he brought infamy, among the slothful, upon a creature which, created for light alone, knows not how to harm men, whom it is compelled rather to help by continual service.

Tertullian had already closed the way to this, Apologeticum 22., saying: Demons, taking certain lots of the times, emulate the Divinity, while they steal divination.

*To this is added that if the things which are set forth about the good and bad angels in S. Scriptura — about their origin and apostasy, about apparitions, temptations, infestation of bodies or possession, or the casting out of them; and how they pervade the whole world, seduce men, transform themselves into angels of light, and promote the kingdom of Antichrist in signs and prodigies of falsehood: if, I say, these and very many similar things may be allowed to be ascribed to the errors and hallucinations of the imagination, no literal sense will any longer remain in the sacred words; but it will be lawful to transform everything into a perpetual allegory, so that whoever sets himself to their reading, as if led around by illusions, will seem not to read what he reads; and will be bound to seek another sense than that which the words sound. How absurd and impious these things are, no one of sound mind fails to see; for this is nothing else than to permit the divine Scripture to the wandering of the human mind, and to instill a certain subtle atheism into the souls of men, by which it will come about that this most certain rule of faith is wholly stripped of its divine authority.*

It is a matter of faith that the angels were brought forth by God. For Sacred Scripture openly hands down that God is the one God from whom all other things have been created: thus John 1. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made. And Romans 11. From him, and through him, and in him are all things. Indeed, as is read in Esther 13, You made Heaven and Earth, and whatever is contained within the compass of Heaven; you are Lord of all. The Apostle bears witness to this specifically of the angels, whom he reckons among the works of God at Colossians 1: In him all things were created, * in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created through him and in him*; whereby the Apostle clearly signifies that the angels were created by God. For just as by "visible" he wished to embrace all bodily creatures, whether heavenly or sublunary, so it is most certain that by "invisible" spiritual and intelligent creatures are denoted, namely the angels.

Nor does Moses declare this obscurely at Gen. 2: the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the ornament of them: or as the Hebrew text has it, all their host, namely the angels. For nothing is more familiar to Scripture than that the angels are called the host of heaven. So Psal. 23, verses 20 and 21; and Psal. 148, verse 2; and Luke 2, verse 13. Hence God is called Sabaoth, that is, of hosts, chiefly from the multitude of the angels who surround him.

*Hence the Royal Psalmist, after saying at Psal. 145: Praise him, all his angels, adds: For he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created. I pass over the general Councils and the Symbols of faith in which it is asserted that God is the maker of Heaven and Earth, of things visible and invisible. For not only does natural reason demonstrate this truth, as we signified in the first Tom., Tract. 1, Disp. 1, Sect. 1, where it was proved that some being from itself must necessarily be admitted, from which all other things are; but experience itself also persuades it, since it is evident that the angels are subject to God and serve him: the good indeed willingly, but the wicked unwillingly, as appears in the Exorcisms of energumens; but if the angels were from themselves, they would not be so subject to God, for a being from itself in no way depends on another, nor can it be subject to it.

Note 2. That the angels were created by God for a threefold end. First indeed on account of the concord of divine praises, whence Plato calls them Sirens; St. Bernard the singers of heaven; Gregory, heralds of divine praises; Athanasius, an unceasing hymn and unresting praise of the magnificence of God; hence God himself, addressing Job, says: Where were you when the morning stars praised me, and all the sons of God rejoiced? Second, the angels were created that they might administer the corporeal world. For divine Providence is accustomed to rule lower things through higher ones, and to administer bodily things through spiritual ones; hence the angels are said to be rulers of the world, ministers of divine Providence, and to bear up the orb, according to that of Job, chap. 9: God, whose anger no one resists, beneath whom they are bowed down who bear up the orb. Seneca also knew this truth, for he says in Lactantius, book 1, Divinarum Institutionum, chap. 5:

When God was laying the first foundations of the most beautiful mass, and beginning this work which nature knew to be neither greater nor better, so that all things might go forth under their Leaders — although he himself had extended himself through the whole body, yet he begot ministers of his kingdom, the gods (that is, the angels).

Third, the angels were created that they might assist men, and rule and guard them, according to that of Hebrews 1: All are ministering spirits, sent to minister for those who shall receive the inheritance of salvation.

Note 3. That in fact the angels were not created from eternity; not because they could not have been created from eternity — since God from eternity could have produced any creature whatsoever, especially an angel, as we demonstrated at length in our Physica — but because it pleased God to produce creatures of any kind after their non-existence, and consequently not from eternity. Nor indeed were they created long after the world was formed; since at Job 38 they are said to have praised God when he founded the earth: therefore they had already then been brought forth into light. There remains, therefore, a difficulty to be examined, whether the angels were created before that moment of which it is said: In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth; concerning which there are chiefly two opposing opinions of Authors. The first indeed is that of several Greek Fathers who, with Origen, Tractate 9 on Matthew, contend that the angels are more ancient, not only than man created afterward, but than every creature made on account of him; which opinion Cassian, Collation 8, chap. 7, affirms was undoubted among all the faithful: nevertheless nearly all the Scholastics cry out against it together with very many of the holy Fathers, both Greek and Latin, as will be shown

First conclusion. — In truth the angels were not created before the corporeal world, but together with it.

This truth seems to be determined in the Lateran Council, chapter Firmiter, where we read:

One is the Principle of all things, Creator of all, of things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporeal, who by his omnipotent power from the beginning of time created both creatures together out of nothing, the spiritual namely, and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the mundane: and then the human, as it were common, constituted of spirit and body.

The Council, however, speaks of simultaneity of time, as is clear from those words: God from the beginning of time together: for although otherwise the particle simul could be taken in a collective sense, not a temporal one, as if it said: God equally or alike created both creatures — in which way it is taken in certain other places of Scripture, as together the foolish and the senseless shall perish, that is, they shall perish alike, namely by the same kind of corporeal death, though not together in time and in the same instant — nevertheless that particle simul written by the Council cannot be taken otherwise than of simultaneity of time, sufficiently declared there, because the Council does not say only that God created together, but added: from the beginning of time he created both creatures together. Moreover, immediately it subjoins: and then the human, etc. But the particle deinde can signify nothing else than posteriority of time, because the human creature was created only on the sixth day of the world, when first the angels were created together with Heaven and Earth: therefore just as the particle deinde necessarily signifies posteriority of time, so also the particle simul denotes its simultaneity.

This same thing is proved also from the Constantinopolitan Council, Action 11, where the letter of Sophronius was read and approved, in which God is said to have created all things invisible and visible, the creature spiritual and corporeal, and to have constituted the beginning for all times.

This same thing Sacred Scripture indicates, Genesis chap. 1: In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth, where the particle, in principio, sounds the same as before he did anything, as it is taken in Proverbs 8, where Wisdom speaks thus: The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before he did anything, from the beginning: for thus St. Augustine expounds the same particle, book 11, De Civitate Dei, chap. 6. Then from chap. 20 of Exodus: Six days did God make Heaven and Earth, and all things that are in them: which last particle, according to the manner of speaking of sacred Scripture, embraces also the angels themselves; for in Psal. 148 the angels are numbered among those things that are in the Heavens.* *It accedes that whatever was before the world is God himself, because this prerogative is claimed for him in Scripture, psalm 91, verse 2; and Proverbs VIII, verse 22; and John I, verse 1, when it is said: In the beginning was the Word, whereby it is signified that before the created world nothing existed besides the divine Trinity, and consequently the angels did not yet exist*

The holy Fathers teach this same truth: of the Greeks indeed St. Epiphanius, heresy 65, where he says Scripture plainly indicates that the angels were not before Heaven and Earth: Since, he says, this word is plainly immutable, that before Heaven and Earth there was nothing of created things. Theodoret consents, Question 3 on Genesis, although he uses a reason not sufficiently to be approved: namely, that an angel needs a place in which it would be received: Because if there is not, he says, in the nature of things something that comprehends, how will there be something that is comprehended? Likewise Procopius, in the Preface to Genesis, referring both opinions, brings forward this one, and says that Moses, by the name of Heaven, comprehended the angels when he said: In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth, where the container is put for the contained. Bede himself sings in accord with these, tom. 4, in Exameron, saying that the angels were created in the beginning together with Heaven and Earth, and therefore that Moses said of the earth that in the beginning it was empty and void, because it lacked fruits and inhabitants; but that he did not say this of Heaven; Because, soon created, it was filled with its inhabitants, that is, with the most blessed Spirits of the angels; whence Moses subjoins: The Heavens were finished, and all the ornament of them; seeing that they had their due inhabitants. — To this opinion subscribe also very many of the Latin SS. Fathers, with saint Augustine lib. 11. De Civit. Dei, cap. 6. and the imperfect book upon Genesis, chap. 3, especially St. Gregory, book 32, Moral., chap. 9, Beda in Exameron, etc.

This truth can also be persuaded by theological reason: First indeed a priori, by that congruity, namely, which St. Thomas sets forth, question 61, art. 3: namely that God created this Universe in the manner of a workmanship most excellent and absolute; but that it may be perfect, it ought to consist of spiritual and corporeal things: therefore he ought to produce both parts of the Universe together, not indeed one after the other, lest, the former being produced long before the other, the Universe would not stand integrated, nor consisting of its parts. — It can truly be proved a posteriori thus: when the angels sinned, the Heavens already stood high, since immediately against the rebels there was made a great battle in Heaven; for Michael, and his angels fought with the Dragon, namely Lucifer, Apocalyps. 12, and the arch-enemy Lucifer, with his most lost followers, was cast down out of Heaven immediately after sin, according to that of Luke 10: I saw Satan falling like lightning from Heaven. Which almost all sacred Interpreters explain of the ruin, and fall of the angels.

But it is more probable that the angels sinned shortly after their formation; for it is not made probable that the wicked stood long in grace, because it is credible that the state of the way of the angels was ended in a briefer space than that of men, since the angels are by their own nature more prompt in operation and election than men; but it is evident that Adam did not stand innocent so long: therefore it seems the demon persevered in grace by a much smaller interval of time.

— It is confirmed from this, that for the angels sinning eternal fire was prepared, as is evident both from that Matth. 25: Go into eternal fire, which is prepared for the Devil and his angels: therefore as soon as they sinned, they paid the penalties of their guilt; and from 2 Petr. 2: If indeed God spared not the angels that sinned, but dragged them down by chains of hell into Tartarus, to be tormented; therefore already then the tartarean place existed when the angels first sinned.

You will say 1. Sacred Scripture not obscurely insinuates that the angels already existed when God created the Universe; therefore they were not created with it. The antecedent is proved. First from chap. 28 of Job, where God addressing him says: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth..... when the morning stars praised me together, and all the sons of God rejoiced? that is, the angels. Also chap. 40, of Behemoth it is said, He is the beginning of the ways of the Lord, that is, of creatures: therefore Lucifer, who by sin was made Behemoth and the Devil, was brought forth before the other creatures, and the same must be said of the other angels. Finally, at Titus 1, of the Incarnation of the Word it is said: which he promised, who lies not, God, before the times of ages: therefore it was necessary that some should have been before the created world, to whom the promise of incarnating the Word would be made: certainly to none others than the angels: therefore then they were standing.

I deny the antecedent, and to its first proof I say that the angels could have been present at the creation of the stars, especially since the Sun and Moon, and the other stars were not created on the first day. Add that the angels themselves, having been created with all the endowments of Intelligence, could have known God immediately from their formation *and burst forth into his praises. But from that sacred text nothing is had from which it could be gathered that they were created long before the Mosaic beginning. Indeed, since from this it is evident that they are a certain part of the universe, no reason can be given why that part remained separated from its whole through so many centuries. And what need was there to create those ministering spirits at so great an interval of time, before there were those to whom they would be sent, and whom they would serve?*

To the second text I say that by Behemoth, literally is understood the Elephant, or some other terrestrial animal of the genus of Dragons; just as Leviathan signifies either the whales of the sea, or some genus of fish. But it is rightly called the beginning of the ways of God; not because it precedes the other works in duration, but because in power of body, magnitude, and fortitude it excels the other beasts. If however you take these things of the demon, I will reply with Beda, question 9, ex variis, that Lucifer was first, by prelation of order, not of quantity of time.

To the third context I say that that word promisit does not signify any promise made by word, but the eternal predestination of God, as SS. Chrysostom and Anselm explain that place; namely in that mode in which he speaks, 2 ad Timoth. 1: According to his own purpose, and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus, before the times of ages: what here he calls purpose, there he calls promise.

You will say 2. Very many of the holy Fathers openly teach that the angels truly existed not only before the creation of the world, but even some contend they were created from eternity: thus *in the first place Origen, lib. 3, De Principiis, c. 5, where he says that God created the world, and much more the spiritual substances, from eternity. For if, he says, the world is from time, what was God doing before the world was made? To call the nature of God idle is at once idle and absurd; or to think that goodness sometimes did not make, or that omnipotence sometimes did not exercise its might. To him subscribes *S. Basilius, Homilia prima Exameron;

There was indeed, he says, a certain status prior to the generation of the world, abstracted from that concretion of matter, more excellent than the world, accommodated to decorum, anterior also in condition of time, namely eternal and perpetual. Thus Hieronymus on the Epistle to Titus, chap. 1.: Six thousand years of our time are not yet completed, and how great times, how great origins of ages must be judged to have been, in which Angels, Thrones, Dominions, and the other Orders served God? To him subscribes S. Damasc., lib. 2, De Fide: Certain ones say, that before every creature the Angels were born, as the Theologian Gregory says. First indeed God devised the angelic virtues, and the celestial, and the devising was his work. Of the Latin Fathers S. Clemens Papa signifies, lib. 8, Constitut., chap. 12, saying: O God, who before all things madest Cherubim and Seraphim, and Ages, and Armies, Virtues and Powers, Principalities and Thrones, Archangels and Angels: and who after all these fabricatedst this world that is seen, and all things that are contained in it: therefore it is certain from their mind that the angels were created before the world.

I answer. Truly indeed the praised holy Fathers were of the opinion that the angels were created before corporeal things: but contrary is the opinion of several other Fathers, and now it has prevailed more among all sacred Doctors, and seems more conformable to sacred Scripture, as is evident from the texts praised by us above. But concerning saint Basil, who seems to assert that the mundane substances, which he calls potentiae, existed from eternity, I would judge him to be understood thus, that the angels, in his opinion, were created before the motion of the Heavens, which we call time, before which he judges there was a certain interval more ancient than time and generation, in which he thinks the angels were created; and that therefore he calls it eternal, because it is preceded by no true time.

You will say 3. It does not seem consonant with reason to believe that God was idle for so many centuries before the creation of the corporeal creature: therefore we ought to assert that God communicated his goodness to spiritual creatures before he produced corporeal creatures. Theodoret answers, Question 3 on Genesis, that that reason is empty and futile, for if it had any weight, it would certainly prove that the angels were brought forth by God from eternity, lest through eternal duration God should be idle. For however he had created the Spirits from the beginning, even if he had produced them before the corporeal creature, it would follow that through eternal duration before their production God was idle: but no Catholic will judge this absurdity.

You will say 4. If the angels had been created with the corporeal world, Moses would have made some mention of their creation: but he made no mention of them, when he spoke of the creation of the corporeal world: therefore it is a sign that they were not created with the corporeal world. St. Augustine answers, in the book de Genesi ad litteram, and with him Beda in the Exameron, that the creation of the angels was not omitted by Moses, but expressed by the name of light, which God formed on the first day of all. Some indeed judge that in truth the angels were passed over by Moses, and that deliberately, lest namely he give occasion to the Jews, prone to Idololatria, to worship them as Gods. But by this reason he ought never to have made mention of them anywhere, since discourse about the angels would have afforded the same occasion of idolatry. I would judge therefore it truer to say that Moses made no mention of the creation of the angels because the reason of his institute did not demand it: for his scope was to weave the history of the Church, and to take its beginning from the beginning of the world; therefore it sufficed him to delineate the origin of the world, from which the Church takes her origin. Not passing over the angels either, presently, as the reason of his institute demanded in adorning the history of the Church; in nearly similar mode, in histories of Kingdoms, accurate mention is not always made of the origin of the neighboring Kingdom. But that the angels were brought forth by God was sufficiently evident in the single moment of time; since they are spiritual substances, involving no succession in their being.

Second conclusion. — It is more probable that the angels were created in the sidereal Heaven, which is proximate to the Empyrean.

Proof 1. By the authority of S. Hieronymi, lib. 6, In Isai., cap. 14, where, weighing those words: I will ascend into Heaven, which he had previously said could be understood of the fall of the angels, and asking: if he was still placed in Heaven, how does he say: I will ascend into Heaven? he answers: But because we read Heaven the Heaven of the Lord, while he was in Heaven, that is, in the Firmament, he desired to ascend into Heaven, where the throne of the Lord is.

Likewise it is persuaded from this, that by this reason all those texts of sacred Scripture can easily be understood literally, by which it is evident that Lucifer fell with the angels from Heaven, and desired to ascend into Heaven. Thus also it appears that the angels had a place corresponding to their natural dignity, and afterwards obtained one worthy of their merits, so that the faithful and observant toward God were raised into the empyrean Heavens, but the hostile cast down into Tartarus.

You will say. Lucifer is said, Ezech. 28, to have been in the delights of Paradise: but the Heaven which is Paradise is not sidereal, but empyrean: therefore not in that, but in this were the angels created and stood. Then, the angels ought to have been created in the place noblest and supreme of all; for the place always corresponds to the dignity of the one placed, as appears in corporeal things themselves, which the nobler they are, the higher place they obtain: but no place is nobler and more sublime than the empyrean: therefore the angels ought to have been created in it. Finally, since the angels are incorruptible and consistent substances, they ought to have been formed in a consistent and immovable place: but such is not the sidereal Heaven, but the empyrean: therefore in this, not in that, the angels ought to have been formed.

Answer to the first. By the name of Paradise is here not signified that most delightful place which blessed minds occupy, and which is commonly named the seat of the Blessed; for no Theologian will admit that the Devil ever stood in it: but those gifts of heavenly charisms are understood, wherewith Lucifer, illuminated and enriched with the other angels, had been in that sidereal Heaven, marked expressly by the name of Paradise because it had been illuminated not only by twinkling stars, but also by angels.

To the second. I say it is false that a higher place is conveniently assigned to the nobler thing; for man holds primacy among corporeal things, nevertheless inhabits a lower place.

Finally to the third I answer. An angel is not necessarily moved with the motion of Heaven, since it occupies no corporeal place, nor adheres to it: and so it could stand unmoved in the movable. Add that no inconvenience appears, that the angels were moved together with the Sidereal Heaven; since everywhere they had God most present.

Although the angels are, as it were, interpreters of the divine silence, and, like clear and gleaming lights of the Godhead, point out what lies hidden in the deep, says S. Dionysius lib. De Divinis Nomin. cap. 4., nevertheless their substance flees so far from our mortal gaze that, unless God Himself became the interpreter of His interpreters, and revealed to us through the oracles of the Scriptures, the Councils, and the Holy Fathers their nature and excellence, this would certainly remain wholly hidden from us.

Hence it should seem wonderful to no one, if some princes of Philosophy, and of Theology, have said and written things so conflicting, and so alien from the truth which now shines upon us, while some maintain that they are compounded of matter and spirit; on the contrary, others contend that they are free from every body; some think them liable to mortality, and to decay, unless God preserved them by a singular benefit; while the rest proclaim them by nature immortal, and indefectible. Nay, there are even those who judge them to be undistinguished from the rational soul; while some affirm that there is no concord among those substances. But so that it may appear what is to be said more truly amid so manifold, and so diverse, an opinion of the authors, three things especially are to be discussed in this Article: First, whether the angels are in truth altogether spiritual, and incorporeal: Second, whether they demand incorruption from their own nature: Third, whether, and in what manner, they are distinguished from the rational soul.

Note 1. The name "spirit" is among nearly all equivocal terms one of the widest in scope, and it is used in various ways both by Philosophers and by Theologians. First indeed for a most tenuous and subtle thing, whether it be an accident or a substance: thus the images of things emitted from objects to the faculties are called intentional species; thus likewise the most tenuous and purer parts of the blood, through which the power of nourishing and sensing flows into the rest, are called spirits, either animal spirits, insofar as they are poured forth from the brain through the nerves for the offices of motion and sensation, or vital spirits, when propagated by the arteries from the heart they refresh the innate heat by which the life of the living being is sustained. Second, it is taken for wind, air, exhalation, etc.; hence to breathe, to respire, etc., is the same as to draw in air, and a wind rushing with excessive violence is called a spirit of storms. Third, for the soul, whether rational or sensitive: thus Ecclesiastes 3: Who knoweth if the spirit of the sons of Adam ascend upward? and if the spirit of the beasts descend downward? Fourth, for an incorporeal substance, as opposed to a gross body compacted of flesh and bones. Thus Christ the Lord, Luke 24, proving the truth of his resurrection before the Disciples, says: Handle and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones: for which reason the most ancient of the Theologians thought that angels consisted of aerial bodies, or of bodies so subtle that they could neither be touched nor perceived by any of the senses; and therefore that nothing prevented them from being called Spirits together with this aerial body. Finally, fifth, the name Spirit signifies an intellectual nature consisting of no matter, concreted with no body, however tenuous.

Note 2. Both the Ancients and the more Recent writers vary greatly concerning the definition of an altogether spiritual substance. First, indeed, some of the holy Fathers think that spiritual is the same as uncreated; on which account they taught that whatever is created is corporeal, and that God alone is without body. Thus St. Hilary, Canon 5. on Matthew:

There is nothing (he says) which is not corporeal in substance and creation, whether the elements formed in Heaven or on earth, whether of visible or invisible things; for even the souls, whether of those possessing bodies or of those exiled from bodies, yet receive a corporeal substance of their nature: because everything created must necessarily exist in some place.

Origen had gone before him in that opinion, for in book 1. De Principiis, chapter 6, he writes: It is proper to the nature of God alone, that is, of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to be understood as subsisting without material substance and without any bodily admixture. Such was also the opinion of Minucius Felix, who teaches that God alone lacks both matter and body; which was likewise the opinion of the ancient and recent Platonists, who distinguished a threefold genus of substances, namely purely corporeal, as are the elements and mixed bodies; material at once and spiritual, such as men are; and corporeal and spiritual indeed but not material, such as genii and angels, consisting, they said, in a body indeed subtle and ethereal, but not material; whose opinion was also that of St. Athanasius, or whoever is the author of the book De Communi Essentia, where he defines an angel: an immaterial discursive animal ζῷον λογικὸν ἄϋλον. Caesarius subscribes to him, who in Dial. 1. question 48 says that angels are indeed ἀΰλους but not ἀσωμάτους, that is, immaterial indeed, but not incorporeal, by which words he judges, according to the teachings of the Platonists and Peripatetics, that the corporeal approaches closer to the spiritual than the material does. — A fourth genus of substance, finally, they said was God, who is neither material nor corporeal, but utterly devoid of all matter and body.

Second, some took incorporeal to mean the same as unlimited. Thus Elias in Orat. 1. Nazianz.: God alone (he says) is free from circumscription: because he alone properly lacks body; the Angels however are circumscribed, because they are not properly incorporeal, even if in respect of us they are said to be incorporeal. To him concurs a certain Faustus, whose book is held in Tome 1 of the Bibliotheca sanctorum Patrum, in which he tries to demonstrate that angels and souls are material, because they are circumscribed by places.

Third, some have used incorporeal for immutable, as may be seen in St. Augustine, Epistle 28, where, having established that the soul is incorporeal, he adds:

Lest I make the controversy about the word superfluous, or admit it imprudently. If every substance or essence is a body, or if what is more aptly so named is whatever exists in some way in itself, then the soul is a body. Likewise, if it pleases us to call incorporeal only that nature which is supremely immutable and wholly everywhere, the soul is not a body, since it is not such a thing. Further, if nothing is a body except what is fixed or moved through the space of a place with some length, breadth, and height, such that its greater part occupies a greater place, and its lesser part a lesser, and is less in a part than in the whole, then the soul is not a body.

Finally, there are not lacking among the Recent writers those who think that spiritual properly so called is the same as penetrating bodies and suffering penetration: or the same as not depending on matter: or the same as being immutable and wholly everywhere. But they stray from the concept of spirit, or of a spiritual thing: for according to the first definition, material substantial forms and accidental forms would be spiritual, since they penetrate and pervade both matter itself and the bodies which they affect or perfect. According to the second, matter itself would have to be called spiritual, because it does not depend on matter. According to the third, indeed, God alone would be spiritual in reality.

And so the Spiritual, or incorporeal, seems better able to be defined by negation of the material and gross entity of which bodies consist; so that a spiritual substance or entity is purer, thinner, and subtler than any material created or creatable entity, whether divisible or indivisible. According to this acceptance of the word Spirit, therefore, it is asked first whether angels are altogether spiritual; second, whether their natures are simple or composite.

Note 3. From the Seraphic Doctor, in 2. dist. 3. art. 1. quest. 1., an angel does not have an altogether simple essence by privation of every composition. For it is certain, he says, that an angel is composite by a multiple composition: for it can, he says, be considered in comparison to its principle, and thus it is composite insofar as it has dependence upon it: for the absolutely most simple is independent, and everything dependent falls by this very fact into some composition, because in it there differs that by which it is and what it is. Second, it can be considered in comparison to its effect, and thus it is composed of substance and potency. Third, it can be considered with respect to being in genus, and thus metaphysically it is composed of act and potency; logically indeed of genus and difference. Finally, fourth, it can be considered according to its entity, and thus as regards actual esse in it there is the composition of being and existence: as regards essential esse it is composed of that by which it is and that which it is: as regards individual or personal esse there are found in it that which it is and what it is, that is, nature and person. Therefore, when the angelic essence is said to be simple, it does not thereby exclude all the aforementioned compositions; but only that which is made either of a corporeal and spiritual nature, or of quantitative parts, or heterogeneous parts, or finally of matter and corporeal elemental form. Whether, however, it admits any composition of diverse natures, or of matter and some purest form, as both the Alensis and St. Bonaventure seem to teach, this is to be resolved; but first let there be

First conclusion. — The angels are altogether incorporeal and purely spiritual.

Proof 1. From Sacred Scripture, with all those Oracles by which the angels are called Spirits. Thus in Psalm 103: Who makest thy Angels spirits; that is, who institute as thy ministers and messengers, executors of thy commandments, those whose nature and substance is spiritual, as St. Gregory Nazianzen explains, Orat. 34, and Damascene, book 2. De Fide, cap. 3. Which St. Paul confirms, Hebrews 1: All are ministering Spirits, sent to minister, etc. The same is read often in the Gospel of the good angels, and no less of demons. Thus Matthew 8: He cast out spirits: and Luke 10: Spirits shall be subject unto you: and chapter 11.

He assumes seven other spirits worse than himself. But the name Spirit thus used in Scripture properly signifies an incorporeal thing: which indeed is clear from the supreme and lowest Spirit, namely God and the rational soul, to whom this name is given; to God indeed absolutely and by antonomasia, as John 4: God is a Spirit; but to the soul because it is distinguished from the body. Thus 1. Corinthians 5: To deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord: that is, that the soul may be saved: therefore in like manner the angels, who hold a middle place between God and man, are called Spirits precisely because they are incorporeal.

Proof 2. From the definition of the Lateran Council, chapter Firmiter already praised by us, wherein it is established:

That there is one Principle of all things, Creator of all things spiritual and corporal, who by his omnipotent power together, from the beginning of time, fashioned both creatures out of nothing, the spiritual and the corporeal; namely the angelic and the worldly, and afterwards the human, as it were common, constituted of spirit and body.

By which words the Council asserts, first, that the angels were created out of nothing: therefore they were not formed from air, as Rupertus holds; nor from any matter, as some conjecture. It affirms moreover that the angels are Spirits, just as the soul of man is called a Spirit: but it is established that the rational soul is purely spiritual and incorporeal, as sanctioned in the other Lateran Council under Leo X.: therefore the angels are altogether spiritual and incorporeal. Finally, it teaches that man is a substance between the angelic nature and corporeal creature, because man consists of spirit and body: therefore since the angels are not intermediate between a spiritual and a corporeal creature, they must be altogether incorporeal.

It can be confirmed from this, that in the Second General Council of Nicaea, act 5., from the book of John of Thessalonica, rational souls and angels are placed in the same order of intellectual, or — which is the same — spiritual substances: yet rational souls are purely spiritual and incorporeal, as we saw above sanctioned in the Lateran Council under Leo X.: therefore likewise the angels are purely spiritual and incorporeal. Also in the profession of faith of the seventh general Synod, or Nicaea II., act 4., the holy angels are called incorporeal, which would be false if they were constituted partly of body and partly of spirit: We venerate (it says) the images of the saints and of the incorporeal Angels, seeing that they appeared to men in human figure, as men.

It is proved also from the holy Fathers. First indeed from St. Ignatius, who in his epistle to the Smyrnians, writing against those who in his age denied that the flesh of Christ was true and real, among other things writes:

But I know not only that he was born and crucified in the body, but also after the resurrection I know and believe him to be in the flesh. And when he came to Peter and those who were with Peter, he said to them: handle me and see, for I am not δαιμόνιον ἀσώματον, an incorporeal demon. For a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me have.

From whence St. Ignatius drew these words of Christ, the opinion of the ancient authors is diverse; for Eusebius, book 3. of Eccles. history, cap. 36, candidly confesses that it is not manifest to him. Ignatius (he says), speaking of our Saviour in his epistle to the Smyrnians, cites certain words of his, whence he received them I know not. But I (he says), know and believe that after the resurrection the Lord appeared in the flesh. And when he had come to Peter and the other companions, he said to them: take hold, touch me, and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit. Origen judges, book 1. periarchon, that these words attributed to Christ were taken from the book inscribed Periodus or Doctrina Petri.

If anyone wishes (he says) to bring forward to us from that little book which is called the doctrine of Peter, where the Saviour seems to say to the disciples that he is not an incorporeal demon, we must answer him that this book is not held among the ecclesiastical writings, and we must show that neither is that writing Peter's, nor that of anyone else inspired by the Spirit of God.

But St. Jerome, in the prologue to book 18. of the commentaries on Isaiah, and in the Catalogue of ecclesiastical writers, says those words about an unbodied demon were copied out from the Gospel of the Nazarenes, for when he had spoken of St. Ignatius he adds these words:

Going forth thence he wrote to the Smyrnians, and particularly to Polycarp, commending to him the Church of Antioch, in which also, concerning the Gospel lately translated by me, he puts a testimony in the person of Christ, saying: but I also saw him in the flesh after the resurrection, and believe that it is he. And when he came to Peter, and to those who were with Peter, he said to them: behold, handle me, and see me, for I am not an unbodied demon.

But whatever may be the case about the copying of these words, it is certain that St. Ignatius was of the opinion that demons, and consequently the other angels, are incorporeal, seeing that he forges a strong argument to confirm the Catholic truth, namely that Christ clothed himself in a true and solid human body, from the fact that he himself said: I am not an unbodied demon.

Such was the opinion of St. Dionysius, book De coelesti Hierarchia cap. 1.; he calls those Spirits simple, and Intelligences veiled by no figures: Let us be carried up (he says) to the simple Intelligences of heavenly things, veiled by no figures, and their assimilations: and c. 4. De Divinis Nominibus, speaking of the angels he says: They are understood as altogether incorporeal, and as lacking matter, and as spirits understood above the worldly manner. And c. 6. he affirms that God bestows upon the supercelestial lives, that is, the angels, an immaterial immortality similar to the divine, but upon men a commixed one. Nor does he judge otherwise concerning demons, although in that chapter 4. he attributes to them fury, concupiscence, and wanton imagination: for by these he wished to signify the depraved affection of the demons, as is clear, because in the same place he asserts that the origin of evil is not to be drawn from the body; seeing that the demons are stained with the utmost malice, and yet do not consist of body.

Many other holy Fathers subscribe to them. Of the Greeks indeed Gregory Nyssenus, Epistle to Eustathia, which is the eightieth among the Epistles of Basil, where he says: The nature of man is compounded of soul and body: but the Angelic has received an incorporeal nature. And in Oration 4. on the Lord's prayer: Every rational nature (he says) is divided into a corporeal and an incorporeal nature: moreover the Angelic creature is incorporeal, we are the other. Nazianzen subscribes, Orat. 34., where he expressly says that the angels are incorporeal, and approaching nearest to God. To these plainly agrees St. Chrysostom, Hom. 22. on c. 6. of Genesis, where he proves that the angel fell before man had been carried into Paradise, because he envied him: Otherwise (he says), how would it be consonant with reason for an incorporeal angel, placed in such dignity, to envy a man girded about with a body? But he mocks, because he was cast down from the supreme glory into the extreme ignominy, although he was incorporeal. St. Damascene assents, book 2. De Fide cap. 3., where he defines an angel as An intelligent substance devoid of matter and body: although compared with God they must be held material and corporeal.

Very many prove the same truth from the Latins. Thus St. Leo the Pope, Epistle 93., writes: The true faith, which is Catholic, confesses the good substance of all creatures, whether spiritual or corporal. Very many others subscribe, who, interpreting that word of the Apostle to the Hebrews, All are ministering Spirits, pronounce the angels to be altogether incorporeal: thus Saints Ambrose and Jerome on those words.

It can also be persuaded by theological reason: The first indeed our Alensis supplies, q. 20. member 1.: God was able to produce a creature altogether incorporeal, and it was fitting for the completion of the universe that that creature be produced: therefore it must be affirmed that it was so fashioned: but that creature altogether incorporeal is called the angel: therefore truly God formed it. The major is evident, as regards the first part; since God produced the rational soul, incorporeal and intellectual, as an incomplete substance, to be the form of the body; why then could he not also produce an integral and complete intellectual and incorporeal substance, without any relation to a body? The minor also holds; for it belongs to the completion of the Universe that all grades of things be in it: therefore just as in it there is the grade of complete and incomplete corporeal substance, so likewise there ought to be the grade not only of incomplete spiritual substance, such as the rational soul is, but also of complete, such as the angel is.

Then, where one extreme and a mean are given, it is fitting that the other extreme also be given: for just as (says William of Paris, second part de Universo) oximel is given, which is composed of honey and vinegar, it follows also that vinegar separated from honey, and honey separated from vinegar, be found in nature: but in the order of beings something altogether material is given, as bodies, and something holding a middle manner, as man, who is partly corporeal, partly spiritual: therefore the other extreme ought also to be admitted, namely a purely spiritual substance, which we call the angel. Finally, if the angels had some body, especially compacted of air, as those hold who feel them to be corporeal: but the body of an angel cannot be called aerial: partly because in it organs, nerves, and other things of that kind necessary for motion and the operation of corporeal life require the commixture of the four primary qualities, which an aerial body lacks: partly because the body of an angel ought to be more excellent than the human body: but a purely aerial body is not more perfect than a human body: nay, less perfect; for every elemental body is less perfect than a mixed body: partly finally because the angelic body ought to be most solid and altogether indissoluble, otherwise it would be subject to destruction, nor could the angels accomplish such marvelous works as reason and experience teach are done by them: but an aerial body cannot be altogether solid and indissoluble, for air easily yields and dissolves: therefore an angel cannot have an aerial body.

The aforesaid reasons can be confirmed from this, that by the command of Christ the Lord a legion of demons was driven out by one man

Sacred Scripture relates, Luke 8. Now a legion contains six thousand six hundred sixty-six: Moreover, says Richard Victorinus, book 4. De Trinit., if so many were cast out by one man, so many were in him before the casting out. If demons have bodies, where, I ask, were they in him? in the spirit, or in the body? But it is established, because every body has length, breadth, height, namely local dimensions, and by that very fact cannot subsist without local capacity, which indeed spirit altogether lacks: therefore they were not in the spirit, but in the body. But how, or in what part of the man did so many bodies dwell? But however subtle, two bodies, especially of the same quantity, cannot occupy one and the same place: therefore of what smallness, I ask, do you think the angelic body to be, if you believe that even the mere skin of a man taken off from the body could contain so many angelic bodies!

Nor does it matter that St. Augustine, Epistle 115., discussing aerial and ethereal animals and bodies, that is, angels and demons, writes: It is by no means absurd that those who accomplish in their works something with an aerial or ethereal body which they naturally penetrate, use far greater facility in moving whatever they wish, etc. For this is true, that it is not a body, since impenetrable quantity belongs naturally to any body; nor can it be separated from it except by miracle.

You will say 1. Sensible and corporeal generation presupposes a body: but Sacred Scripture attributes corporeal generation to the angels: therefore it presupposes a body to be in them. The major holds: the minor is proved from Genesis 6: The Sons of God, seeing the daughters of men that they were beautiful, took to themselves wives of all whom they had chosen, etc. In which passage, where our version has the phrase Sons of God, the Seventy Interpreters read Angels of God. Whence very many of the holy Fathers judge that the first sin of the angels was that commixture with women.

Thus teaches first of all St. Justin Martyr in the First Apology, where, having said that God committed the world, founded by himself, to the care and providence of the angels, he adds:

The angels, moreover, having followed this order, were captivated by intercourse with women, and begot sons, whom we call demons; and besides they afterwards subjected the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, partly by the terrors and punishments which they inflicted, partly by the institution of sacrifices and burnt offerings and libations, of which they began to stand in need, after they had subjected themselves like slaves to the disturbances of their lusts; and they sowed among men murders, wars, adulteries, lusts, and every kind of wickedness.

Tatian, the disciple of S. Justin, taught in his book against the Greeks that not all demons are clothed in flesh, but are endowed with most subtle coverings, as it were of fire and air;

demons, he says, are not all endowed with flesh, but there inheres in them a spiritual concretion, such as that of fire, such as that of air: moreover the bodies of demons can be perceived only by those who are fortified with the Spirit of God, not likewise by the rest, that is, by living beings. For what is lesser cannot comprehend that which is greater.

Athenagoras, himself a contemporary of S. Justin, teaches the same thing in his Plea for the Christians, where, after saying that certain of the angels persevered faithful in their office, he adds:

Others wantonly abused the nature and substance entrusted to them, and misused their dominion; both those set over matter and the forms inherent in it, and those others who occupy themselves about that first firmament. Know indeed that we say nothing rashly and without witness: but declare what has been pronounced by the prophets. And these men, having slipped into desire for virgins, were overcome by the enticements of the flesh; while the latter, behaving negligently, and wickedly occupied in the administration of what had been committed to them, went astray. Moreover, from those who consorted with virgins were born those whom they called giants.

S. Clement of Alexandria was imbued with this same opinion, for in book 2 of the Paedagogus, chapter 2, he says that certain angels abandoned the beauty of God on account of a beauty that withers, and therefore fell from heaven to earth. He declares this more fully and more distinctly in book 5 of the Stromata, where he says: Those angels to whom the heavenly lot had fallen, having fallen down to pleasures, revealed the mysteries to women, etc.

Lactantius confirms these things admirably in book 2 of On the Origin of Error, chapter 14, where he writes:

When, therefore, the number of men had begun to increase; God, providing lest the devil — to whom he had given power over the earth from the beginning — should by his frauds either corrupt or scatter abroad the men whom he had made at the beginning of things, sent angels for the guardianship and cultivation of the human race: and because free will had been given them, he commanded above all that they should not, stained by contact with the earth, lose the dignity of their heavenly substance: namely, he forbade them to do the very thing which he knew they would do, so that they could not hope for pardon. And so while they dwelt among men, that most deceitful ruler of the earth gradually led them little by little into vices by their very association, and defiled them with unions with women.

And shortly after he adds: Thus two kinds of demons came into being, one heavenly, the other earthly. These are unclean spirits, the authors of the evils that are done: of whom the same devil is prince.

S. Ambrose seems to descend into this same opinion in several places, but especially in book 1 of De virginibus, where he writes: how illustrious a thing it is that angels fell from heaven into the world on account of their intemperance; and that a virgin passed from the world into heaven on account of her chastity. S. Cyprian also subscribes to him in the book De disciplina et habitu virginum, where, after having inveighed against the vain ornaments of women, he adds: all which things sinful and apostate angels disclosed by their arts, when, cast down into earthly contagions, they withdrew from heavenly vigor.

Above all the rest, however, Tertullian defends this opinion, who in the book De velandis Virginibus, chapter 7, weighing that saying of the Apostle in chapter 11, that women ought to be veiled in the Church because of the angels, gathers from it that Virgins ought much more to be covered:

For if, he says, it is because of the angels, namely those whom we read fell from heaven before God on account of concupiscence for women, who can presume that angels already stained in body and desiring the remnants of human lust did not rather burn with passion for Virgins, whose flower excuses even human lust?

He concludes: Therefore so dangerous a face ought to be veiled, which has hurled scandals even up to heaven. S. Ambrose seems to favor the same opinion in book 1 of De Virginibus, where he says: Chastity made the angels; for whoever preserved it is an angel; whoever lost it is the Devil.

I deny the minor. In proof of which I say that in the Hebrew text, and in the Seventy, as also in the Vulgate, it is read as the sons, not the angels, of God, as is clear in the more correct exemplars, as S. Augustine observes lib. 15. De Civit. Dei, cap. 23.: and by the name of the sons of God are most fittingly understood the sons of Seth and Enos, who being devoted above other men especially to divine worship were called sons of God on account of piety, whether paternal or their own; who, mingled with the daughters of men, that is, women sprung from Cain and his posterity, men devoted above all to earthly and corporeal pleasure, begot Giants. Or else by the name of the sons of God are understood men of lofty stature, according to the usage of Scripture, which calls things most high by the name of God in the Hebrew manner of speaking, as the cedars of God, the mountains of God. Or finally, by the name of the sons of God are understood the sons of Magnates and Princes, according to the Hebrew Elohim: which name Sacred Scripture attributes not only to God, but also to Princes and judges, in Exodus 7 and Psalm 81; whose sons, mingling with the daughters of the common people and of the lowborn, begot Giants, that is, men stouter than the rest, and more prone to lust; as the holy Chrysostom, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria interpret.

And Scripture favors this exposition: since it subjoins that the flood was sent by God on account of the sins of men, especially on account of that commingling of the sons of God with the daughters of men: therefore that commingling must be understood not of angels, but of men. Hence it appears how far those strayed from the truth who judged that the first sin of the angels was corporeal lust, whereby the flood was brought about: for long before, the angels had fallen; for their Prince, not long after the creation of the world, tempted and seduced our first parents. Add that Christ the Lord expressly pronounces angels incapable of generation; for he says in Luke 20, in praise of Virginity: The children of this world marry and are given in marriage; but they who shall be held worthy of that world and of the resurrection from the dead shall neither marry nor take wives: neither can they die any more: for they are equal to the angels.

To the SS. Fathers cited in the objection. I say that they embraced that opinion on occasion of the book inscribed The Revelations of Enoch, a fragment of which Scaliger produces in his notes on Eusebius, which book Tertullian in the place cited above tries to assert among the sacred books, although it was long ago regarded as apocryphal: which may certainly be observed from these words of S. Hilary on Psalm 132:

Now this is told, concerning which even some book or other exists, that the angels, coveting the daughters of men, when they descended from heaven, met together especially on this high mountain. But we pass over these things. For the things which are not contained in the book of the law we ought not even to know; and they are mentioned only for this reason, that our profession admonished us through the prophet concerning this mountain of God. Certainly today the nations venerate this mountain with profane religion, and bear witness to the interpretation of its name, which is anathema, in that very seat of impious superstition.

You will say 2. Sacred Scripture affirms that angels are perceptible to human senses, and appeared in human form to the Patriarchs and Prophets; for Abraham received three of them at his table, Jacob wrestled with an angel through the whole night, he saw also angels ascending and descending, as related in Genesis 18. 19. 28. 32.; and in the book of Tobias the angel Raphael was companion to the younger Tobias on the way, ate with him, and taught him that demons would be driven away by burning the liver of the fish, as appears in chapters 6 and 8. Finally, demons are tormented with the fire of hell, Matthew 25., are taken captive in chains, Jude 6., are dragged down by cords into Tartarus 2 Peter 2., from all which it is evident that angels are corporeal.

I answer the prior points. The angels performed all these things not in their own body, but in one assumed and formed, whether out of air, or out of some other thin and subtle material: for angels can form bodies for themselves and move them locally, and present themselves visible in them and converse with men, although in those bodies they exercise the works of corporeal life not truly, but only in appearance, according to that saying of Tobias 12: I seemed to you to eat and drink: but I use invisible food and drink, which cannot be seen by men; that is, the beatific vision, which in the Scriptures is wont to be explained by the metaphor of a banquet. But as to being tormented physically or morally by the fire of hell, they need not be corporeal: for separate souls, though purely spiritual, are tormented there. And indeed the liver of the fish burned, in Tobias 6, drove away a demon morally, because clearly the religious fumigation was joined to prayers and to the practice of chastity, and furthermore prefigured Christ, the sacred Fish, burned in the fire of love in his Passion; as Augustine expounds, sermon 4 on the SS. Peter and Paul, and Prosper, book De Promissionibus, part 2. c. 39. So also in exorcisms, fumigations applied torment demons morally, or hinder them, either because they are sacred, or because they are made in contempt of them, or because they are apt for tempering the humors, so that they can make use of them less conveniently; finally, the cords and chains with which they are said to be bound are understood tropically, as the nature of Spirits requires, for spiritual coercion and binding to a fixed place: which detention can be exercised by means of bodily things, at least morally.

You will say 3. In the Second Council of Nicaea, act 5, the opinion of John, Bishop of Thessalonica, is approved, asserting that angels are to be depicted, but not God himself.

Since indeed, he says, truly God is incorporeal and uncircumscribable: but intelligible creatures are not wholly incorporeal and invisible as God is. Therefore they are in place and are circumscribed. But if anywhere you find angels, or demons, or souls called incorporeal, for this reason they are so called, because they do not consist of the mixture of the four material elements: nor are they such thick and solid bodies as surround us. For truly, to speak the truth, although they are invisible with respect to us, nevertheless they have been seen by many, and perceived by sense in the form of their proper bodies: seen, I say, by those whose eyes God opened: and since they are circumscribed by place, it is sufficiently shown that they are not wholly incorporeal as God is.

Which opinion the Synod seems indeed to have approved, since when Tarasius, the President of the Council, had recited it, the whole Synod said: Even so, Lord.

I answer. The Council approved only the Conclusion excerpted from the aforementioned opinion, namely, that angels can be depicted, because they appeared to men at times in human form; not that one, that they are corporeal. Which indeed is plain, both because the Council approved only what it excerpted from the book of John of Thessalonica, which Tarasius proposed: but he, wisely omitting the error about the corporeity of the angels (about which there was then no question, but only about the cult of the sacred Images), proposed only that angels can be depicted, according to the opinion of John of Thessalonica, because they appeared in human form: The Father shows, he says, that angels too must be painted, since they are circumscribed, and have appeared to many in the form of men: upon hearing which the Synod immediately subjoined: Even so, Lord.

Therefore that acclamation of the Council falls only upon what Tarasius had just said, who in reciting the opinion of John seized upon one thing only, namely, that angels can be painted, because they are circumscribed, that is, defined within a certain place, and appeared in human form; but deliberately omitted the other reason adduced by John, namely, that they are corporeal, and that they appeared in their own body. Then also because the Council in the fourth act recites and approves the opinion of S. Athanasius asserting that angels are incorporeal: nay, in the same place this profession of faith is read: We venerate the Images of the saints, and of the incorporeal angels, who like men appeared to the just in human figure: and therefore nothing against our assertion is proven from this Council.

You will say 4. That opinion must be approved which the holy Fathers teach and defend by common reckoning: but almost all, both Greeks and Latins, teach that angels are corporeal: therefore they must be said to be such. Proof of the minor. First, for Methodius the martyr seems to assign to angels a body of pure air and fire: Indeed, he says, their bulk is compacted of pure air and fire, and it is of the same substance as the angels, it cannot possess the quality of earth. S. Basil subscribes in the book De Spiritu Sancto, c. 16, where, after saying the holy angels are airy or fiery spirits, he adds: They are both in place, and become visible in the form of their proper bodies, appearing to those who are worthy. S. Ephrem agrees, in the Sermon on the nature of God not to be scrutinized at all. And Caesarius approves, in the first Dialogue, question 48: Angels, he says, are indeed incorporeal according to us, but body in itself; just as wind, or fire, or smoke, or air; for they are thin and immaterial bodies, secreted from our grossness. Macarius holds the same opinion, in the fourth Homily, where concerning angels he writes:

Everything is body according to its nature; whether it be an angel, or a soul, or a demon. For although these bodies are thin, nonetheless in the character and representation of their substance, according to the subtlety of their nature, they are subtle bodies: just as this body of ours is a gross body according to its substance.

The Latin Fathers second the Greek Fathers. Above all Tertullian, in the book De Carne Christi, chapter six: It is agreed that the angels bore no flesh of their own, being, as it were, of spiritual nature, yet of some body, though of their own kind, but transformable into human flesh for a time, that they might be seen and converse with men. Similarly S. Ambrose, book 11 De Abraham, chapter 8, refuting the opinion of the Peripatetics, who asserted that heaven is a fifth substance diverse from and uncompounded with the four elements, prescribes thus universally: But we think nothing immune and exempt from material composition, except that alone venerable substance of the Trinity, which is truly pure and simple, of sincere and unmixed nature. He judges, therefore, that even the angels consist of elemental substance. Which certainly he had drawn from the Platonists, for Apuleius, in the book On the Demon of Socrates, writes: Demons are animals in genus, passive in mind, rational in intellect, aerial in body, eternal in time. And S. Gregory the Pope, homily c. 10 on the Gospels, calls the angel who appeared to the shepherds at the birth of Christ a rational animal. To be seen also in book 2. Moral. cap. 2.

S. Augustine thinks the same, teaching in several places that angels are corporeal. Thus in the second book De Trinitate, c. 1, he says: That they can change and alter their body — which they do not obey, but govern as subjected to them — into forms adapted and suited to their actions as they will, according to the power attributed to them by the Creator: and in book 3 De Genesi ad litteram he teaches that demons are aerial animals, because the nature of aerial bodies flourishes in them, and therefore are not dissolved by death, because the element prevails in them which is more apt for acting than for suffering. The same holds in Epistle 175, where, answering Nebridius asking how angels can insert good or evil thoughts into us, he says: By no means is it absurd that those who act something in bodies by means of an aerial or ethereal body, which they penetrate by natural order, should use far greater facility in moving whatever they will. Justin the martyr, in the Dialogue with Trypho; Clement of Alexandria, book 1 of the Paedagogus, c. 6, constantly affirm that angels are corporeal, and can be deluded by the same corporeal pleasures as men, and boil with the heat of concupiscence; whence it came about that they burned with mad lust for the daughters of men.

In which opinion they had several followers among the aforementioned, especially Origen, who although in book 1 De Principiis, c. 1, and 3, last chapter, says: Therefore this whole account contains this, that God created two general natures; the visible nature, that is, corporeal, and the invisible, which is incorporeal. And this most openly of all in book 4 of the same work, c. 2:

But again he declared that all things visible and invisible were created through Christ, by which it is shown that there are in creatures also certain substances invisible in their property. But these, although they are not themselves corporeal, nevertheless use bodies, although they themselves are better than corporeal substance. But that substance of the Trinity, which is the principle and cause of all things, from which are all things, and through which are all things, and in which are all things, must not be believed to be a body, or to be in a body, but wholly incorporeal.

Although, I say, in those and similar passages Origen seems to assert that angels are devoid of all matter and body; nevertheless, he says they are incorporeal only to this extent, that their bodies are subtle and ethereal, not material and coarser, as human bodies are. Which he manifestly indicates in the proem of the book De Principiis; for when he had said that the word incorporeal is not used in Scripture, someone objects to him a passage from a little book inscribed the Doctrine of Peter, in which Christ says to his disciples that he is not an incorporeal demon. To which objection he replies first that this book is apocryphal, nor is it held among the ecclesiastical books of Peter. Then he subjoins that even if its authority were admitted, that word incorporeal would not have to be understood in that sense in which ethnic authors use it, for

the body of a demon, he says, is not like this our coarser and visible body, but is naturally subtle, and thin as an aura; and on this account it is either reckoned by many, or called, incorporeal.... In the custom of men, however, everything which is not of such a sort (that is, a solid and palpable body) is named incorporeal by the simpler or less instructed; as if anyone should call this air which we enjoy incorporeal, seeing that it is not such a body as can be grasped and held, and resist pressure.

Similar things occur in book 2 on the Song of Songs. S. Methodius the martyr seconds him, who assigns to angels, on Psalm 144:

God ordered and made all things; to some he gave sense and intellect and immortality, as to angels; to some he gave sense and intellect with mortality, as to men; to some the sense of body, but neither intellect nor immortality, as to cattle; to some truly neither sense, nor intellect, nor immortality, as to herbs, trees, stones; yet even these cannot be wanting in their own kind.

He holds, therefore, that angels are endowed with sensitive life just as men and brute animals; and thereupon he thinks they have a soul and a body; although elsewhere he asserts that he has nowhere read in the Scriptures of the Law that angels have souls. Whence St. Fulgentius in the book De Trinitate concludes:

That angels are composed of a twofold substance is asserted by great and learned men, that is, from an incorporeal spirit, by which they never depart from the contemplation of God, and from a body, through which they appear from time to time to men....... They say that they have an ethereal body, that is, one of fire. But the evil angels, that is, the demons, have an aerial body.

To these the Venerable Bede consents in book 1 De elementis philosophiae, where he writes concerning angels:

Some say that their bodies are so subtle that they cannot be perceived by sense; hence, in respect of our bodies, which are dense and thick, they are called spirits, just as air, although it is a body, is nevertheless on account of its subtlety called spirit.

This Blessed Gregory confirms, who in the Moralia book 11, chapter 2, speaking of angels says: in comparison with our bodies they are spirits, but in comparison with that supreme and uncircumscribed Spirit, they must be called bodies. This again they prove by the authority of Blessed Augustine, who sets down in the Enchiridion a certain chapter on what kind of bodies angels have. Cassian has things very similar to these, conference 1, chapter 13, where he writes:

For although we may pronounce that there are certain spiritual natures, such as the Angels and the other powers, and even our own soul, or certainly this subtle air; nevertheless they are not to be judged incorporeal in any way, for they have of themselves a body by which they subsist, though more tenuous than we, for they are bodies according to the sentence of the Apostle, who says thus: and there are celestial bodies, and terrestrial bodies.

Of the same opinion also are SS. Damascene book 2 De fide orthodoxa chapter 3, and Bernard in the Canticles sermon 5, and very many others besides.

I answer 1. Indeed, in truth many of the holy Fathers thought that angels have a body, whether aerial or ethereal. But very many protest against it, as we said above on page 27. Hence the minor must be denied: since nowhere was there in this matter a common and concordant doctrine of the Church, nor do those who hold that angels are corporeal confirm it either from Scripture or from the tradition of the ancients, as Origen himself confesses in book two of De Principiis chapter 8, where, having written that it does not seem absurd, concerning the holy Angels and the other celestial powers, to say or to think that they have souls, he adds: although this is established by the authority of no Scripture.

I answer 2. When the holy Fathers and ecclesiastical writers assert that angels are corporeal, they use the word body in diverse ways, and in a looser signification, namely either insofar as it is opposed to shadow or phantasm, and it signifies an existing thing, in which sense a body is attributed to God by Tertullian, and on this account angels can truly be called corporeal: or they use body for everything that is not of the same immateriality as God, in which sense St. Augustine, vol. 3, in the book De spir. et anima chapter 18: "The soul," he says, "in respect of the incorporeal God is corporeal; nothing invisible and incorporeal is by nature to be believed except God alone, who on that account is called incorporeal and invisible, because he is infinite and uncircumscribed:" or finally, by the name of body the Fathers understand either those movements of anger, envy, and other depraved affections after the manner of perverse men by which demons are tossed about: or the punishments which those arch-enemy angels endure from bodily things, especially fire, after the manner of bodies: or finally by body they understand that disturbance of the prevaricating angels from heaven and their casting down to lower places that are truly corporeal and coarser, where they are detained after the manner of bodies and pay the penalties of the crime they committed. Hence Origen, vol. 1 on John, says that demons were condemned to a coarser body according to the measure of their crimes, and Minucius Felix says that these spirits lost the simplicity of their substance. Indeed even St. Augustine, book 3 of De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 10, says: "But if those transgressors before they transgressed bore heavenly bodies, neither is it wonderful if they were changed by punishment into an aerial quality."

I add. Very many of these seem to waver and be in doubt in defining this matter: for first Origen himself in book 6 against Celsus says that Angels lack a body: "We," he says, "think that the fiery substance does not burn, nor does the soul of man, or an angel, dissolve into fire." Similarly St. Basil in book 4 against Eunomius affirms that the nature of angels lacks a body and is endowed with reason. As regards St. Augustine, however, it is established that he determined nothing certain in this matter, as is clear from very many of his writings, but especially in the Enchiridion chapter 58, where he says that he does not know whether the Sun and Moon and all the stars belong to the Principalities and Powers as their bodies. Indeed in book 1 of the Retractationes chapter 11 and book 2 chapter 14 he retracts what he had written elsewhere, namely that angels are souls, and says they must be called not souls but spirits, whom he confesses are not clothed over with a body, since they do not have the nature of souls. Hence Theodoret places the questions about the corporeity or spirituality of Angels among useless and superfluous disquisitions. Yet finally, provided one confess that angels were created by God, he leaves everyone free thereafter to determine the rest according to his judgment. "If anyone," he says, "shall say that the choirs of angels were made before heaven and earth, he does not offend the word of piety." But to press verbose contentions, which profit nothing except the subversion of those who hear them, the divine Apostle expressly forbids. Such too was the humble hesitation of mind of Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, in this matter. For in book 2, distinction 2, question 2, having expounded the opinion of SS. Augustine and Jerome about the creation of the Angels, he then subjoins: "We approve what was said before more for the understanding we have captured, saving however reverence for the secrets in which nothing is to be rashly asserted." But after the definition of the Lateran Council, whoever today should affirm that angels are corporeal would have to be held, if not for a heretic, certainly for rash and presumptuous.

You will say 5. With Cajetan and certain of the Recentiors affirming that angels are corporeal because all the grades of living things must be conceded, seeing that they are necessary to the perfection of the Universe: therefore just as there are given vegetative things without sense, and sentient things without progressive motion: so there ought to be given intelligences without sense, with only progressive motion, such as will be Angels endowed with ethereal or aerial bodies: therefore such must be conceded.

I deny the consequence. For although it may seem required for the perfection of the Universe that in it there be all possible grades of being, namely to be, to live, and to understand; nevertheless it is not necessary that all the modes in which such grades can be possessed exist in fact. Wherefore although it would not involve a contradiction for there to exist an intellectual form informing a non-sentient body, which would in no way use senses for receiving intelligible species, but only for motion and certain other effects; nevertheless it does not follow that that mode of possessing intelligence without sense is necessarily desired: both because not all the specific or generic grades of living things that can exist must exist in reality, since the perfection of the Universe is not as great as it could have been, but as great as God willed: and because the manner of understanding without sense, and with only progressive motion, does not constitute a special grade of being; but is only a special mode of possessing the grade of intellectual being.

You will say 6. Angels, especially wicked ones, have some sympathy and antipathy with certain corporeal things. Thus at the sound of David's harp the demon departed from Saul. Thus Tobias 6, verse 8 and chapter 8, verse 2 says that a demon was put to flight by the smoke of the liver of a certain fish, and his witchcraft repelled. Indeed we see that demons are kept away by various bodily remedies and amulets, and their infestations hindered. The same power of tormenting and expelling demons, as Delrio says, book 2, q. 30, sect. 3, some attribute to rue, baths, goat dung, and flogging: therefore they seem to have in themselves something of corporeal qualities contrary to the qualities of those things.

I answer. These effects do not arise from natural power and opposition between the things themselves and the demons; but from this, that God sometimes uses natural and bodily things as instruments, as it were, assumed for driving away demons: as appears from the examples brought forward. Add that the virtue of Raphael and the holiness of David conduced to restraining these spirits. I confess, however, that certain natural things by their own power conduce to restraining the Demon and impeding and mitigating his infestations; namely when the humors of the man vexed by the Demon remove noxious matters in which the Demon chiefly lodges, and which he uses to infest the man.

Second conclusion. — Angels are not composed of matter and physical form.

This follows from the preceding. And it is proved by all those texts of the holy Fathers in which they teach that angels are incorporeal and entirely simple as regards their nature; for it is established that they are composed both from subsistence and from spiritual accidents, namely intellection, volition, and the like, which kind of composition no one will deny in the angels. It is evident moreover from this, that the angelic nature is more excellent and nobler than the rational soul: but the rational soul, as we said above, is simple and immaterial: therefore much more the angels.

You will say 1. St. Augustine, book 7 of De Genesi ad litteram chapter 6, affirms that God created from the beginning a certain spiritual matter from which He drew forth the human soul, and from which the soul has that it is mutable from virtue to vice, and conversely, just as the body is mutable into infirmity; or, as he adds:

Just as the flesh in its nature either progresses so as to be beautiful, or declines so as to be deformed: it also had matter, that is, earth, from which it might be made so as to be flesh entirely; so perhaps the soul also could have, before it became that very nature which is called soul (whose beauty is virtue, whose deformity is vice), a certain matter of its own kind, spiritual, which was not yet soul: just as the earth of which flesh was made was already something, although it was not flesh.

Boethius subscribes to him in the book De Unitate et Uno, where he teaches that the same is the matter of corporeal and spiritual things: > Since, therefore (he says), matter formed in the highest things is the form of intelligence, and the rational form of the soul; then afterwards the form of the sensible soul; then the form of the vegetative soul; then the form of nature: finally, however, it is the form of the body; this does not happen from the diversity of the power of the agent, but from the aptitude of the receiving matter.<

And finally, when he treats of the various kinds of the One, among other things he says that there is a certain something, known as one through the cognition of simples, as an angel, and the soul, each of which is one by the conjunction of matter and form. Rupert consents to them in book 2 of De Victoria Verbi Dei chapter 12, where he judges that angels were created from matter.

I answer 1. That St. Augustine uttered those things not by affirming, but rather by trying out and doubting. Then, by the name of matter he does not understand prime matter, which is receptive of all physical forms; but an informity, or potentiality, as it were, proportionally common to corporeal matter and spiritual substance: for just as prime matter is of itself formless, so the Angel is first created according to natural things before he turns to the Word by whom he is illuminated; and therefore he is said to be produced in intelligible potency, proportionally to matter, which is in potency to forms. Or finally I say that perhaps he spoke in the opinion of the Platonists about ideas and intelligible forms, such as Plato constituted abstracted from bodies, and in which the Platonists wished matter to be, in which those intelligible forms would inhere; For, says Plotinus, Enneads 2, book 4,

since there are many species in those ideas, there must be something common in them: but also something proper, whereby one differs from another. This proper thing, therefore, and that discerning difference, is the proper form. But if form inheres, there is also the formed, around which the difference is. Underneath, therefore, lies the matter, which receives that form.

In which same sense Rupert, praised above, seems also to have spoken.

To Boethius I say. That he in the book De duabus naturis et una persona Christi asserts that there is no matter in things lacking a body,

Every body that subsists in generation and corruption seems to have common matter, but not everything from everything, or in everything, or can act, or be acted upon: but corporeal things can in no way be changed into incorporeal, since they participate in no common underlying matter, which may be changed into either one by the qualities received: for the substance of every incorporeal nature leans on no material foundation.

Therefore either Boethius militates against himself, or in the place cited in the objection he uses matter in the sense of the mind of the Platonists, namely for the idea, which, like matter, preexists in the divine mind for forming spirits, from which they have, first, that they are; then, that they are such, that is, living and understanding. Thus teaches St. Maximus in the fifth scholion of the book De Divinis Nominibus;

Invisible (he says) and supreme minds, were first partakers of essence, or existence, and afterwards of life and wisdom; for just as in us matter was first produced of which we are; so in minds lacking a body that is understood in place of matter which is the form of each one through life, and through which he is substantiated unto life, and wisdom, and likeness.

You will say 2. With St. Bonaventure: no mutable thing is simple: but the angel by his nature is mutable: therefore he is not simple, but composed: but what is composed and mutable consists of matter, which is the principle of mutability and composition; For (says St. Augustine 12. Confessionum) every mutable thing intimates to our knowledge a certain informity, by which the form is received, or changed, or turned: and Boethius book 3 of De Trinitate: "Nothing that is truly form can be subjected to accidents."

I concede the whole argument, but deny what was assumed. For angels are mutable according to accidental perfections; and thus they have composition, not only from essence and existence, but also from subject and accident; because intellection and volition perfect the intellect and will of the Angel, and consequently intellect and will are in potency to them. And thus Augustine and Boethius, praised by St. Bonaventure, can be explained, namely that in angels there is the ratio of potency and subject in respect to the accidental form which inheres in the angels; whence angels are not simple acts, insofar as simplicity denies all real composition, which is the divine simplicity: but only insofar as simplicity is opposed to composition from matter and physical form.

You will say 3. Nothing acts and is acted upon in the same respect and by the same respect: but the same Angel acts and is acted upon, namely he illuminates the lower angels or men, and is illuminated by the higher angels and by God: therefore he has one principle according to which he acts, and another according to which he is acted upon: but the principle according to which he acts is form, and the principle according to which he is acted upon is matter: therefore in the Angel there is composition from matter and form.

I answer. To act and to be acted upon intentionally in the Angel belong differently with respect to the same entity and faculty, either toward the effect which he produces, or toward the principle from which he receives something: as similarly it is established of the human intellect, which although it is one simple and individual faculty, nevertheless is denominated and is agent and patient, as appears from the Physics. Here therefore it must be observed that although it may seem difficult to define what St. Bonaventure willed, I judge nevertheless that he intends nothing else than that the Angel has composition from metaphysical matter and form, that is, from genus and difference; for in the first question he speaks thus: The essence of every creature is composed from diverse natures, and those two are related after the manner of actual and possible, and thus after the manner of matter and form, and therefore that position seems truer, namely that in the Angel there is composition from matter and form.

But he indicates this more clearly in question 2, when he says: Granted that the Angel has composition from matter and form, the name of matter being taken broadly for everything potential, which comes together with another unto the constitution of a thing as its foundation. Therefore he does not speak of physical matter, strictly so called; but of the generic grade, which is called matter metaphorically, and by a certain proportion which it has with matter, as was said in the Logic.

Note 1. That is called incorruptible not only which in fact is not subject to corruption, but also which cannot be subject to it. Now corruption can be taken in two ways: first, more broadly, for any cessation of a thing that passes from being into non-being, in which sense corruption signifies the same as cessation or failure, and incorruptible the same as indefectible. Second, more strictly, for the destruction or dissolution of a substantial composite constituted of matter and form: just as the generation opposed to it is the production and bringing-forth of a substantial composite.

Note 2. Something can be called naturally indefectible in three ways. First, absolutely, because it is of such a nature that it can be destroyed by no power and reduced to nothing. Second, that which according to the ordinary power of God as agent, namely according to the exigency of natural causes, ought not to be destroyed; either because there is none among natural causes that can destroy that thing, or because none demands its destruction. Third, finally, that is said to be naturally incorruptible which from its intrinsic principles demands never to fail: but once it has received existence, it requires to preserve it forever.

Note 3. Regarding the resolution of the present Question there are, we hold, three opinions. First, indeed, the heretics called Libertines denied that angels and rational souls are immortal, so that just as they had a beginning so they would also have an end, since they will that immortality belongs to God alone, whose created things cannot share. Second, there are some who affirm that angels are naturally and intrinsically defectible and persevere by God's favor alone like other beings, because since they were drawn from nothing they also of themselves demand to pass back into nothing. Third, finally, others contend that they naturally require incorruption; so that they could be destroyed and annihilated only by God's extraordinary power. Three things therefore must be established here: first, that the angels will never perish; second, that by God's absolute power they can fail; third, that from their intrinsic principles they demand to subsist forever.

First conclusion. — The angels will exist forever, and will never be subject to any destruction. This is a matter of faith; and it is gathered from all those texts of Sacred Scripture by which it is established that the good will persevere eternally in glory and the wicked in punishment, as is read in Matt. 25, Luke 20, and the Apostle Jude verse 6, where it is said that the angels who did not keep their principality were reserved under darkness in eternal chains. — It is likewise confirmed by the Letter of Sophronius recited at the sixth General Synod, action 11, and approved at action 13, where we read this:

God presiding over his works and constituting for all things a temporal beginning subjected sensible things to temporal end; but intellectual and invisible things he deigned worthy of this better dignity; and they do not die at all nor are corrupted, in the way sensible things flow away and pass through, but he bestowed on them grace restraining them from that corruption and from death. Thus the souls of men remain incorrupt, thus the angels persevere immortal.

The same is gathered from the Council of Lateran under Leo X, in which at session 8, as one of the errors ever rejected by the Church, their assertion is condemned, who dared to say that the rational soul is mortal. And he adds: With the approval of the sacred Council we condemn and reprove all who assert that the intellectual soul is mortal, seeing that it is not only truly and per se and essentially the form of the human body, but also immortal. But if immortality belongs to the rational soul, which has commerce so akin with the mortal body, much more must it be granted to the angel, who has no affinity whatever with matter.

This same thing the Holy Fathers prove, who with St. Dionysius chapter 4 De Divinis Nominibus confess that the angels have everlasting life, incapable of being diminished, freed and liberated from every destruction and death; or with St. Athanasius Treatise On the Definitions, that angel and soul may be called eternal; Because, he says, although they have had a beginning, they are immortal, and will live forever: or with St. Basil on Psalm 44, saying that the angels are not mutable in their being, because in the state in which they are created, in that they remain perpetually, the substance of their own nature remaining simple and the same immutable, etc. From all these it is established that it is the common faith and doctrine of the Church that angels are incorruptible and immortal.

You will say. God alone in the Sacred Scriptures is called immortal, 1. Timoth. 6, Who alone has immortality: therefore immortality belongs neither to angels nor to rational souls.

I answer. that the words mortal and immortal can be taken threefold: First indeed for a thing mutable from one state to another, in which sense St. Augustine Epist. 28 shows that the soul of man is partly mortal and partly immortal:

The soul of man, he says, is immortal according to a certain mode of its own, for it is not altogether as God, of whom it was said that he alone has immortality; for Sacred Scripture commemorates many deaths of the soul, such as that: let the dead bury their dead, etc.

Whence secondly De Trinitate, chapter 9:

Mutability itself, he says, is not unfittingly called mortal, according to which even the soul is said to die; not because it is changed and turned into body or some other substance; but in its very substance whatever it now is or was in another way is found mortal insofar as it ceased to be what it was.

— Second, that is called immortal which has it not from itself but from elsewhere that it cannot die, by which reason angels are called by some holy Fathers partly mortal, partly immortal, because although they are incorruptible of themselves, they can nevertheless by divine power be reduced to nothing. — Third, finally, that is called immortal which can fail neither of itself nor through another: in which sense God alone is immortal.

Second conclusion. — The angels are not absolutely incorruptible with respect to the extraordinary power of God. So the Subtle Doctor in 1. distinct. 8. q. 5. num. 22., where he affirms that no being besides God is necessary; I say, he says, that nothing other than God is immutable, speaking of mutation that is a turning-about, because nothing other than God is formally necessary. Since therefore the existence of the angels is not absolutely necessary but contingent — indeed God could have not produced them — therefore they cannot be called absolutely incorruptible: for just as they were formed out of nothing, so by the extraordinary power of God they could again pass into nothing.

This same thing holy Cyril proves in book 20 of the Thesaurus, where he shows that the Son of God is more excellent than the angels, in that he exists necessarily and immutably; while they, should the Creator will it, could be reduced to nothing.

For although, he says, an angel is in a certain way immortal, because of the will and grace of the Creator so constituted concerning him: nevertheless, since he has a principle of existing, he could surely also attain an end; for natural prerogatives are valid indeed for those possessing them, but not against God their maker. Just as fire has the force of burning, but not

against God: and an angel is indeed immortal, but not against God.

By which words Cyril intends two things: First, that just as fire is so naturally combustive that its force can be suspended by no created agent, but only by God, so the angel is so immortal that he can be hindered from being perpetual by none other than God alone. Second, that although the angel is incorruptible by his nature, he can nevertheless be destroyed if God wills it, namely if God were to cease conserving him; For (as St. Augustine says in Letter 56.) things have failing or being able to fail for no other reason except that they were made out of nothing: so that what they are and that they remain... belong to his goodness and omnipotence, who supremely is, and is the maker.

The same is taught by very many of the holy Fathers, who teach that the angels are immortal not by nature but by the grace of God alone, because just as they can have a beginning by divine power, so also destruction; since they will that immortality belongs to God alone, whose created things become participants for as long as it has pleased God. Which St. Ambrose teaches excellently in book 3 De fide, chapter 2. Nor, he says, is an angel immortal naturally, whose immortality lies in the will of the Creator. St. Damascene subscribes, book 2. chapter 3. An angel, he says, is immortal not by nature but by grace; for whatever had a beginning can by its own nature also cease. St. Hilary also favors this on Psalm 148, where explaining those words: He set a commandment, and it shall not pass, he says:

That they should remain forever in that which they are (the angels and rational souls) is not to be understood as belonging to their nature, but to the commandment of him who is able to bring to things substituted out of nothing the nature of eternity: for, he says, the commandment shall not pass, that is, there shall be no end to his mandate: in eternity they remain, to whom the power of eternity has granted eternity.

This truth did not escape even the Platonic philosophers; for Plato himself in the Timaeus introduces the highest God addressing the lesser gods, namely the angels, thus:

Attend to these things, you who are sprung from the seed of the gods, whose works I am parent and maker; the things made by me have not been dissolved without my consent. Although every bond can be loosed. Yet it is in no way the part of the good, overcome by reason, to wish to dissolve them. But since you have come to be, you cannot be immortal and indissoluble. Nevertheless you shall by no means be dissolved, nor shall any deed of death destroy you, nor any craft stronger than my counsel; which is a greater bond unto your perpetuity than those by which you were bound when you were begotten.

Third conclusion. — The angels are incorruptible and immortal from their intrinsic principles. This Conclusion follows from the preceding ones.

It is further proved. that that is incorruptible from within which does not intrinsically consist of matter, which is the principle of corruption: but, as was said in the previous question, angels are altogether immaterial: therefore also incorruptible. — Second, everything that has nothing in itself by reason of which it demands to be destroyed, and can receive nothing that overturns its existence, is incorruptible from within: but the angels have nothing in themselves by reason of which they demand to be destroyed, because they do not consist of contraries or of a subject admitting qualities contrary to their substance's corruptive [principles], since they are utterly incorporeal; nor can they receive anything that destroys their existence, because they cannot receive any quality disposing to a substantial form incompatible with the angelic form in the same subject; for thus they ought to consist of matter, which is therefore said to be the principle of corruption insofar as, having propensity toward all forms, it can admit contrary qualities which destroy the present form and prepare for the introduction of another: therefore the angels are incorruptible from within. — A third argument holy Maximus the martyr supplies in the little work De immortalitate animae, where he proves the soul is immortal from the fact that it is simple. Which he proves thus:

Nothing whatsoever, he says, can entirely corrupt itself, otherwise it would not have been constituted at all: for things are corrupted from contraries; therefore everything that is corrupted is dissoluble; but that which is dissoluble has several parts; and that which is composed of parts consists certainly of diverse parts: now that which is diverse is not the same. Wherefore the soul, since it is simple, and not consisting of differing parts, is neither composite nor dissoluble, and therefore will be free from corruption and immortal.

All these things can be said far more of the angels, since they consist of a more excellent nature.

You will say 1. The Holy Fathers praised above in Concl. 2 affirm that the angels are immortal not by nature but by grace: therefore they judge them not to be naturally and intrinsically incorruptible.

I answer. that the particle ex natura can be taken in two ways: First, as signifying the same as from the force of its essence, and of itself and independently of the influx of anyone else; in which sense the angels cannot be called immortal by their nature, for this would be to say that they are altogether independent, which is heretical. Therefore against this sense the Holy Fathers oppose that they are immortal by grace, that is, by the benefit of creation and conservation, which because it is granted freely by God is also called grace by the Fathers of the Council of Africa, cited in St. Augustine Letter 95. Not undeservedly is it called the grace of God by which we were created, that we might not be nothing... because it was given not by the merits of any preceding works, but by the free goodness of God. Nor does it matter that the conservative concourse seems naturally owed to the angel, if he is immortal by nature; for from that it does not follow that he cannot be called by grace, since it is something following upon creation, which was granted gratuitously and without any preceding merits; for things that follow upon a free gift are sometimes also named by grace: thus although eternal glory is owed as the reward of good works, the Apostle nevertheless calls it grace in Rom. chapter 6. — Second, by the word ex natura, as signifying the natural inclination and exigency toward always subsisting and never failing; in which sense the Holy Fathers do not deny that the angels are indefectible by their nature: seeing that since they are incorporeal and include in themselves no principle of corruption and failure, they naturally demand to subsist perpetually, so that destruction and failure would be for them altogether against nature, just as for fire the stripping of its native heat would be violent, and for secondary causes the privation of the divine concourse naturally owed to them for operating.

You will insist. Therefore the holy Fathers affirm the angels to be corruptible by nature because they were created out of nothing and tend toward nothing by their nature: but that which thus verges toward nothing cannot be said to be incorruptible according to natural inclination, nor can destruction be for it contranatural and violent, nay rather it is conformable to its native propensity: therefore, etc.

I distinguish the minor. that which tends toward nothing from some intrinsic principle liable to corruption and failure, and can either be destroyed by corruptive causes or cease through the negation of further concourse of God as agent according to the exigency of secondary causes, cannot be said intrinsically incorruptible — I concede: that that which can be destroyed only by the extraordinary power of God exercising his supreme dominion over creatures even against their natural order and exigency cannot be said incorruptible — I deny. Therefore I confess that the angels are by their nature in obediential potency such that they can be destroyed by God: but I deny that this destruction would be conformable to their intrinsic principles and connatural to them; and therefore they must truly always be said incorruptible by their nature.

You will press 1. What is natural to a thing carries with it in it repugnance to the opposite: but the angel has no repugnance such that he could fail and perish by the extraordinary power of God: therefore immortality and indefectibility is not connatural to him. The major stands, because since the heating power is connatural to fire, therefore fire has repugnance to not heating: ergo in like manner, if immortality were connatural to the angel, it would carry in him repugnance such that he could die and fail even by the extraordinary power of God; for what is repugnant cannot be done even divinely.

I distinguish the major. that it carries repugnance to the opposite when it happens to a thing through agents acting according to the order and exigency of nature — I concede: that it happens by a preternatural way — I deny; therefore immortality, which is connatural to the angel, carries in him repugnance such that he could fail either of himself or through extrinsic causes naturally corruptive of him: yet not therefore does it declare repugnance such that he could be destroyed and annihilated by God acting beyond nature. For just as fire, although it has innate heating power, can nevertheless not heat, namely if God does not concur with it for producing heat; so similarly the angel could fail, if God should determine not to conserve him of himself, although he has from elsewhere the innate power toward incorruption.

You will subjoin. The angels have no repugnance to being annihilated by God: but this non-repugnance is a true natural potency, at least passive, toward non-being: therefore they can fail by their nature; and therefore are not naturally indefectible.

I deny the minor. for this non-repugnance carries only the obediential potency, by which every creature is subjected to God, so that he may make in it or of it whatever does not involve contradiction. Whence it follows that God, annihilating an angel, would do no violence to him, because although then he would act against the particular inclination that the angel has toward enduring forever; yet he would not act against the universal inclination, which as part of the Universe he has toward obeying the Creator: just as heavy bodies are not said to suffer violence while they move upward, lest they impede a vacuum: because although they act against their particular inclination, they nevertheless serve the good of the Universe, toward which they are more inclined than toward their own particular convenience.

Finally you will press. Non-repugnance, or logical potency, in the angel, to be produced, suffices that he can naturally be created by God: therefore the same non-repugnance to destruction will suffice that he can naturally be annihilated.

I deny the consequence. and the reason of the disparity is, that before his production the angel did not demand by his nature to be produced, since he then was nothing: but once produced purely spiritual, he of himself demands and requires to subsist perpetually and to be conserved by God, since he has in himself no principle of corruption and failure; for which cause his production can happen naturally, but not so his annihilation.

Note 1. We are not here inquiring whether the angels excel men; for it is certain, and more certain than certainty, that by their natural endowments the angels are far more excellent than men, seeing that St. Paul affirms that even Christ the Lord Himself, inasmuch as He is man, was made a little lower than the angels, Hebrews 1. Hence St. Peter, chapter 2, teaches that the angels are greater in power and might, namely than men; for, as St. Jerome says in expounding that text, So great is the dignity of the angels that all human nature compared to them is called childhood. Hence St. Augustine, book 9 De Civitate c. 13: Man is a kind of mean between the beasts and the angels, inferior to the angels, superior to the beasts, having mortality in common with the beasts, and reason with the angels. To these oracles theological reason itself also bears witness: both because the angels have a greater affinity with the divine essence — for they have no commerce with matter, and are wholly simple, excluding, in the manner of God, all composition and physical composibility; not so man, who consists at once of an earthly and a heavenly part, namely an immortal soul and a corruptible body. Moreover, as was proved in the preceding Question, an angel demands incorruption and everlasting duration: but man, as Job says, comes forth like a flower and is crushed, and flees like a shadow, and nowhere remains in the same state. Finally, the angels had from their very origin knowledge of all natural things, and there is nothing so abstruse and impenetrable to us (excepting future things and the secrets of hearts) that they do not see most profoundly; hence they will effectively, choose immovably, and move with such swiftness that in an instant they possess heaven and earth. But man is utterly unwarlike, dull, and rude, always unlike himself while he lives, nor is he the same in the evening that he was in the morning. Great, therefore, is the dignity and excellence of the angelic nature above the human.

If, however, we consider the divine benefits of the supernatural order granted gratuitously by God both to angels and to men, it is beyond doubt that human nature is superior to the angelic in many gratuitous and supernatural gifts. For that nature was raised to hypostatic union and assumed by the divine Word, which, as the Apostle says, Hebrews 2, nowhere took hold of angels, but of the seed of Abraham. Hence with reason the angel of John the Evangelist's Rector and Teacher, Apocal. 19, refused to be adored by him. See, he said, that you do it not, for I am your fellow servant: which St. Ambrose expounding says: The angel trembles to be adored by a man, when above himself he adored the man God. Moreover, God bestowed the priestly dignity not on angels, but on men, by which they hold authority over the triple body of Christ, namely the Moral, the Mystical, and the Natural. Priests, I say, have authority over the moral body of Christ, namely souls, which they can bind and loose from sins by censures. Second, they obtain jurisdiction over the mystical body of Christ, namely the Church, which they illuminate, perfect, and as it were deify: wherefore by St. Dionysius in the books De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia priests are called theurgists, that is, makers of gods. Third and finally, the priest holds dominion over the true and natural body of Christ. For he makes it present sacramentally, and at his words the very Word of God, by whom all things were made, presents Himself to another, God obeying the voice of a man, as is said in Josue 10. Hence St. Ephrem calls the priesthood the most excellent of all ornaments, the summit of all the goods that are in men, something divine; and as it were the final goal of all things that are sought among men.

These things being premised, there remains here only to be discussed whether and by what reason the angels are distinguished from the rational soul according to the proper characters of each nature and their own entity, which, that it may be settled more evidently,

Note 2. All the theologians (excepting a few of lesser note) agree among themselves that rational souls are specifically distinguished from angels; and the Doctor proves this in 2, dist. 1, q. 5, num. 2, by this argument: Forms of the same character have the same character of perfecting or not perfecting: but the soul is naturally the perfective of a body as its form; an angel, however, is naturally not the perfection of any matter: therefore etc. The things that can be objected against that assertion are of less weight and will be easily dissolved from what is to be said. But since this specific distinction must precisely be sought, the controversy among the very princes of Theology is grave.

For the Seraphic Doctor in 2, dist. 1, part 2, artic. 3, q. 2 derives that distinction from the fact that the soul is unitable to a body, whereas an angel is not so unitable.

St. Thomas in 2, dist. 3, q. 1, artic. 6, ad. 2, and often elsewhere, following in the footsteps of Henry of Ghent, places this difference in a diverse intellectuality, or in degrees of intellection, or in the power of understanding; namely that the angels are endowed with a stronger power of understanding and understand more fully and more excellently than the soul: since, he says, the angels apprehend most perfectly all the objects that are offered to them without any inquiry and discursus; but the soul knows definite things only with discursus; and therefore it is called rational, because it reasons about things.

But our Alexander of Hales in 1. 2, collation on substance, q. 2, derives the specific distinction between the angels and the rational soul from the greater or lesser degree of understanding, which namely is greater in an angel and lesser in the soul. For if, he says, a diverse degree of sensing, greater or lesser, in brutes suffices for their specific distinction; why should not the same diversity in the intellectual power also produce a diverse species? Yet he hunts out another cause of this distinction, which we shall set forth below.

The Subtle Doctor refutes these opinions excellently, and himself established the fourth, far more probable, which, that it may appear more evidently,

Note 3. A species can be regarded in two ways: First properly, for a thing that is placed per se and directly under a genus, and which is predicated in quid of many things differing in number, e. g. man, who is constituted under the genus animal and is said in quid of individual men. Second, it is taken less properly, for a thing that is not placed per se under a genus, but in predicating has the manner of a species; thus matter and form, considered in themselves, are placed under no genus, since they are only parts of the composite; but they have only the manner of species in predication, for matter considered universally is said of this and that matter; and material form of this and that form; and so they are called species merely predicable, and not subjects. Nevertheless, those species regarded according to their metaphysical entity, and inasmuch as they consist of genus and difference, since they have the true character of some metaphysical whole of being, can also, thus considered, be called predicable: for the rational soul, e. g., although physically it is a part concurring with the human body toward the constitution of man; nevertheless metaphysically it is a certain whole consisting of a genus, namely the degree of spiritual substance, in which it agrees with the angel; and of its differential character, by which it differs essentially from the angel: and so, thus regarded, it is predicated specifically of this and that soul, and has the true character and denomination of a predicable species.

It must further be observed. from the Doctor praised above, num. 5, that the diversity of species is to be derived from the last essential difference contracting the genus, with which there can stand other superior differential degrees, which are conceived as common to the genus before it is conceived to be contracted and determined to a species by this last difference; as appears from the example of man and horse, for although they are two distinct species mutually opposed through rational and irrational, nevertheless the sensitive faculties, namely nutritive, visual, etc. are in both of the same species, because they tend to the same object. For faculties and powers are distinguished by operations, and operations by objects, at least extrinsically on the part of the specifying terminus; for those sensitive powers do not emanate proximately and immediately from the last difference contracting the genus, namely the degree of sensibility, or animal, and constituting the species proximately of man and horse; but from the remote difference contracting the superior genus, namely a living body to a corporeal animated sensitive substance, and constituting it in sentient being. These things having been lightly touched, the proposed question must now be resolved.

First conclusion. — The specific difference distinguishing the angelic nature from the human is not to be sought from the fact that the rational soul is unitable to a body, whereas the angel is not so unitable. This is the opinion of the Subtle Doctor in the place praised above, num. 2, and he proves it thus: the specifically distinctive difference must be sought from the first constitutive and distinctive degree of the species: but unitability is not the first constitutive degree of the rational soul a priori; for that unitability denotes an aptitude, which presupposes the essence of a thing, and therefore cannot be the primary reason of specific distinction, although a posteriori it denotes it, as the properties of things usually indicate specific differences.

He confirms that argument from the fact that the soul (let the same judgment be made about the other substantial things) is first constituted in itself essentially before it may be said to have an order to another to which it be united; and consequently has in itself the difference by which it is distinguished from other things. Nay, the Doctor's argument seems best if the speech is about formal unitability, and inasmuch as it is an aptitudinal respect resulting from the nature of the soul; but otherwise if the speech were about radical unitability, because that radical unitability is the very essential difference of the soul, from which follows the aptitude to union; just as conversely the non-unitability of the angel consists in some essential predicate of the angel, to which follows the negation of unitability, both radical and formal.

St. Bonaventure, however, seems to have spoken of radical unitability, when he assigned it as the primary reason of the specific distinction of the soul from the angel, for he says:

that which is for the soul to be united to a human body, or to vivify a human body, does not signify an accidental act, nor does it signify an ignoble act. Not accidental, because by reason of it the soul is a substantial form: not ignoble, because by reason of it the soul is the most noble form of all, and in it stands the appetite of the whole nature: for the human body, of the most noble complexion and organization that there is in nature, is organized and complexioned, and therefore is not completed, nor is it born to be completed, except by the most noble form or nature: that therefore by which the soul is unitable to such a body signifies something essential, which is the most noble in the soul: and so by it is rightly taken the specific difference according to which the soul differs from the angelic nature.

In which words the Seraphic Doctor seems to speak of radical unitability, since he calls it most noble and essential; but such is not formal unitability, and therefore he is not to be understood of it, and thus his argument is valid and efficacious, and coincides with the argument of the Doctor in the third conclusion to be brought forward.

Second conclusion. — The specific distinction of the angels from the rational soul does not arise from their having a diverse manner and distinct power of understanding. This is against the authors of the second and third opinions, but especially against the Thomists, who confirm their assertion with the Angelic Doctor by this argument above all: Intellectual forms, which are so disposed that one in understanding discurses and the other does not discursus, are not of the same species: but the soul in understanding discurses, the angel by no means: therefore they are not of the same species. It is confirmed by a similar case, because the sensitive soul in brutes does not seem to be distinguished except by diverse degrees of sensing, and yet there is a specific difference there: therefore the specific difference between angel and man ought to be gathered by diverse modes and degrees of understanding, namely that the soul in understanding discurses, but not the angel.

The Doctor attacks this argument: both because it is not a priori, for the diverse degrees and modes of understanding in the soul and the angel are something posterior to their essences: but the specific distinction of beings must be sought from their natures. Moreover, things are first distinguished according to their faculties and first acts before they are distinguished in order to second acts: but to understand with discursus, and not to understand with discursus, are only second acts, which presuppose in the angel and the soul a diverse faculty and intellectual power: therefore their specific distinction is not primarily to be derived from them. Then also because that argument does not conclude a posteriori. For, says the Doctor, if to discursus and not to discursus argue diverse intellectual natures, since the soul discurses about conclusions, which it infers from principles per se known, but does not discursus about those same principles, it would follow that the soul is specifically distinguished from itself. Moreover, the blessed soul does not discursus about the beatific object: but it does discursus about the object naturally known: therefore if the specific distinction of the soul from the angel were to be gathered from the power of discoursing or not discoursing, it would follow that the blessed soul is specifically distinguished from itself, since it discourses about one object, but not so about another. Nor does the alleged example in confirmation help at all; for brutes are not distinguished by various degrees of sensing more or less; but by formal and specific differences, which, since they are for the most part unknown to us, we are compelled to expound through their various properties and diverse modes of sensing. Here, however, we do not inquire into the properties peculiar to the angels as opposed to souls, but into the essential differences by which they differ from each other specifically, which we contend are in no way to be inferred from the power of discoursing or not discoursing.

Third conclusion. — The specific distinction of the angels from the rational soul is not to be sought from their greater or lesser inclination and propensity to the good. This is against Alexander of Hales, who in quest. 20, memb. 5 derives the difference of both the angelic and the human nature from the fact that the angel is a free substance vertible immutably, but the soul is vertible mutably.

For God (he says) is a free essence invertible into good and evil: but the angel and the rational soul is a free essence vertible into either: but in this they differ essentially, because the angelic understanding, where it is turned to good or evil, is determined to it by its nature, and therefore the evil angel is not capable of penitence, because he is not avertible from evil: but the rational soul, vertible into good and evil, after its conversion to either always remains free, and therefore is convertible and capable of penitence.

But to this argument, however excellent, Alexander himself does not trust, for he adds: This is said without prejudice to the more probable opinion: for if anyone in the theological order could find a more convenient difference, one must rest: since things of this kind are of the highest speculation. Therefore this reason does not better indicate the specific difference of the angel from the rational soul than the preceding ones; since that vertibility or invertibility, or mutable or immutable and unvaried adherence of the will to some object or purpose, follows only upon the operation of the intellect and will of the angel and the soul; and therefore it presupposes their faculties and essences as diverse: therefore another reason must be sought a priori for the specific distinction of the angel from the soul, which will be opened up by

Fourth conclusion. — The angel and the rational soul differ specifically from their own natures, namely because the angel is of a complete nature and the soul of an incomplete nature. So the Doctor in the place cited number 4, where he says:

I say that because the angel is such a nature to itself, and the soul such a nature to itself, therefore they are first distinguished in > species: not indeed as two species, but as species and part of a species; and yet it itself is the first reason for distinguishing its own species (of which it is a part) from the angel; and therefore the first reason of specific distinction on the part of its own species is itself.

As if he should say that that which has a species in itself cannot be of the same species as that which has not a species in itself, but is a part of a species: but the angel has a species by himself, whereas the soul is only a part of the human species, and is the reason or formal cause why man is specifically distinguished from the angel: for the human body is indeed the material cause of this distinction; but the soul is its formal cause and the more principal one; since it is the more excellent constitutive part of man, it is likewise the most principal distinctive part of him.

Therefore it is impossible that the soul should be of the same species as the angel; but it differs from him as a part of a species from a species.

And so the primary reason of their distinction is to be sought from the fact that the soul is an incomplete nature and the angel a complete nature. — Then, the specific distinction of the angels from the rational soul is to be sought precisely from this, that, this being posited, even though the other things are not understood, they are truly perceived to be of diverse species: but with the character of a complete nature posited in the angels, and of an incomplete nature in souls, they are sufficiently understood to differ specifically, even if unitability or non-unitability etc. is not perceived: therefore the primary reason of their specific distinction is to be sought from the concept of a complete or incomplete nature. The major is evident. The minor is proved: for whether the angel and the soul are conceived intuitively or abstractively, it is certain that he who perceives the angels to be complete natures, saying no order of them to another with which they constitute some whole, truly perceives them to differ specifically from the soul, which by its nature is incomplete, and says that it has a habitude to the body with which it constitutes man; even if he does not apprehend them to be discursive or non-discursive etc. Therefore the primary reason of their distinction is derived from the concept of a complete or incomplete nature.

Which is certainly confirmed by the example of the angels themselves, who, as the Princes of Theology agree, are distinguished among themselves specifically, and consequently have faculties and powers specifically distinct; for they cannot be distinguished specifically unless they have distinct properties proceeding from diverse specific differences. But those properties cannot be assigned which could belong to one and not to the other, unless their intellect and mode of understanding be specifically distinct. For what other faculties can be thought in an angel than intellect and will? Therefore even if angelic intellects are occupied about the same object, nevertheless they are truly specifically distinct; much more are they specifically distinguished from the human, for the agreement of the intellect of one angel with the human is less than with the intellect of another angel.

— Finally, that must be said the primary reason of either distinction, from which arise properties specifically distinct: but the diverse properties of the angels and of souls arise from the fact that the soul is an incomplete nature, but the angels a complete nature; for from that it follows that the soul is unitable to a body, whereas the angel is not unitable to it: therefore etc.

— And so spiritual substance taken generically is immediately divided into a spiritual substance complete in the manner of a substantial and spiritual act existing per se integrally and subsisting, and into a spiritual substance incomplete in the manner of a form ordered to the other part, that is, to the human body, and consequently not existing integrally nor subsisting. The first species is the angel; the second is the soul. The first is called a complete spirit in the manner of act: the second an incomplete spirit in the manner of potency; for to be a form, since it demands matter, is as it were something potential: whence the angel can be called act in act, but the soul act in potency.

Which the Doctor most clearly signifies in the words praised above, when he says num. 5:

The angel is such a nature to itself, and the soul such a nature to itself, that is, such a spiritual substance, therefore they are first distinguished in species, not indeed as two species, but as species and part of a species: because the soul is not properly a species, but a part of a species: as if he should say: the angelic nature constitutes an integral species, because it is a complete act.

You will say 1. If these things are so, it follows from this that the opinion of the Subtle Doctor in this matter coincides with the opinion of St. Bonaventure, which he himself impugns. For what else is the unitability of the soul with the body than that character of an incomplete spiritual substance? And what else is that non-unitability in the angel than the character of a complete being? For that reason indeed the soul is said to be unitable to a body, because it is an incomplete substance and a form orderable to matter; and conversely it is an incomplete substance because it is unitable with the body.

I answer. by denying this inference: for it is one thing to be an incomplete substance, and another to be unitable to a body: since the character of an incomplete substance is precisely something absolute, and is attended to in the order to itself; but the character of unitability is something relative, and is attended to by the order to another to which it is unitable. Then the character of unitable follows the character of incomplete, for it presupposes the unitable thing already constituted in its being, and consequently distinct in its being; for a form is first conceived to have entitative being and in itself, before it is conceived to be ordered to another. Finally, since the character of non-unitable is a negation, it cannot be constitutive and distinctive of the angelic nature. Therefore neither can unitability be the constitutive and distinctive character of the soul. Since, then, the angel and the soul are distinct species of spiritual substance, they ought to have opposite differences and mutually diametrically opposed. It is added that unitability is either the non-repugnance that the soul be united to another, and thus it is something negative; or an inclination to union, and thus it presupposes a thing constituted. But the soul does not constitute an integral species, although it is the first reason of specific distinction in man, whom it constitutes with the human body. — Therefore, according to the mind of the Doctor, the primary reason of the specific distinction between the angelic and human nature is that one is a complete spiritual substance, the other an incomplete one. To which degree of spiritual substance, then, belong the intellective and volitive character, or intellect and will, which are the faculties and powers of that spiritual substance itself, and as it were properties proceeding from that substance and predicable of it in quale. For if it be asked of what kind that spiritual substance is, it is fittingly answered that it is a substantial spiritual act, intellective and volitive.

You will say 2. The angel and the soul are equals in nature: therefore they are of the same species. The consequence is evident; for things that differ specifically have a diverse nature, and therefore are not equals in nature. The antecedent is proved from St. Augustine, book 3 De Libero Arbitrio, where he says that rational souls are unequal in office to the superior powers, but equal in nature: therefore etc.

I deny the antecedent. and to its proof I say that St. Augustine said the angel and the soul are equals in nature, not by respect to the predicates by which they are constituted, but by order to the beatitude to which they are ordered: both because one has more of beatitude from his nature than another: then because although they are not of the same natural perfection, they can nevertheless have equal beatitude: finally because they have the same beatific object in which alone they can rest and be satiated; and therefore by their nature they are equally ordered to seeing and loving God.

You will say 3. The operations and powers of the angel and of the rational soul are of the same species: therefore likewise the angel and the soul do not differ in species. The sequence is evident, for the powers and operations follow the natures of the things of which they are: for operating follows being, not only according to the order of existence, but also according to the character of essence and the dignity of entity.

The Doctor answers num. 6. in two ways: first indeed that if the angel and the soul are considered absolutely and according to their own natures, they truly differ in species; nevertheless the intellect and intellection of the angel ought not on that account to be specifically distinguished from the intellect and intellection of the soul; for it does not involve (he says) that things may differ in some species according to nature, but not according to power and operation; since the soul of an ox and of an eagle differ specifically from each other, nevertheless the visual power and vision of the ox does not differ in species from the vision and visual power of the eagle while they are occupied about the Sun, e. g., because they are about the same object. Hence it is possible that containers differ in some way, although the contents do not differ from each other; for the animal in man and brute is the same, although brute and man differ specifically.

He answers, second, that the intellectual power of the angel and of the soul differ in species on the part of the foundation, but not on the part of the object while they are occupied about the same object, and thus acts can be diverse when they proceed from diverse natures and foundations of the powers; although they are of the same species inasmuch as they depend on the objects about which they are occupied; and therefore the intellection of the angel and of man can be said to be of the same species on the part of the object, but diverse on the part of the foundation. But since the diversity on the part of the foundation is a diversity simpliciter; whereas the identity on the part of the object is not an identity simpliciter, but secundum quid; for whatever difference suffices to distinguish, but not whatever identity suffices for the perfect identity of things: hence it must be said that the intellection of the angel and of man, even about the same object, and likewise their intellectual powers, differ specifically.

You will say 4. If the angel and the soul were of diverse species, it would follow that every angel is more perfect than any soul, and consequently that the capacity of any angel with respect to beatitude would be greater than the capacity of any soul: but beatitude satiates the whole capacity of nature: therefore greater beatitude ought to be given to the greater capacity: and consequently the beatitude of any angel would be greater than the beatitude of any man; which yet the Theologians, and indeed the holy Fathers, affirm to be false.

The Doctor answers. by conceding both consequences and denying the subsumption; for beatitude (he says) is not given with proportion to nature chiefly, but to merits; and consequently it does not satiate the whole natural capacity of the soul or the angel, because they could have greater beatitude, if namely they had ampler merits, although they obtained an equal natural capacity. The second consequence could also be denied; for the angel could have a greater natural perfection, although he did not have a greater capacity for beatitude.

The most wise son of Sirach, marveling, once said, Eccli. 1. The sand of the sea, and the drops of rain, and the days of the world, who has numbered them? But certainly the human mind must labor under greater ignorance in defining the vast and stupendous multitude of the angels: for the Sage says, c. 9. If it is difficult for us to estimate the things that are on earth, and we find with labor the things that are before us, who shall investigate the things that are in heaven? Since, however, deferring to the other theologians, we have undertaken to unfold the nature, multitude, order, operation, and excellence of the angels, therefore, their nature having been declared as far as was permitted, now their number must be investigated, and their diverse order delineated. Wherefore three things are to be determined in the present Article: First, whether the immense multitude of the angels is, and what it is: Second, how they differ from one another: Third, what their order is, and of what sort.

Note 1. That the angels are of the greatest number, and of an immense and utterly astonishing multitude, is taught everywhere in the Scriptures; thus Daniel 7, cap.: Thousands upon thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him: Apocalypse 5: I heard the voice of many angels, and their number was thousands upon thousands: and Hebrews 12: You have come to the company of many thousands of angels; therefore it is an established truth that the multitude of the angels is immense and very great.

— Now it was most fitting that the angels be created in the greatest number: both in order that God might communicate himself most liberally to the more perfect creatures, and also in order that he might show forth his omnipotence the more, creating so many spirits at once, and so noble, in a single instant: which indeed S. Chrysostom, observing, hom. 2 De Incompre. says: There are ten thousand times ten thousand angels above, and hundreds of thousands of archangels: likewise Thrones, and Dominations, and Principalities, and Powers, and infinite peoples of bodiless Virtues, and countless tribes; and yet he founded all these Virtues with such ease as no speech can attain. Another most congruent reason is added, namely that it befits the supreme Prince and most powerful Emperor to have a most numerous family and an abundant army; for Prov. 14: In the multitude of the people is the glory of the king, and in the smallness of the folk is the ignominy of the prince: but God is the greatest King, namely King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Apoc.: therefore it befitted him to have very many angels assisting him.

Note 2. The number of the angels can be inquired into in two ways: First absolutely, and precisely: Second comparatively, namely whether it is greater than the whole multitude of men, or even than all corporeal substances. It is certain, however, that the number of the angels cannot be designated by us absolutely and precisely. For Scripture, when with the words related above it posits a certain number of angels, does not speak of all, the good equally with the bad, and it posits a determinate number for the indeterminate, as the Interpreters and holy Fathers acknowledge there: but no other certain tradition is brought forward: indeed the holy Fathers themselves confess that that number is precisely unknown to us, and so immense that, with respect to us, it can be called innumerable and infinite, as will appear below: there remains, then, to investigate whether a determinate number of the angels can be known from a comparison made, both with men and with the other created beings.

Note 3. Concerning this determination, the opinion of Authors is varied and manifold. For there are those who think the angels are infinite in number: some wish them to be more numerous than all corporeal creatures, considered both in species and in individuals. The Author of the questions to Antiochus (which exist among the works of Athanasius) reports also that some think the angels are related to men as ninety-nine to one, from the parable of the hundred sheep: others as nine to one, according to the other parable of the ten drachmas; others finally think both are equal in number. There are also those who judge that the elect men unto eternal felicity will be as many as the angels who fell. But what seems truer to us in so manifold and doubtful an opinion, let us set forth distinctly: three things are to be determined in this Question: First, whether the number of the angels is truly infinite: Second, whether there are more angels than all corporeal things, considered both in species and in individuals: Third finally, whether they exceed at least the number of men.

First conclusion. — The angels are not infinite in number. This is the common opinion among Theologians, and Guillaume of Paris proves it admirably, part 2 of the second part de Universo cap. 17, from the fact that the number of created things must necessarily be determined and limited.

First indeed (he says) determination itself is so essential to number that by every addition or diminution a new species of it is constituted. For example, if you add unity to three, another number than three is constituted, and of another species, namely four: but if you take unity away from it, another number, and of another species, remains from it, namely two. This determination, therefore, which I called essential, forbids every number to receive more and less, and greatness and smallness. Second, this determination constitutes each of the numbers in its own species. Wherefore where determination is changed, the species of any number whatever is changed, that is, it is another a priori: because therefore it is necessary that each of the numbers be in some species of number, or under some one, as an individual: it is necessary that each of the numbers be dete>rmined, and limited, and be two or three or one of the other determinate numbers: wherefore it is impossible by every mode that any number be infinite. Third, if the number of substances of this kind were infinite, since it would be a number, it would of necessity be either even or odd: but if it were even, it would have a half, which would be either finite or infinite: if finite, therefore the whole number would be finite, since it would be an aggregate of finite parts: if it were infinite, it would not be less than its whole, since no number could be found or even thought which would be exceeded by its whole. Fourth, everything that receives addition upon itself is finite and terminated by addition of this kind, since the whole is short of it, having nothing at all beyond. Therefore, since every number receives the addition of unity upon itself, or even of a number of another species, it is necessary that every number be finite. Wherefore it is impossible that this number be infinite. Fifth, it is necessary that every number, and every measure, be quantity in genus; but quantity is everything making how much, and number is that making how many; therefore the whole company of substances of this kind is in number how much, and in number how many, that is, some definite amount; just as there is no one of whom it is not possible to assign or answer who, nor what sort, nor of what kind, of whom it is not possible to assign and answer the inquirer of what kind he is. Therefore, since you cannot assign or answer concerning the whole company or the totality of the substances of which we treat, how much it is in number, or how many it is: it is manifest there is no number of substances of this kind: therefore the number is not infinite. Sixth, the Creator formed all things in weight, number, and measure: but those things which are in number are numerable, and those things which are numerable are in some determinate number; for it is not intelligible that some things be in number and yet be innumerable.

Therefore, since an infinite number is repugnant, it is also repugnant that created things be infinite in number. Add that an infinite multitude of angels can be urged neither from holy Scripture, nor from the SS. Fathers, nor from any reason.

You will say 1. Job cap. 25 says: is there any number of his soldiers? As if to say: there is no number of his soldiers, namely of the angels, whom he therefore calls the soldiers of God, because for the glory of God and the salvation of men they fight against the Demons from the time when the great battle was made in heaven by the faithful Angels against the foes: therefore, since the number of the angels is not determined, it must necessarily be judged infinite.

I distinguish the antecedent. The number of the angels is not determined with respect to us, I concede: with respect to God, I deny; for, says S. Gregory the Great on the aforesaid text of Job, In the cognition of human reason there is no number of the supernal spirits, because it knows not how great is that company of the invisible army; and lib. 27 Moral. cap. 9, comparing the aforesaid text of Daniel with what was said above, he adds: The number of supernal citizens is infinite, and it is defined, and expressed: that he who is numerable to God may be shown to be innumerable to men. I confess, therefore, that only God can know that immense number of angels determinately, and therefore it appears to us as if infinite, as it is also not rarely named by the SS. Fathers; although truly in itself it is determinate and finite.

You will say 2. Very many of the sacred Doctors judge the number of the angels to be infinite, and in no way able to be detected by men wayfarers. So especially Origen lib. 1 De Principiis, cap. 5, where, weighing this text of the Apostle to the Ephesians 1, vers. 21: above every name that is named not only in this age, but also in the future, after he had recalled the orders of angels declared by the Apostle, he adds:

From this, namely, he shows, he says, that there are certain ones besides these which he recalled, which are indeed commemorated in this age, yet were not enumerated by him, perhaps not understood by anyone else: and that there are others which indeed are not named in this age, yet will be named.

Nor did Origen alone persuade himself of this besides those orders of angels which are named in Scripture, that there are others infinite in number and unknown to men. For Chrysostom wrote, homil. 4 De Incompr.: For there are, there are also other virtues whose names even we do not know. Which he professes shortly after to gather from the above-remembered place of Paul to the Ephesians, and he repeats the same in Orat. 5 contra Anomoeos, and Homil. 3 on the epistle to the Eph. Theodoret, on the same place of his epistle, agree with Chrysostom, and Oecumenius and Theophylactus.

I answer. that the aforesaid writers were indeed of that opinion that they thought there were other orders of angels besides those declared in holy Scripture, that it did not yet sufficiently plainly appear, as it now appears among Theologians, the series and distribution of the angels into three hierarchies and nine orders, although truly they judged there to be far more angels than are those whose characters, offices and names become known to us. Yet from this it is not permitted to gather that they thought the angels to be infinite in number; for it is one thing to assert the number of some things to be immense and greater than mortals can detect, another thing that it be infinite.

You will say 3. If the number of the angels were finite, especially since limited and determinate, it would have been so either on the part of God the creator, or on the part of the creatable angel, or from both: but from neither side does it seem necessary that the angels ought to have been produced in a certain and determinate number. Not indeed on the part of the Creator; for this would come about either because he could not, or because he would not produce the angels in infinite number: but neither seems rightly to be asserted;

for none (says Guillaume praised above) was so weak and brief of intellect who has thought upon the virtue and power of the Creator, but that it is itself in the ultimacy both of amplitude, and of fortitude, and of liberty; and on account of the ultimacy of fortitude unthinkably able toward that which it does not will, and unprohibitable by that which it wills, likewise unfatiguable and undefectible. Also that very constriction or determination does not come from the part of his goodness; for since creation of many was equally easy to him as of few of such substances, and of infinite as of finite, who imposed this end upon the Creator? who so limited him and made him stand in a finite number? who prohibited him from being extended into infinity? who, of even the least largess, if he could give great things with the same facility as small, and many as few, and infinite as finite, especially since he could laudably give all things, restricted and narrowed himself to finite goods? How much more strongly, therefore, could the largess of the Creator not give in some number or even quantity of giftable things? Nor can that limitation and determination be demanded from the part of the angels, since among them there would be no contrariety or opposition by which they might impede one another in any way. For there is not among them, as among corporeal substances, the straitness of place, by which it comes about that they expel one another.

— The same Guillaume answers, that this indeed comes not from the part of the Creator, but of the creature:

just as (he says) virtue or power did not fail the Creator, so that he could create an infinite world, but power failed the world, by whose defect it could not be created infinite; for there failed it the receptibility of infinite magnitude. For some body cannot be of infinite magnitude, therefore the corporeal world, as a body, or aggregate of corporeals, had need to be finite. Therefore the divine power was not straitened, so that it could not bestow on it a greater magnitude. But when it saw that it could not receive an infinite one, it provided for it a finite one most congruent to its nature, which would suffice to contain all other bodies, and hold them together among themselves. So also it provided for all other corporeal natures quantities most congruent to their natures. For not without cause did he will the ant to be smaller than the Elephant, and the fly so far from the magnitude of the crane or eagle. If however an infinite multitude cannot be, that finition was from the part of the multitude: wherefore the largess and goodness of the Creator stood in a determinate number, since it could not be indeterminate or infinite.

Second conclusion. — The angels are more numerous in number than the corporeal species, and the individuals of the more excellent species: but they do not seem to be so many as the individuals of the less noble corporeal species. This seems the more probable as regards each part.

The first part holy Dionysius indicates cap. 14 De Coelesti Hierarchia, where he says:

Many are the blessed armies of the heavenly minds, which surpass and pass over the weak and contracted measure of the corporeal numbers which we use, and are knowingly defined by their sole summit and celestial intelligence, and science, which is granted to them most abundantly by the Divinity, and by the cause of infinite cognition, which at once, after the manner of the nature of all things surpassing the principle, is the principle and deficient cause of essence, and the containing and embracing force of determination.

And Dionysius adds there that Scripture is wont to set forth the number of the angels by the greatest numbers repeated in themselves, and by Myriads of Myriads. Aeneas Gazaeus subscribes, tome 2 biblioth. Graec., whose words in Theophrastus are of this kind:

Yet the universe of heaven is full of intelligible virtues, full are the earth, the sea, and all things under the earth, and as one of our Wise men said, nothing is empty, not even so little as that a blade of grain and a hair could be inserted. So much so that even if God should will to prolong the life of men to thousands of years of ten, still I do not think the souls of men will be equal in number to the multitude of angels and demons.

It is proved also by theological reason: for since the perfection of the Universe was chiefly intended by God in the creation of things, the more perfect some things are, the greater excess were they created in. Wherefore just as God founded the incorruptible and more perfect heavenly bodies in that mode of being, in a mass almost infinitely greater than sublunary things, so he created the angels incorruptibly in a far greater quantity: not indeed continuous, but discrete, that is, in a greater number than all the rest inferior to them.

The second part also stands; for who would bring himself to believe the angels to be more numerous than all the sands of the sea, the atoms of the air, the leaves of herbs and trees, gnats, flies, ants, and all the fish of rivers and sea, and likewise all the grains of wheat, barley, and of all legumes, whose immense number verges almost into infinity?

Third conclusion. — It is probable that the number of the angels exceeds the multitude of men, who are, have been, and are to come forth.

It is first proved from that parable of the good Shepherd, who, leaving ninety-nine sheep, went to seek one lost, and carries it found on his shoulders, as we read Luke 15. For that unique sheep is said to be human nature: but the remaining ninety-nine the angels. So S. Hilary on Matthew:

The sheep, one, (he says) is to be understood as man, and under one man the whole universality is to be understood: but in the error of one Adam the whole race of men went astray: therefore the ninety-nine not erring are to be reckoned the multitude of the heavenly angels, for whom there is joy in Heaven, and care of human salvation.

S. Ambrose subscribes, lib. 7 on cap. 15 of Luke:

Rich therefore is the shepherd (he says) of whom we all are the hundredth portion, who has flocks of angels, archangels, dominations, powers, thrones, and others innumerable, which he left in the mountains, who, since they are rational, rejoice not unworthily in the redemption of men.

— Cyril of Jerusalem also, cath. 15, gathers the same not only from that parable, but uses moreover this argument, that from the magnitude of a place the multitude of inhabitants ought to be estimated: but the whole earth is like a point in the middle of one heaven, in which the angels dwell:

For according to the magnitude of places (he says) the dwelling of men is to be reckoned, that if this our earth is as a center in the midst of heaven, and has so great a multitude, how great a multitude will the heaven have, which surrounds the earth, and the heaven of heavens? They surely have an immense multitude.

Another reason is also supported, sought from the common opinion of Theologians affirming that a guardian angel from the lowest order is deputed by God to each man; so that each of the men who have been from the beginning of the world and are to exist unto the end has had, or will have, his own peculiar angel; indeed we read in the Revelations of S. Bridget lib. 4. cap. 11. that there are so many S. Angels in that lowest order, that from it more than ten could be deputed to each man in guardianship. Since, however, there are more angels in the higher orders, there is no doubt that all of them far exceed the number of men.

You will say. The men to be saved are as many as the evil angels, because there will be as many blessed men as angels fell, who were to repair their ruin by an equal number: but it stands that a third part of the angels fell, when the Dragon drew the third part of the stars, Apoc. 12. but men, who will be gifted with beatitude, are not the third part of men, since Many are called, but few chosen: therefore there seem to be more men than angels; since the men to be damned are far more than those to be saved, who will equal the third part of the angels.

I answer first. that it is false that men were destined to salvation only from the accident of the ruin of the angels, and not per se; and therefore to be saved precisely in that same number.

Secondly. it is uncertain whether those seats of the angels are to be restored by men only in the same number, and according to the same proportion. For perhaps (says S. Augustinus in the Enchiridion c. 29.) that heavenly city will not be defrauded of the numerosity of its citizens, but will perhaps reign with even richer abundance. Because we do not know how great is the number either of the men to be saved, or of the evil angels.

Thirdly finally I say. it is uncertain whether Lucifer precisely drew the third part of the angels: for Apoc. 12. a certain number is posited for the uncertain. And the literal sense is about Antichrist, about to lead into error and perdition a great part of the faithful, even the more learned and more excellent, who shine like stars in the firmament of the Church, as the Interpreters of the cited chapter teach, especially Richard 1 t. on Apoc., our Lyranus on the same place, and very many Recentiores after them.

You will say 2. There are as many men as angels: therefore the angels do not exceed the multitude of men. The antecedent is proved from that of Deuteronomy 32: He established the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the angels of God, as the seventy Interpreters read: for instead of that which is in the Vulgate According to the number of the sons of Israel they read sons of God, by whom the angels can be understood, so that God established the number of the multiplication of men according to the number of the angels.

I answer. that the reading of the Vulgate is to be preferred, as is gathered from the Hebrew over against the seventy interpreters, as Origen and others testify. And the sense is that God, when he confounded the tongues at Babylon, and scattered men into various parts of the earth, already then destined the land of Canaan to the sons of Israel for a sufficient and commodious dwelling: then also because although it may be read properly, According to the number of the sons of God: from this the ancient Fathers gather only that human Kingdoms and Empires are divine according to the number of the angels, who were deputed to their guardianship, as Theodoret expounds Orat. 10. on Daniel around those words; The prince of the kingdom of the Persians resisted me, etc. And according to the same sense Clement of Alexandria said lib. 7 Strom. a little from the beginning: There are angels distributed through the Nations by divine and ancient command.

Note 1. From the Doctor Subtilis we find that in any created thing there is a twofold difference, namely specific and individual. The first is between those things which differ essentially, as between man and horse, and this difference is found only between distinct species, or individuals of different species: also between those things which agree neither in species nor in proximate genus, as between man and whiteness. The second is between two individuals, as between two men, or between two stones, and universally between those things which agree with one another in the most special species, each of which is multiplied through individual differences. But from whom this numerical difference is to be sought, Authors disagree among themselves in various ways, as is evident from our Logic q. 3. De differentia individuali: for some derive it from the existence of the thing; some, with S. Thomas, from matter, whether affected by quantity and other accidents, or considered only in itself; others think differently; but the Doctor Subtilis in 2. distinct. 3. teaches that this difference is some positive entity, but formally indistinct from the nature which it individuates.

Note 2. That although an angel is not physically composed of matter and form, nor of quantitative parts; nevertheless he is truly composed metaphysically of act and potency, whether of genus and difference, or of nature and supposit. For no substance besides the divine nature is pure act; for this belongs to God alone on account of his supreme singularity and necessity of being, since it constitutes him in ultimate actuality and unity: hence the divine essence is not determinable, nor contractible to many individuals, as specific natures are in created things; whence it involves a contradiction for it to be conceived as indifferent to several gods. But whether the angelic nature is likewise so singular that it cannot be multiplied into various individuals is disputed among theologians.

Note 3. Concerning the present Question there are three opinions of theologians. The first is that of S. Thomas, quaest. 50. art. 4. and in q. de spiritualibus creaturis art. 8., of Cajetan De ente, et essentia c. 5. q. 9., and of others affirming that all angels differ from one another in species: and that it is impossible for there to be many angels distinct in number alone. Impossible, I say, either absolutely and simply, as Cajetan and others cited by him hold, or by ordinary power, which seems to be the view of S. Thomas in Opusculo 16. The second, contrary to the former, wills that all differ in number alone. The third opinion, intermediate between the preceding ones, affirms that angels differ partly in species, partly in number alone.

First conclusion. — Specific distinction must be admitted between the angels.

It is proved first from S. Dionysius c. 5. De Coelesti Hierarchia, where he says: The traditions of the holy volumes declare that the superior substances differ from one another in degrees of loftiness. But gradual difference at least signifies specific diversity: for many individuals differing in number alone do not differ from one another by different degrees, or loftiness of degrees: therefore from S. Dionysius there can be specific distinction among the angels.

Alensis proves this conclusion in 2. Quaest. 20. membr. 6.:

The Angels of the supreme Hierarchy differ more with respect to those who are in the lowest than they do from those who are in the supreme Hierarchy: but those who are in the same Hierarchy are either specifically the same, or the same in genus, and they differ in species; therefore the Angels who are in the higher Hierarchy, since they differ more from those who are in the lowest, differ in species. Likewise those who are in the Seraphic order agree more among themselves than they agree with those who are of the order of Cherubim or Thrones: therefore since those who are of the order of Seraphim agree among themselves in species, and differ according to number, or agree according to genus, and differ in species; so those who are of the order of Seraphim differ from those who are of the order of Cherubim. Moreover orders are distinguished according to offices; but offices are different in genus, or in species: therefore also the Angels.

It is proved besides: that above all must be asserted to have been established by God which most redounds to the commendation of his divine power and wisdom, and to the beauty of the Universe, and which does not conflict with its own nature: but that there are many angels distinct in species nowise conflicts, and this especially tends to the commendation of God and the ornament of the Universe, therefore etc. The minor is proved as to the first part, namely that it does not conflict; for that repugnance would have to be derived either from the side of God, or from the side of the angel: but none can be devised on the side of God, since God is infinite in the respect of spiritual substance, just as in every other perfection: therefore in such a respect he is participable and imitable in infinite variety; and consequently it is fitting that he be participated by several species of spiritual substance: add that it seems incredible that so great a variety and multitude of species could have been created in bodily things, while only a single one in the complete spiritual degree. Nor does it conflict on the side of the angels; for this repugnance, if there were any, would have to be derived from the fact that it cannot be explained what would be that specific diversity of one angel from another: but this reason is nil, for they can easily be conceived to have specific differences by which they are distinguished from one another: for just as they differ more than specifically both from God and from the rational soul — inasmuch as it is surpassed by God in substantial intellective perfection more than specifically, and itself exceeds rational souls even insofar as they are spiritual and intellectual — so others can exceed others specifically in the complete intellectual degree, and consequently in operation, so that they understand more things at once, and more nobly and more perfectly: whence also they have ampler species, whether infused or acquired, and consequently excel in a greater faculty of willing and operating. Which indeed is confirmed by the fact that theologians everywhere teach with S. Damascenus lib. 2. De Fide c. 3., that the angels received grace proportionate to their natural endowments, namely that according to the differences of their natures God bestowed on them greater or lesser gifts. This also contributes greatly to the beauty of the Universe, for just as the diversity of corporeal species adorns the visible and sensible world in a wondrous manner, so the variety of spiritual substances illumines the spiritual and intellectual world.

You will say 1. Very many Holy Fathers affirm that the angels are of the same nature and species: thus Athanasius, or whoever is the Author of the Quaestiones ad Antiochum q. 3., affirms that the essence of the angels is the same as that of the demons, just as of men: but men do not differ in species: therefore neither do the angels. Damascenus subscribes, lib. De Decretis cap. 1., Anselmus lib. 2. Cur Deus homo, cap. 21. And Basilius lib. 3. Contra Eunomium, saying: Priority in the Persons does not impede the unity of essence: for some Angels are prior to others, and yet they are of the same essence.

I answer. The Holy Fathers by the name of essence, nature, or species understand the grade of a subaltern species, namely spirituality and intellectualism, in which all the angels agree univocally; on which account all corporeal creatures can be said to be of the same nature, for they plainly have the common respect of body and matter.

You will say 2. All rational souls are of the same species: therefore also all angels. The consequence seems excellent from parity of reason; for just as rational souls agree in the degree of rationality, so all angels agree in the degree of pure spirituality and intellectualism.

I deny the parity, and this reason of disparity can be brought forward: because rational souls, being forms ordered by their nature to inform a body so as with it to constitute man, who is of himself mortal; therefore, lest the Universe should be deprived of some whole species, or of several, by the death of one man or another, the whole multitude of men had to be of one and the same species. But it is not thus with the angels, since each one by his nature is incorruptible, and has no need for his conservation of multiplication, or any propagation of individuals within his own lowest species; hence it is that the angels could be of diverse species.

You will say 3. The whole distinction which is established between the angels appears to us only from the very gifts granted by God; or from the offices to which they are deputed: but these can subsist in angels of the same nature and species: therefore no specific distinction seems to exist between them.

I answer. Indeed the distinction of the angels appears and is gathered from those assigned headings a posteriori and as it were through a certain extrinsic locus: but far better is that specific diversity of the angels intimated to us by those reasons designated above by us.

Second conclusion. — It is more probable that the angels are many of the same species, differing in number alone.

This is the opinion of the Doctor [Scotus], and of nearly all theologians, excepting a few Thomists, who defend the contrary with Cajetan. The Seraphic Doctor had taught it before in dist. 3. first part of the distinction, art. 2. quaest. 1., where he says:

certain persons said, that in the Angels there is personal distinction, but never pure; rather there are as many species as individuals; they say the like concerning the luminaries. But although this has probability in heavenly bodies, yet it does not seem reasonable in spirits, that none should communicate with another in spiritual and specific nature: for as is made known by Scripture, many Angels are ordained to the same office, and seem to have the same common operation: but neither by Scripture, nor by the sayings of the Saints, nor by their offices is so great a diversity made known: therefore it seems nothing but presumption to say this, especially since no compelling reason appears at hand. There is another position, sober and catholic, which places distinction in the Angels as regards personality only, either in all, or in some.

S. Thomas also subscribes, Opusc. 16. De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas, where he says:

Thus therefore the intellect, if it were naturally one for all, since it would not have a natural cause of multiplication, could nevertheless obtain multiplicity from a supernatural cause, nor would there be involved an implication of contradiction: which we say not so much on account of the matter proposed, but rather lest this form of arguing be extended to other things: for thus they could conclude, that God cannot make the dead rise again, and that the blind be restored to sight.

Nor is it valid to reply with Goneto, that the intent of the Angelic Doctor in the aforesaid place is only that it does not conflict with an intellectual nature, from the fact that it is intellectual, to be multiplied, provided it say an order to matter: but about the angels, he says, he treats nothing there, because the repugnance of their multiplication arises not from the intellectual nature, from the fact that it is immaterial and incorporeal, but from the fact that it is altogether separate and unreceptive, such that it includes neither matter nor says an order to it. This reply, I say, is naught: since the Angelic Doctor pronounces absolutely, that if an intellectual substance did not have a natural cause of multiplication, it could nevertheless obtain multiplication from a supernatural cause. That is, even though it did not say an order to matter, which in his mind is the natural cause of individuation, it could nevertheless by supernatural power be multiplied into number, because this implies no contradiction: but whatever does not imply a contradiction can be done by God. Add that in the year 1325, by the sacred Faculty of Paris, with Stephen the Bishop acting, the following articles were proscribed and condemned: 1. Because the intelligences have no matter, God cannot make many of the same species: 2. God cannot multiply individuals under one species without matter. 3. Forms do not receive division except according to matter. And deservedly indeed were the aforesaid three Articles proscribed: for nothing must be denied to divine power which involves no manifest contradiction; because every word is not impossible with God. Although however we do not perceive fully and evidently how those two Angels would be distinguished within the same species; nevertheless God knows how to do more things than we understand; for the Philosophers judge that from perfect and consummate privation there is no possible return to habit; but God has taught us that the dead can rise again, and the blind be restored to sight. The Philosophers also judge impossible that an accident can be without a subject, and that God should become man, that he should suffer etc.: nevertheless, though the philosophers clamor against it, God afterward accomplished all these things in deed.

The Doctor Subtilis proves the conclusion in the praised place number 3.: To no lowest species does it conflict that it be capable of being communicated to many: therefore neither will it conflict that it have beneath itself many inferior things distinct in number alone; and thereupon God will be able to produce many angels numerically distinct under the same ultimate (atoma) species. The consequence is evident: the antecedent is proved: if it conflicted with any lowest species to be communicated to many, this repugnance would arise either from the perfection, or from the imperfection of such a species: not from perfection, because communicability belongs to the nature or quiddity of God, which is nevertheless most perfectly perfect: not even from imperfection, because being communicated to many belongs to the lowest species of corporeal substance, which are nevertheless more imperfect than the lowest species of angelic nature: therefore it conflicts with no lowest species to be communicated to many; and consequently it will not conflict with the angelic one.

That the more recent Thomists may respond to this reason, they observe with Cajetan in Opusculo De ente, et essentia cap. 5. quaest. 9., that there is a threefold communicability of the lowest species or quiddity. The first is that which occurs with a limitation of it to a certain degree of its perfection, and is called the communicability of universal nature with respect to its inferiors. The second is that which occurs without limitation of the nature to a certain degree of its perfection, whereby the divine nature or quiddity is said to be communicable to three Persons. Finally the third is that which occurs through the assumption of some nature to hypostatic union, and thus human nature is said to be communicable to the three divine Persons, inasmuch namely as each one of them can assume it to hypostatic union. These things premised, they deny the antecedent, howeversoever it be taken of those three modes; for if in the first mode, it is false, because the divine essence is not communicable in the first mode. If in the second mode, it is also false, because no created lowest essence or quiddity, or species, is communicable in this mode. If finally the antecedent be understood of the third communicability, it is false also, as is evident from the example of the divine nature, which cannot be assumed by several supposits to hypostatic union.

Against this. the reasoning of the Doctor proceeds rightly; for it is founded on that maxim: Whatever belongs to the genus or predicate, belongs to the species or subject: for communicable in that antecedent is taken in common, and insofar as it is indifferent to those three modes: as if the Doctor were to say, every quiddity is communicable: the angelic nature is a quiddity: therefore it is communicable; which argument is excellent, because it is from the whole, as genus to species, for quiddity is the genus, and the angelic essence is one species of it: therefore the predicate which belongs to that genus, namely quiddity, ought to belong also to its species; from which it follows, that since the angelic nature is a quiddity, it is also communicable in one or other of those modes; but since it conflicts with it to be communicated in the first mode, from a sufficient division it follows that it is communicated in the second mode, or is communicable. For although from the superior to the inferior affirmatively the consequence does not hold; for it does not follow: it is an animal: therefore it is a man: yet it holds well from the superior descending to the inferior through distribution. For it follows excellently: Peter is an animal: therefore he is a man, or brute; but he is not a brute: therefore he is a man: so in the present case, the angelic nature, which is a species, is communicable to many: therefore either without division, or numerical distinction of itself, or with it: but not without division of itself numerical, because this belongs to the divine nature alone: therefore with division of itself numerical.

These things are confirmed: that some specific nature lack individuals and be incommunicable to another, either imports and connotes perfection or imperfection. If imperfection, this is not to be attributed to the angelic nature, most excellent of all created natures; if perfection, thence it would be licit to infer that the angelic nature is more perfect than the divine, because it would be more incommunicable. For the divine nature, although it is incommunicable to very many individuals, is nevertheless communicable to several persons. But the angelic nature would be communicable only to one person, and consequently would be more incommunicable than the divine. It is added that if a nature of an angelic species, (for instance), cherubim, be wholly at once and according to its every perfection in one single individual, suppose saint Michael or Gabriel, it will be of infinite perfection. But this consequence is absurd, therefore etc. The sequence is proved: because for this reason the Thomists deny the multiplication of individuals in the Angels from the fact that that multiplication would tend to infinity; for individuals with respect to the same species are interminated: since therefore Gabriel or Michael would have a nature corresponding to infinite individuals, hence it becomes manifest that he himself would also be equivalent to infinite Angels, since he would actually have the species which by its common notion ought to extend itself to infinite Angels.

But you will say: that reason concludes not at all; otherwise any individual whatever of another nature than the angelic, suppose the human, since it has the whole human nature infinitely multipliable, ought to be said to be of infinite perfection, because it would have a nature of infinite power in its communicability.

Against this. that response does not lighten the force of the argument, for there is a difference between an individual of human nature and of angelic nature, that the individual of human nature embrace in itself a nature which is not actually but only potentially multipliable to infinity, and consequently does not actually have its entire multipliability. But truly if the angelic nature be incommunicable to several individuals, the consequence is that the individual in which it resides contains the entire multipliability of it, and accordingly has multipliability to infinity. Since indeed the nature in that individual has all that which it would obtain in infinite individuals, if it were multipliable into several individuals.

The Doctor proves secondly: every nature which can be conceived under a universal aspect without contradiction is multipliable in number; for if it were of itself this particular thing, it would be repugnant to it to be conceived under a universal aspect, just as it is repugnant to the divine essence that it be conceived under a universal aspect, because the divine essence is of itself this particular thing: but every created nature can be conceived under a universal aspect without contradiction; because no created nature is of itself this particular thing, otherwise it could not be multiplied by God's absolute power, even specifically: therefore, etc. It is confirmed. For although the Sun, for example, be one in number within its species, nevertheless it is understood in the universal, since a definition is assigned of it, which would belong to other individuals of the Sun if such were given: therefore every created nature is multipliable in number.

The Thomists reply: that something can be called universal in two ways, namely either on the part of the thing, or on the part of the intellect: in the first way, when the thing which is said to be universal is really in many things, as animality in man and brute animal, or humanity in Peter and Paul: in the second way, when that thing is perceived by the intellect according to itself and apart from its being found in many things, but is only represented without individuating conditions, which are matter and quantity: these points premised, they say that the angelic nature cannot be conceived under a universal aspect in the first way, but only in the second way, because that angelic quiddity is understood only without individuating conditions, yet it is not found in several individuals: whence it has no foundation of universality in the first way: now that proposition's major is true in the first sense, but then the minor is false; while in the second sense the minor is true, but the major is false.

On the contrary: every created being is either universal and common, or particular, or an individual: but the quiddity of an angel is not of itself this particular thing and individual: therefore it is universal. The major is clear. The minor is proved: where there is not the reason and cause of individuation, there is no individuation, nor is such a thing individual: but in the quiddity of an angel, as the Thomists will have it, there is no principle of individuation: therefore that quiddity is not individual, nor of itself this particular thing: therefore it is universal. Moreover, if it were of itself this particular thing, it would be, like the divine essence, unplurifiable even by the divine power into more species, which is absurd. The consequence also is evident, since between the universal and the individual there is no middle ground, because the universal is that which is in many things and is said of many things; whereas the singular is said of only one thing, namely of itself. From this I infer that the quiddity of an angel is intelligible under a universal aspect not only on the part of the intellect but also on the part of the thing, because on the part of the thing it is not of itself this particular thing and individual: therefore it is universal, or common, and consequently multipliable into several things distinct in number. Next, (says Rada), Cajetan's distinction implies a contradiction, because it belongs to the notion of the universal precisely to be said of many things and to be in many things: therefore to divide the universal into that which is in many things and that to which it is repugnant to be in many things, is to divide the universal into itself and into its opposite.

It is confirmed. The intellect cannot truly apply the intention of universality to anything unless a foundation be found in the thing; otherwise indeed the second intention of species could be applied to a generic nature just as well as to a specific one, and the intention of genus to an individual just as well as to a genus: therefore it is necessary that something in the thing be the foundation whereby the intellect conceives the thing under a universal aspect: therefore when the intellect conceives the nature of the angel Michael, for example, under a common aspect, or one communicable to many, it finds a foundation in it, and can apply to it the second intention of species without contradiction and repugnance.

The Doctor proves thirdly: God can, after annihilating one angel, reproduce his species in another individual. Not in the same one who was before, because the same angel in number, once annihilated, cannot be reproduced, in the opinion of the Thomists, who assert that if the same soul in number did not remain incorrupt, but the soul were destroyed together with the body, the same man in number could not rise again, as St. Thomas expressly teaches at dist. 44, art. 2, qu. 2, ad tertium of Book 4: therefore in an individual different from the one he had been before; and thereupon several individuals are possible under the same ultimate species of the angelic nature, at least by God's absolute power.

The Thomists answer: by conceding that God, after annihilating one angel, could reproduce his species in some individual: yet by denying that that individual would not be that very same one that had been annihilated, but different. To the proof brought forward to the contrary they say that although the same man in number, his rational soul having been annihilated, cannot rise again, he can nevertheless again be created or reproduced; and the reason for the disparity, they say, is because resurrection, unlike reproduction or repeated creation of a man, requires the existence of part of him, namely the rational soul.

On the contrary, first: the Subtle Doctor argues ad hominem against St. Thomas, namely that reproduction of anything cannot take place unless some part of it subsisted incorrupt; but if an angel ceased to be, since no part of him would subsist incorrupt, God could not reproduce the same one: he ought therefore to create another distinct from him in number: and thus it would be true that the same specific nature would be common to two angels distinct in number. Next, either God can create another angel of the same species as Gabriel, or he cannot: if so, we have our point; if not, then against it, God can do whatever involves no contradiction: but that two angels should be of the same species involves no contradiction: therefore, etc. The assumption is proved: if there were a contradiction, it would arise from the fact that numerical difference would have to be sought from matter: but this is false: both because one angel differs from another angel not only in species but also in number: yet no angel has matter: therefore numerical difference in angels is not taken from matter; and also because rational souls separated from the body are distinguished in number, yet have no matter; and finally because two lights of glory, two beatific visions, two acts of the angelic intellect or will tending in like manner toward the same object, and likewise two supernatural habits of faith, or hope, or charity, differ in number, and yet lack matter.

The Thomists reply: that although those things do not consist of matter, they nonetheless connote it and refer to it: for rational souls connote an order to the different bodies which they inform, while spiritual accidents connote the subject in which they inhere, which subject, though immaterial, nevertheless plays the role of matter inasmuch as it receives and sustains them.

On the contrary: if the numerical multipliability of the soul arose from its habitude to the body, it would follow that given that habitude, that multipliability would also be posited: but this is false, for if only one soul were possible, it would have a habitude to a body, and yet would not be distinguished in number from another. Next, the inclination toward the body is an aptitude of one thing to another: therefore it presupposes something prior, and accordingly the substance of the soul ought to be conceived as priorly distinct in number from another soul before it is conceived as bearing an order to a body. Finally, if souls are distinct in number because they can inform different bodies; so too can several angels exist in number, because they can be in different places and have diverse operations.

The Subtle Doctor confirms these arguments by the authority of St. Augustine in the Enchiridion, where he says:

It therefore pleased the Creator and Moderator of the universe, God, that since the whole multitude of angels had not perished by deserting God, that portion which had perished should remain in perpetual perdition: while that which had persevered with God, when the other deserted him, should rejoice in its most certain knowledge of its felicity ever to come. But that rational creature which was in men, since it had wholly perished through sins and punishments both original and personal, being repaired on that side, should supply what that diabolical fall had diminished from the angelic society.

From these words I argue thus: that totality and partiality among the angels cannot be saved except because some angelic species, with respect to all its individuals, had not perished totally, and thus some of every species fell, and some persevered: therefore in the same species not only can there be several individuals, but in fact several appear to exist.

You will say 1. It is repugnant that a simple form, separate from matter both actually and in aptitude, or which bears no order whatever to matter, be multiplied by number alone: such is the angelic nature: therefore it is repugnant that it be multiplied within the same species by number alone. The minor is evident from what was said in article 1. The major, which the adversaries deny, is shown in many ways from Aristotle, Metaphysics book 5, chapter 6, near the end, where he says: Some things are one in number, others in species, others in genus, others by analogy.

I answer, with the Doctor, that Aristotle there takes matter for that individual entity which is constituted in material being, not however in formal being, insofar as the quiddity is called form, because that entity is not quidditative. This exposition is clear from what he subjoins: Those are one in species whose account is one; for account is there taken for the quiddity, which is called form with respect to individual being; for just as matter is not the principal part of the physical composite, so the individual difference is not the principal part in the metaphysical composite: for the specific nature is the whole nature of the individual.

I answer 2, that even if Aristotle really speaks of physical matter, theologians need not therefore listen to him; the inference would indeed be true according to his principles, namely that angels could not be multiplied in number within the same species, because he teaches that immaterial substances are necessary beings, and consequently that they possess in act whatever can belong to them: hence if they could have several individuals, they would necessarily have them: and since there would be no reason why they might not have infinite ones (if, as Aristotle supposes, they were necessary beings), if they could have several individuals, they could also have infinite ones, and thus there would necessarily be infinitely many angels: which, being absurd, makes it equally absurd, on the Philosopher's principles, that the angelic nature should be multipliable in number. But since the principle from which such an inference is drawn is false, namely that every quiddity lacking physical matter is a necessary being, the conclusion drawn from it is likewise altogether false, and not to be used by theologians.

You will say 2. Every formal difference is specific: but angels differ from one another by formal difference, because they are distinct forms: therefore necessarily all differ in species, and consequently there is no numerical difference among them.

The Doctor answers that formal difference can be taken in two ways: first, for the difference which is made through form: second, for the difference of forms, or for the forms themselves which make the difference. In the first way the major is true, but the minor false: in the second way, however, the major is false. As for the proof that could thus be framed — an angel differs from an angel, which is form: therefore they have formal difference between themselves — the Doctor says there is the fallacy of the consequent: for it does not follow: forms differ; therefore they differ formally or through form: just as it does not follow: several men are distinguished from one another; therefore they differ from one another by humanity; for they differ from one another by their individual differences from others, not by their humanity. Hence it is one thing for something to be distinguished, and another to be the reason of the distinction: for Peter is distinguished from Bucephalus by humanity, but he is not himself the reason of the distinction, but his humanity is.

You will say 3. Every form separated from matter has the whole perfection of its species: just as whiteness, if it were separated from every subject, would have the whole perfection of whiteness: but an angel is a form separated from matter: therefore it has the whole perfection due to its species; and consequently there cannot be several angels distinct in number within one species. The major is proved: if it did not have the whole perfection due to its species, it would have to participate it: but this cannot be; for in order to participate, the form itself would have to have the character of perfectible matter, since it would be perfectible by that perfection which it received. Since it does not have the character of matter, neither can it participate the perfection of its species; and accordingly it must contain that entire perfection of its species in itself, and thus there cannot be another angel of the same species.

He denies the major, the Doctor does, together with its proof; for from the fact that something lacks matter it does not follow precisely that it must have the entire perfection of its species, since that specific nature is multiplifiable to infinity, if one of its individuals must have the whole perfection of its species, it would necessarily have infinite perfection, at least extensively, which is absurd. He answers secondly that, the major being denied, he distinguishes its proof: if it participated the perfection of the species, it would have to have the character of first physical matter, which is ordered to physical form — this he denies: the character of metaphysical matter, that is, of the specific nature, which is ordered to metaphysical form, namely to the individual difference by which it is contracted and determined to the being of an individual — this he concedes: but nothing follows from this against the truth of the conclusion.

You will say 4. In perfect beings, such as the angel is, there is nothing that is not intended per se by nature: but numerical plurality is not intended per se by nature, because such plurality, of itself, can be infinite; but the infinite cannot be intended per se by nature, because nature does not intend what it cannot produce: and since it is limited in entity and in operation, it cannot produce the infinite.

The Doctor answers by denying the minor together with the consequence of its proof; for although numerical plurality can be infinite, it does not necessarily have to be infinite; and consequently, although nature does not intend per se an infinite plurality, it does not follow that it does not intend some plurality which is not actually infinite, such as the multitude of the angels really is, as was proved in the preceding Question.

You will say 5. The multitude of individuals is intended only for the conservation of the species, which in corruptible things would fail unless propagated in several individuals, as Aristotle says in De Anima, book 2: but this reason holds nothing concerning angels; for since they are immaterial and incorruptible, the species could be preserved in a single one. It is confirmed. Within the genus of incorruptible corporeal substance, God produced a single individual in number, namely one Sun, a single Moon, and stars individually distinct in species from one another: therefore by parity the same must be said of the angels, which are incorruptible spiritual substances.

He denies the major, the Doctor does; for since, he says, the Artificer of all things chiefly intends the good and order of the Universe in forming creatures, he ought to intend not only their diversity according to species, but also their multitude according to individuals; because each conduces above all to the order and beauty of the Universe. For, says St. Augustine lib. 19. De Civit. Dei, cap. 13., Order is the disposition of equal and unequal things, assigning to each its fitting place: where by unequal things he understands the essences of things, which cannot be equalized in quidditative perfection, otherwise they would not be different species and essences: but by equal things he understands the individuals contained under the same species, which are called equal for that reason because they share entirely the same essential perfection. Add that, says holy Damascene In Elementario, chapter 12, it was fitting to produce several angels in the same species, so that, sharing nature with one another, they may rejoice in one another; and joined in natural beatitude, be disposed toward one another securely and amicably.

To the confirmation. I deny the antecedent: for it is more likely that the heavens all, and the many stars, are of the same species, although some may also differ in species, as can be gathered from their varied and diverse influx.

Or else I deny the consequence: for the disparity lies in this, that the production of several individuals in those celestial bodies would either be useless, or would harm the Universe; useless, I say, because whatever light could be furnished by two Suns, for example, would be sufficiently lavished by a single one: and it would also harm the Universe: for those two Suns, since they could not shine at once, it would be necessary that, one setting, the other rise, and thus there would be no alternation of days and nights, and consequently no time of rest for animals, nor of cooling for the earth, seeing that the alternating heats of the Sun would scorch everything. Not so, however, with the angels, who, since they hold distinct offices toward governing different men and administering various affairs, can also be many with the greatest utility for the Universe. All this William of Paris lucidly weighs and confirms in part 2 of the first part De universo, chapter 21:

It is not likely (he says) that the most wise Creator made all the simple and spiritual substances equal in every respect and alike in all things: just as it did not please him to do this in any species of sensible substances, as neither all men, nor all horses; and the same holds in all other species of sensible substances. For the wisdom and goodness of the Creator foreknew and foresaw that from that very inequality, dissimilitude, and variety the comeliness of that most resplendent and noblest City of his, supercelestial, would be increased beyond estimation. For just as diversity adorns and beautifies an army, and just as a variety of ministers and vestments renders the throng more pleasing to beholders: so the multiform comeliness of natural gifts, that is, of knowledges and virtues, renders those hosts of simple and spiritual substances more beautiful, and contributes much delight and adornment to their universality, after the manner of a most lovely meadow, in which the greater the diversity of flowers and the more multiform their variety and loveliness, the more grateful it is to the eyes of beholders, and the more outstanding its beauty. So variety of colors behaves in a garment; so too in paintings, and in all other things that are made for beauty and adornment. And a manifest example of this is the variety of the fixed stars of heaven, which bestows upon it so great a spectacle of beauty.

Note 1. The word Hierarchy is Greek, and means a sacred principate, or a collection of persons in some way sacred under some Prince. Now St. Dionysius distinguishes a threefold Hierarchy in book 3 of The Celestial Hierarchy. The first (says Hugh of Saint-Victor in his explanation of that same book),

principal over all, and the form, and exemplar of the rest, is the supreme and ineffable power of the Trinity: simple, and one, and uniform, without grade, and difference, and comparison, supreme, and eternal, and perfect, and true, omnipotent by its own power in creating and governing all its works; receiving nothing external, losing nothing of its own. The second Hierarchy was formed in the angelic nature, by adoption, and participation, and gracious favor from the first and supreme, and, in a second similitude to the first, holds a lofty grade, and receives difference, and admits comparison: after the supreme Trinity, distinguished by a second emulation, in a threefold division. The third, and last Hierarchy was ordered in human nature: imitating the second in the first place, and the first in the second place, and receiving and referring back the supreme and superexcellent image of similitude through the participants in the midst, and by that very thing so that all may be from one, and to one, and all in all one.

Note, however, that in God there is not properly a Hierarchy, since among the three divine Persons there is neither principate, nor order, nor superiority or inferiority of dignities. Hence St. Dionysius teaches in the same place that God is outside, and above every Hierarchy; for every Hierarchy exists in imitation of, and likeness to him.

Note 2. A threefold Hierarchy of the angels is distinguished by the holy Fathers and Theologians, namely the supreme, the middle, and the lowest, each of which is made up of three distinct orders. For the first, says our own Le Petit, ch. 6, De Angelis, comprises the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. The Seraphim are so called from the ardor of love, and the most fervent love of God in which they surpass the others, and to which they excite those within; so that they are continually ardent, inflamed, and kindled with the fire of love with which in an excellent manner they pursue God, while they contemplate him more closely, so great and admirable is his majesty, as St. Gregory, St. Dionysius, St. Thomas, etc., write. The Cherubim are so called on account of the fullness and excess of knowledge by which they surpass the other, inferior angels, and they pour out that most splendid light upon the others like most radiant Suns. The Thrones are so called because in them God rests in a certain more placid manner in a special way; whence they are called the seat of God for receiving the divine splendors into themselves, and transfusing them into the other, inferior angels. The second Hierarchy comprises the Dominations, Principalities, and Powers. The Dominations are so called on account of the excellence of their lordship, namely because they surpass the others in commanding the things to be done. The Principalities are so called because they preside over Kingdoms and Provinces, and with respect to the inferior angels can be called princes; they instruct, illuminate, and move them in those things which pertain to the salvation of all men, according to the will of God manifested to them. The Powers are so called on account of the great power with which they are endowed, and especially for coercing the infernal Spirits, lest they inflict harms upon men. The third Hierarchy comprises the Virtues, Archangels, and Angels. The Virtues are so named because it belongs to them to accomplish miracles, and to work signs and prodigies; for although all Spirits can work miracles, this is nevertheless attributed to the Virtues in a spiritual manner: moreover they are given that name because these Spirits are prompt and ready for the divine service with a certain manly fortitude; and they also bestow aid on the other angels inferior to themselves. The Archangels announce greater things to men by the command of God, and dispatch weightier business, and guard important persons. But the Angels, because they announce lesser matters or accomplish them, since they have no particular name of their own, are given the common name shared by all the other Spirits: their office is to guard men.

Note 3. Although the aforesaid names express characters peculiar to the individual orders of angels, nevertheless they are sometimes taken as common to all, so that the proper name of one order is bestowed on the angels of another order: thus St. Chrysostom, Homily 3, Contra Anomoeos, calls all those most blessed spirits Angels indiscriminately: Hilary also takes the Virtues universally in this way, book 3: The Virtues, he says, are many in Heaven, and efficacious, and eternal, but only one is the only-begotten Son. But why the Angels, and the Virtues are thus used of all, St. Gregory sets out the cause of the former appellation in Homily 34 on the Gospels, namely that some things are announced through them; for not only Spirits of the lowest order, but sometimes also of the highest, are thought to be several in number who fulfill the office of messengers to men. But all angels are called Virtues, says St. Dionysius, ch. 11, because those blessed minds have these three things: essence or substance, power or virtue, and efficacy.

St. Gregory the Great explains this expressly in Homily 34 on the Gospel:

Very often, he says, the very orders of the blessed Spirits take on the names of the orders neighboring to them: for we said that the Thrones, that is, the seats of God, are a special order of the blessed Spirits, and yet through the Psalmist it is said of him who appears seated above the Cherubim: namely because, while in those distinctions the hosts of the Cherubim are joined to the Thrones, the Lord is also declared to sit above the Cherubim by the equality of the neighboring host. For so it is in that supreme city, that certain things are special to individuals, and yet are common to all, and what each possesses in himself in part, he possesses in the other order: but for that reason they are contained under one and the same name in common, so that that order should be called by the private name of each thing which has received it more fully in its gift.

With these things premised, it must be determined by what grounds it is established that those three hierarchies and nine orders of angels exist.

Single conclusion. — In truth there are three hierarchies, and nine distinct orders of the holy angels.

This is the common view among the holy Fathers and Theologians, and St. Dionysius weighs and explains it in the whole book De Coelesti Hierarchia, where in ch. 6 he speaks thus about those divine Intelligences:

These, he says, our divine initiator in the sacred mysteries, St. Paul, distributed and distinguished into three ternions: and first indeed he wills those to be so who always stand about God, and of whom it has been handed down that, with their whole mind and with nothing interposed before the others, they are joined to him; for he says that it has been handed down in the divine writings that the most holy Thrones, and those that have many eyes and many wings, the Cherubim and Seraphim, called so in the Hebrew tongue, stand most closely about God. This distinction, then, which consists of three, our most illustrious Teacher handed down as one, and of the same kind, and as truly the first Hierarchy, than which there is none more like God, and which is occupied above all, without interval, with the greatest zeal in the primary illuminations of the Divinity in acting. He says the second is that which the Powers, Dominations, and Virtues fill. The third is the description of the Angels, Archangels, and Principalities in the last celestial Hierarchies.

The same truth St. Bernard sets forth lucidly in book 5 of De Consideratione, ch. 4, where, having enumerated all the orders of the blessed angels, he writes:

What, then, does this gradual distinction mean? Let us suppose the Angels are so called — unless you have considered something more fitting — because single ones are believed to be given to single men: Sent forth to ministry, according to the doctrine of Paul, for the sake of those who shall inherit salvation. Of whom the Savior: Their angels always see the face of the Father. Let us suppose the Archangels preside over these, who, conscious of the divine mysteries, are sent only for outstanding and greatest causes; among whom that great Archangel Gabriel is read to have been sent to Mary; for a cause, certainly, than which there could be none greater. Let us suppose above these are the Virtues, by whose nod or work signs and prodigies made in the elements, or from the elements, appear for the admonition of mortals. Hence perhaps it is that when you read in the Gospels: There shall be signs in the Sun, and Moon, and stars, a little later you have: For the Virtues of the heavens shall be moved. These are doubtless the Spirits through whom signs are made. Let us suppose the Powers, superior to these, by whose power the power of darkness is compressed, and the malice of this air is coerced, so that it may not harm as much as it wills, nor be able to do mischief except so as to profit. Let us suppose the Principalities set over these also, by whose governance and wisdom every principality on earth is constituted, governed, limited, transferred, mutilated, changed. Let us suppose the Dominations so far surpass all the aforesaid orders, that with respect to these all the others seem ministering Spirits, and are referred to these as to Lords: the governances of the Principalities, the protections of the Powers, the operations of the Virtues, the revelations of the Archangels, the care and providence of the Angels. Let us suppose the Thrones have flown aloft even beyond these by a great retreat, who from the fact that they sit are called Thrones, and from the fact that they sit because God sits in them. For neither could he sit in them, if they did not sit. You ask what I think that session is? The highest tranquility, the most placid serenity, the peace which surpasses all understanding. Such is he who sits upon the Thrones, the Lord of hosts, judging all things with tranquility, most placid, most serene, most peaceable. And such he constituted the Thrones to himself, most like himself. Let us suppose the Cherubim drawing from the very fountain of wisdom from the mouth of the Most High, and pouring back the streams of knowledge to all their fellow citizens. And see whether he is the one of whom the Prophet spoke; the rush of the river making glad the city of God. Let us suppose the Seraphim Spirits wholly kindled with divine fire, setting all things aflame, so that each citizen may be a single lamp, burning and shining, burning with charity, and shining with knowledge.

This same truth St. Gregory the Pope proves and concludes thus from holy Scripture, Homily 34:

Nine orders of angels we have named, he says, since indeed so many there are, the sacred eloquence testifying: at once we know Angels, Archangels, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Dominations, Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim. For that there are Angels and Archangels almost all the pages of sacred eloquence testify. But the books of the Prophets often speak of the Cherubim and Seraphim, as is known. The Apostle Paul also enumerates the names of four orders to the Ephesians, saying: above every Principality, and Power, and Virtue, and Domination. Who again writing to the Colossians says: whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers. But the Dominations, and Principalities, and Powers he had already described speaking to the Ephesians. But about to say those things also to the Colossians, he premised the Thrones, of which he had as yet said nothing at all to the Ephesians. When, therefore, the Thrones are joined to those four which he said to the Ephesians, that is, to the Principalities, Powers, Virtues, and Dominations, there are five orders, which are expressed specially. When to these the Angels, and Archangels, Cherubim, and Seraphim are joined, without doubt nine orders of angels are found.

From these things it is evident how shamefully Erasmus, and Beza hallucinate in their Scholia on ch. 8 of the Epistle to the Romans, while they deny that those different orders of angels can be gathered from the Apostle; for from the words of St. Gregory praised above, all the holy Fathers, both Greek and Latin, teach with the fullest consensus the certain grades and orders of the angels. Above all St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Trallians: I (he says), because I am able to understand heavenly things, and the orders of angels, and the differences of angels and of hosts, and the distinctions of Virtues and Dominations, and the varieties of Thrones and Powers, the magnitudes of Aeons, the excellences of Cherubim and Seraphim... These things, I say, I know; yet am I not on that account altogether perfect, etc.

St. Irenaeus likewise numbers the same orders, if you except the Seraphim and Cherubim; for he says in book 2, ch. 54: They tell us what the nature of invisible things is, they recount the number of angels, and the orders of Archangels, they demonstrate the mysteries of the Thrones, and teach the diversities of Dominations, Principalities, Powers, and Virtues. St. Basil in his Liturgy enumerates them in this order: Thee the Angels and Archangels praise, the Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, and the many-eyed Cherubim, the Seraphim stand about thee in a circle.

Similarly St. Athanasius teaches the same thing in several places, but especially in the book De Communi essentia:

Just as, he says, we have acknowledged a distinction among the supernal Virtues, so also of station and knowledge. The Thrones indeed, and the Seraphim, and the Cherubim learn immediately from God, as being superior to all, and nearer to God. These further teach the inferior orders, and so on, the superiors teach the inferiors. But the lowest order is that of the Angels, who are also the teachers of men.

The Latins also subscribe. St. Augustine in the book contra Priscillianistas et Origenistas, ch. 10, weighing that word of the Apostle to the Colossians 1, Whether Thrones, or Dominations, etc., says: That therefore there are seats, Principalities, Dominations, Powers in the celestial apparatuses, I most firmly believe, and that they differ in something I hold with undoubting faith. But — that you may not despise me, whom you think a great doctor — what those things are, and what they differ among themselves, I do not know. Nay, he even not obscurely condemns the inquiry into these things, saying: Rather in these things rash presumption than cautious ignorance seems to be blamed, and soon after, signifying clearly enough that they exalt themselves above the divine writers, those who think they know something about these things beyond what has been briefly touched upon and prescribed in the Scriptures. And in the Enchiridion, ch. 58, he doubts whether the Archangels are the same as those who are called virtues, and what the four words differ among themselves, by which the Apostle seems to have embraced the whole celestial society, saying: whether seats, or dominations, or principalities, or powers: let them say, he says, who can, if however they can prove it, let them say; I confess that I am ignorant of these things. And in book 2 contra Maximinum arianum, rebuking him because he had written that angels indeed can be seen by archangels, but archangels not by angels: from whom, he says, did you hear this? whence did you learn it? where did you read it? Would you not better have applied your mind to the divine Books, where we read that angels were seen by men when they willed, and in the manner they willed to appear?

St. Jerome seems to have been in the same doubtful opinion; for when in book 11 contra Iovinianum he had numbered seven orders of angels, namely the Angels, Archangels, Thrones, Dominations, Powers, Cherubim, and Seraphim, he adds: And every name that is named, not only in the present age, but also in the future; embracing the matter indefinitely, as if there were innumerable other grades of angels, and names of grades. Which he indicates more clearly in his commentary on ch. 1 of the Epistle to the Ephesians, where, when he had inquired whence Paul received that among the angels there are Principalities, Virtues, Powers, and Dominations, and had said that he had known, from what is related of Kings and Princes, and also Dukes, Tribunes, and innumerable Centurions in the books of Kingdoms, the image of other Princes and Kings, he adds:

Namely, that in the heavens there are Principalities, there are Powers, there are Dominations and Virtues, and the other names of ministries which we are not able to name; nor do I think that Paul himself, placed in so heavy a bodily frame, wished to enumerate them.

As if he said that neither had St. Paul come to know, nor could he have enumerated, all the orders of the blessed angels. — St. Cyril of Jerusalem was also in doubt in this matter, Catechesis 11 to the Illumined, where, rebuking the audacity of the Arians, who busied themselves rashly and curiously about the generation of the Son:

Tell me first, he says, most audacious man, what a throne differs from a domination, and then inquire into the things that pertain to Christ. Tell me what a principality is, what a virtue, what an angel, and then curiously search out the Maker himself.

— Into the same doubt St. Chrysostom fell. Homily 1, De incomp., where, carping at the audacity of the Heretics, who rashly inquire into the nature of God:

Consider, he says, in your mind how great is the insolence of the Heretics; we do not know even the names of the servants, and they inquire rather curiously into the substance of the Lord. For there are Angels, and Archangels, and Thrones, and Dominations, and Principalities, and Powers: but those are not the only companies in the heavens, but infinite peoples, and ineffable nations, which speech cannot unfold.

Which he proves from that word of the Apostle to the Ephesians 1, He made him sit above every Principality, and Power, and Virtue, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the future; from which he infers: You see that there are certain names which will be manifest there, when now they are unknown: for therefore he said, not only those which are named in this age, but also in the future. From these things it is established that the orders of the angels were not defined by very many of the holy Fathers.

— Which things nevertheless do not detract from the certainty of our Conclusion, since constantly the other holy Fathers teach the contrary, and we already hold it as undoubted by all Theologians, who prove the truth itself in various ways. For in the first place William of Paris expressly deduces it in part 2, part 2 of De Universo, ch. 112, a comparison having been made of the heavenly Kingdom with the Ministers, Followers of an earthly King:

It seemed to me (he says) that the closest and lateral companions of the King must necessarily constitute certain orders of men, who must assist the King himself unceasingly and at his side. The first, then, is the order of the Most Loving, that is, of those loving the King most greatly and burning with love for him above all others: and this is manifest, because this is the custom of all kings, namely, that they both wish to have, and do have, near themselves and close to them those whom they believe to be their most faithful friends. The second is the order of the Wise, with which order nothing is more fitting for a king, nothing more becoming, especially since Wisdom herself says that kings reign through me, and that King of the Hebrews, wisest of all, preferred wisdom to all other gifts, and asked for it singularly, the others being set aside. You also know how necessary the wise are for the governance of kingdoms, as that same most wise King said, that the multitude of the wise is the salvation of the world. You know also that through wisdom laws are founded, and salutary statutes enacted, most useful to men. The third order is that of Judges, namely, those who render justice, who settle controversies and disputes. The fourth order is that of the Most Eminent and the Magnates; among whom are the king's subjects and tribute-paying men of the king, or those who are usually called the nobles of the kingdom and barons, in whom consists a great part of the strength and power of the kingdom. The fifth order, governors of provinces. The sixth order, leaders of legions and instructors of wars, and captains of battle lines. The seventh order is that of centurions, namely, ministers who execute vengeance and justice. The eighth, that of great messengers, who are otherwise called Legates, namely because they announce great things, things not to be revealed to other messengers, and carry reports concerning great matters and affairs, to whomsoever the King shall command. The ninth and last order is that of lesser messengers running throughout the whole kingdom, whether horsemen or footmen, bearing the orders and commands of the King. Since, therefore, this number of orders, and their arrangement, and this whole arrangement of an earthly kingdom, is most becoming and most beautiful.... and every good king is an example and likeness of the first and highest King, who is the blessed Creator, it will necessarily follow that every well-ordered kingdom is an example and likeness of that kingdom, and the ordering of this his ordering, and the orders of these his orders. This also appears evidently in the likeness and proportionality, and in the comparisons of the parts or orders to the parts or orders of the first and noblest one himself. For the first order, namely, the order of those burning most fervently with love for the King, is assimilated and proportioned to the order of the Seraphim, as appears from its very name itself, which means wholly burning, or a conflagration of love. And the order of the Wise, which is the second order, corresponds by similitude and proportion to the order of the Cherubim, which the name of the same, interpreted from Hebrew into Latin, shows, which means fullness of knowledge, or flowing forth of wisdom. Similarly the third order, which is that of Judges, is assimilated and proportioned to the third order of that illustrious and most noble Kingdom, which is named Thrones or Seats; for in them, as it were in the kingdom of his royal excellence, sits that King and Lord of ages, and thence through them he exercises his judgments. The fourth order, of the Most Powerful, those pre-eminent in the kingdom in honor and sublimity of power, corresponds by the same ways to the fourth order of the aforementioned kingdom, which is named Dominations, because in them shines forth most of all the most supereminent dominion of the Creator, just as in the very power and glory of the Magnates the power of the earthly kingdom appears most of all. But the governors of provinces, through whom namely the provinces are ruled, are compared to the Principalities with a most fitting similitude.... To the sixth order, which is that of Powers, are most rightly compared the dukes of legions, instructors of battle lines, and Princes of armies, since through them those are brought back and reduced to the King's power who have withdrawn from his authority or rebel against it. The seventh order, which is of those exercising vengeance and executing justices or judgments, such as Centurions usually are: is fitted to the order of Virtues, which ought to be so hostile to vices as to appear sworn to their death, and seem to oppose vices so far as to be worthy to be called not only Virtuous men, but even Virtues. But the last two orders, namely those > of the greater and lesser messengers, have a most evident proportion and similitude to the Angels and Archangels.

Some prove the diversity of Hierarchies among the angels from the hierarchic operations, which are to purify and be purified, to illuminate and be illuminated, to perfect and be perfected, as St. Dionysius says in chapter 3.; for according to this threefold office the angels are rightly distributed into three Hierarchies. For the first Hierarchy is purified, illuminated, and perfected by God alone, and in turn purifies, illuminates, and perfects the middle one. But the middle, having been purified, illuminated, and perfected by the superior, bestows those same divine effects upon the inferior. The first is purified, illuminated, and perfected by no other superior Hierarchy, but purifies, illuminates, and perfects the inferiors; the second is purified by the superior, illuminated, and perfected, and purifies, illuminates, and perfects the third: the third and last perfects, illuminates, and purifies no other except the human.

This purification, however, is not to be understood as if it were made from sin, or from error, or from ignorance; for these can have no place in the most holy angels, who see God clearly and intuitively; but it is made from a lack of knowledge (nescientia), which is found in them. Indeed, they do not know all supernatural truths through the activity of their natural powers, nor through the beatific vision itself, which is terminated only to the object of beatitude, namely, to the divine essence and its divine excellencies: but not to external things, whether those pertaining to the disposition of the universe, or to the governance of the Church, or to the mysteries of grace, which the lower angels can learn from the higher, and the Higher from God himself, as William of Paris, in the second part of the first part de Universo chapter 198., expounds this point learnedly very nearly in this manner:

Among the angels some are more resplendent than others, and nearer to the divine light, and therefore purer, not because they have less filth, or none at all, but because from the inexhaustible fountain of light they receive larger and clearer draughts of truth: just as if several crystals, or mirrors, were set before the Sun, which are not placed in the same position, but one catches his rays more fully and more directly than another; so since some angels contemplate God more perfectly than the rest, they are flooded with a more abundant light than those others, and on that account are purer than they, and illumine them by the abundance of their own light: which communication of more copious light is called purification; not that there is anything of darkness and gloom in them which would be extinguished by the approach of greater light, but because, as I said, there comes about an addition of light to light. For the remission of light does not consist in an admixture of darkness; just as neither the slowing of motion consists in rest, nor dullness of sight in blindness — from which examples the second applies most of all to the matter at hand: since the heavenly orbs are not all revolved with equal swiftness, but the highest among them, which is called the primum mobile, is stirred with a swifter motion, and the rest thereafter, each according as it is nearer or farther, are moved more quickly or more slowly. But if that lesser swiftness consisted in any part of rest, there would nowhere be true and simple motion; since even beyond that supreme and swiftest revolution, a swifter one could either be feigned by us, or created by God: wherefore one motion is slower than another without any admixture of contrary rest; likewise one light more splendid than another, tempered by no part of gloom. After that manner, therefore, an angel is said to be purified when he receives some new light of knowledge which he lacked before: and that very thing which was wanting is like a kind of privation, which the incoming knowledge drives away; whence the name of purification has been given to it.

You will ask first. Do individual angels have proper names?

I answer. It seems more probable that proper names were assigned by God to individual angels severally; not indeed so that they might be known by them among the other Blessed, as St. Gregory teaches, Homily on the hundred sheep, but so that the Blessed may use them when conversing with them, for after the day of judgment the various Blessed will speak of one another, and of the angels; therefore it is necessary that they make use of their names, and now both blessed souls and angels, whenever they speak of anyone, need names for that same reason. And what we say of the good angels must be judged the same of the evil ones, otherwise Christ would have questioned a certain demon in vain as to what his name was.

But there are only seven holy angels whose names are recalled by Catholic writers, and they are Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Salathiel, or Sealtiel, Iehudiel, and Barachiel, as Serarius proves in chapter 12 of Tobias, and Salmeron tom. 3. They are designated by Sacred Scripture under several mystical appellations; for Apocal. 4. they are called seven lamps before the throne of God; because they shine with the highest brightness, and illumine with a certain remarkable splendor those to whom they are sent, a symbol of which thing the angel exhibited who stood beside Peter, A light shone in the dwelling, Act. 12. And in the same Apocalypse St. John says: I saw the lamb standing as though slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent into all the earth. They are called horns, because they are most mighty for routing demons, for protecting the Church, for working miracles, for defending the just, and for the punishment of the impious: they are likewise called eyes, because they are most perspicacious and most vigilant for knowing and fulfilling the will of God, for procuring the salvation of the Church and of men; whence of these it is said in Zach. 4. These seven eyes are the Lord's, which run to and fro through the whole earth: of these also we have it in the same Apocalypse c. 8. And I saw seven angels standing in the sight of God. And elsewhere in the same book seven angels are mentioned as having, as it were, care of the whole earth.

Hence in Tobiae 12.¹ Raphael said of himself that he was one of those seven: I am, he says, Raphael the angel, one of the seven, who stand before the Lord. They are said to stand before the Lord, or in the sight of God, metaphorically, after the manner in which ministers are present to a Prince, and ready to receive and carry out his commands; and this also indicates how familiar they are with God, for to stand seems to signify a certain familiarity, for of the familiars of Solomon the Queen of Sheba says in lib. Reg. 3. cap. 10.: Happy are thy servants, because they stand always before thee; for it is the property of familiars and attendants to stand before a Prince, while Princes sit.

All these things Clement of Alexandria confirms, lib. 6. Strom. toward the end. There are seven, he says, who hold the greatest power, the firstborn Princes of the angels, bearing with them, because of their offices, the name of God.

The peculiar meaning of their names is drawn out thus: Michael is interpreted, Who is like God? which name was given him after he conquered Lucifer with a generous spirit, and drove him out of the empyrean heaven with his wicked followers, and fights against him daily on behalf of men, and because he also defends and guards the honor of God and his greatest glory, nor permits anything whatsoever concerning it, however small, to be detracted.

Some others add that he presides over the prayers and oblations of the faithful, and for that reason is called Michael, that is, Who is like God? as if to say: to God alone belongs the hearing of the prayers of penitents, and being propitious to their sins, and also their justification and salvation.

— Gabriel, that is, the strength of God, because he announced the mighty deeds and wars of God to Daniel, to the blessed Virgin, etc. Again Gabriel is said in Hebrew Geberel, that is, man-God, as if to say: God will become incarnate, and will be man as to nature and progress of age and body: yet he will remain vir (man), because from the first instant of conception his soul will be full of all knowledge, grace, fortitude, etc., according to that saying of Jeremiah 31. A woman shall compass a man.

— Raphael, that is, Physician, or medicine of God, because he presides over the health of bodies. Whence he cured the blindness of Tobias, and can obtain for us spiritual and bodily remedy.

— Uriel, that is, light, or fire of God, because he illumines men with the knowledge of God and inflames them with love.

— Salathiel, or Sealtiel, that is, prayer of God, because he prays for men and stirs them up to adoration.

— Iehudiel, that is, Confession, or praise of God, because he exhorts men to confession and the praise of God.

— Barachiel, that is, blessing of God, because he procures the benefits of God for us and urges us toward the blessing of God and thanksgiving.

— The three last are noted by no tradition, but have come down to us from the Hebrew. There is mention of Uriel in Esdras lib. 4., but this book is not reckoned among the Canonical books; Salathiel, Iehudiel, and Barachiel are celebrated by Antonio Duca, a distinguished man who flourished in the time of Paul III Supreme Pontiff, in the Hymn on the seven assisting Angels. But whether they are to be addressed by those names or by others, it is most certainly certain that they are the seven chief angels of the celestial court, who stand in the sight of God, and to whom the care of the whole earth is entrusted.

Furthermore, these holy angels stir us up to embrace the seven virtues opposed to the seven capital sins in equal number, which are: humility, patience, liberality, chastity, temperance, diligence, and charity; and since those seven pre-eminent angels are of the order of Seraphim, as we shall say presently; therefore their special task and office is to restrain the seven chief demons fallen from heaven, who by continual suggestions induce us to commit those seven capital sins, and alas! often make us succumb to them.

But who are those chief evil angels deputed by Lucifer to suggest so many evils? St. Bernard, in sermon 13. on the Psalm qui habitat, enumerates them:

The first, he says, is Leviathan, the Prince of pride: the second Beerith, the Prince of anger: the third Mammon, the Prince of avarice: the fourth Beelzebuth, the Prince of envy: the fifth Asmodaeus, the Prince of lust: the sixth Beelphegor, the Prince of gluttony, and the seventh Astaroth, the Prince of sloth, or laziness.

Since, therefore, these things are so, God, who by his kindness and ineffable goodness wills the salvation of us all, willed to choose and appoint just as many Princes from among the good angels, that they might blunt the impious assaults of these seven demons against us.

To these add, that beyond the four first angels out of the seven named above, venerable Bede in his Collectanea makes mention of two others, namely Rumiel and Phaniel, and commends himself to them in these words: Gabriel be unto me logic; Michael be unto me a girdle; Raphael be unto me a shield; Uriel be unto me protector; Rumiel be unto me defender, Phaniel be unto me security. Besides these names, moreover, some add Nuriel, Zamael, Zadkiel, and Caphziel. There are also some of the aforementioned, as well as other names, in the second book of the Sybilline verses, which are related in the second tome of the Bibliotheca Sanctorum Patrum:

Then Eromiel, Uriel, Samiel, and Azael, Knowing beforehand what evil each of men has wrought, Shall bring all souls from the lands before the shadowy gloom To judgment, before the dreadful throne of the immortal Great Father.

But since these names are neither inferred from the Scriptures, nor reported by the Holy Fathers, therefore they are neither to be used nor invoked; especially since the holy Apostle has proscribed novelties of words, and the Roman Council held in the year of our Lord 745., under Pope Zachary, condemned the prayer of a certain Aldebert, in which, invoking eight names of angels, he said: I pray you, and conjure you, and supplicate myself to you, Angel Uriel, Angel Raguel, Angel Tabuel, Angel Michael, Angel Adimis, Angel Tubuas, Angel Subaoth, Angel Limihel. When this prayer had been read, Pope Zachary said:

these names, besides Michael's, are all names of demons. What else should be done but that all that has been read be committed to the fire? And all the Bishops agreed, saying, we acknowledge the names of no more than three angels, that is, Gabriel, Michael, Raphael.

So we read in the Acts of the Council. And hence Baronius infers clearly understands that the fourth book of Esdras published under that name, in which mention of the angel Uriel frequently occurs, has been proscribed by the Roman Church and rejected utterly.

To a similar kind of flour must be reckoned those things which Rabbi Benidior relates in the preface which he prefixed to his commentary on the book Ietsira, i. e. On creation, where he sets forth the names of those angels whom the Thalmudists fable to have been the masters and teachers of the Patriarchs. For they say that the angel Raziel was the teacher and preceptor of Adam, Iophiel of Shem, Zaclekiel of Abraham, Raphael of Isaac, Peliel of Jacob, Gabriel of Joseph, Metraton of Moses, Malathiel of Elias. The same author adds that each of these teachers and doctors taught his disciple the Cabbala, or tradition, by voice or in writing, from whom it was propagated among the people of God. Thus, e.g., the angel Raziel, Adam's tutor, consigned to him on behalf of God a book in which the secrets of loftier and more hidden wisdom were contained, mention of which marvelous book is found in the Zohar on Genesis. But all these things are rabbinical trifles, to which no credence is due.