Scotus Academicus, Tomus quartus: De Angelis

The offices and benefits of the angels toward the human race are well-nigh infinite, illustrious, and daily; for in the heavenly Spirits there is found not only an admirable dignity, but also a lovable condescension, says S. Bernard, serm. 1. on S. Michael. But the principal office of angelic beneficence toward men is their guardianship, which they undertake both publicly for all men and privately for each individual; wherefore men may rightly and fittingly, that they may be able in some part to repay the benefits so great that have been bestowed upon them by the angels, celebrate them with praise and cult in testimony of a grateful mind. Whence in this Article we undertake to determine three things: first, whether all angels are at times sent by God to men, so as to bestow upon them some benefit or service; second, which angels are deputed by God to the private and public protection and guardianship of men; third, with what cult and with what veneration men ought to venerate and celebrate the holy angels.

Note 1. All the angels, besides their distribution into three Hierarchies and nine Orders, are commonly divided into Assistants, and Ministrants, which division is taken from Daniel 7.¹ Thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand assisted him: from which oracle the Doctors infer that there are more assisting angels, as it were the Princes of the heavenly court, than ministrant ones; for the Prophet designates the assisting ones in a greater number than the ministrant ones. Hence some conjecture that not all the angels are deputed by God from heaven to earth to men: but only those who are of the last hierarchy, while the rest assist God, ever present in heaven, and never appear to men; whether this is true is to be determined here.

Note 2. According to the Doctor, in 2. dist. 10. qu. unica, num. 2., a twofold Mission of the angels can be distinguished: one exterior, sensible, and immediate; the other interior, insensible, and mediate. The former is that by which the angels are sent by God to men, insofar as they either insinuate the divine will into them, or stimulate and enkindle their affection toward divine love, or illustrate and illuminate their intellect — not only by imparting divine light to them, but also by suggesting to them the truths entrusted to themselves: the latter, however, is that by which the higher angels are sent to the lower ones, so that they may instruct them concerning the divine mysteries and the divine will, insofar as they themselves may be able to teach the same things to men: According to the common process, and order, says the Doctor, the great mysteries of God are revealed to the higher angels, before the lower ones: and so the higher ones are sent to the lower ones by speaking, and illuminating them interiorly: and those lower ones are sent exteriorly, to announce or explain those revealed things to men: and so not all are commonly sent abroad. Whether, however, at least extraordinarily, all the angels are sent by God to men for the sake of announcing certain great mysteries, or transacting affairs, or conferring benefits, is to be resolved here.

Note 3. Although all the Scholastic Doctors agree that the angels are sometimes sent by God to men, so that they may illuminate their intellect and inflame their affection; yet very many disagree among themselves in assigning the mode of that illumination and inflammation; for the Seraphic Doctor says, dist. 11. art. 2. par. 2:

our souls can be illuminated by the blessed angels through their revelations in three ways; In one way, he says, so that the angel is understood to illuminate the interior portion after the manner of an irradiating light: In another way, so that he is understood to illuminate after the manner of a mirror that bears [the image]: In a third way, so that he is understood to illuminate after the manner of a tongue expressing with liveliness. All these modes, although they are in some way intelligible, since the angel is a light, and a mirror, and has also the office of spiritual interpretation or speech, can be maintained; the third mode, however, is more intelligible. For it does not appear very well how the angel irradiates, nor how he offers himself to the sight of the soul; but this is sufficiently intelligible, how the soul can suggest what it has conceived: and just as the Doctor > when he speaks outwardly, and prepares the way for understanding, and a living and efficacious speech has entrance into our intellect with a certain liveliness, while it sounds outwardly in the ear of the body, by reason of which a man also hears more willingly a good cleric, whose speech is efficacious, and living: since it has something of the latent energy of the act of a living voice, as Jerome says: so also in this way it is to be understood, that the angel can do this interiorly, and thus illuminate, not by infusing light, nor only by offering himself as an object or mirror, but also by exciting with liveliness, just as the Doctor does outwardly, and in an even more efficacious way.

These things having been thus premised, three points are to be resolved. First, whether the angels are truly sent by God from heaven to earth for the homage of men: Second, whether not only those from the last Hierarchy, but also from the other two higher ones are sometimes thus deputed: Third, what is the principal, and ordinary effect of that angelic mission.

First conclusion. — The angels are truly sometimes sent to men. This is of faith, and is proved by various texts of Scripture: Exodus 23. Behold I will send my Angel, who may go before thee in the way. Luke 1.² The Angel Gabriel was sent. Acts 12. Now I know in very deed that the Lord hath sent his Angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod.

The Seraphic Doctor proves this Conclusion in the place cited above, q. 1. from the fact that this mission most highly befits divine charity, which is manifested through that mission; and angelic charity, which through it helps us; and our own, which, since it is weak, is fostered, nourished, and excited through angelic homage. This mission, I say, accords with divine charity, because in this the divine goodness is manifested, how greatly it loves our salvation, while it directs and sends the noblest Spirits, who are joined to it by intimate charity, to procure our salvation. And it befits also angelic charity; for since it belongs to ardent charity to desire most greatly the salvation of others, on account of which the Lord says, as Isaiah also said, cap. 6., Behold me, Lord, send me: and the angels are able to help us, for the reason that they see us to stand in need of their help, and the evil angels to assail us unceasingly; therefore, that they be sent to us, the law of angelic charity requires. This also befits human charity, which, since it is small as long as we are in the way, needs to be fostered, and nourished, and excited. And since the angels are fellow-citizens of men, because they are not joined to them by a likeness of nature which excites to love, it was fitting that they be joined by the homage of beneficence.

You will say 1. A man sends a messenger in vain, where he himself is present, and can do better by himself: therefore since God is most present to us, and can do all things by himself, he sends an Angel to us in vain: but God undertakes nothing in vain: therefore he does not send an Angel either.

— The Seraphic Doctor answers, that although God is present, nevertheless on account of the blindness and darkness of our intellect in which we are, we know him as absent. And because those Spirits, on account of the clarity of the light, and the perfection of beatitude, always see God face to face, and are present to him, just as those who are in the King's chamber make known the will of the King to those who are in the King's army, and are sent for this purpose by their Lord: so it is to be understood in the matter at hand. Nor does this avail: The Lord can do it by himself: therefore he should not send a messenger for this. For he who presides can do many things by himself, which he nevertheless enjoins upon a servant, or messenger, so that a seemly and fitting order of actions may be preserved in the ministry.

You will say 2. God sent the Son, and the Holy Spirit, to restore our salvation: therefore for procuring it the mission of the angels is not necessary. — The Seraphic Doctor denies the consequence: for although the Son, and the Holy Spirit, truly restored our salvation most sufficiently through their mission to us, since we are nevertheless endowed with freedom, and our will is sluggish, and does not cooperate well with grace, it therefore needs to be excited: and for this no one is more suitable than an angel: and therefore it is fitting that he be sent to us, not on account of any need in the procuring of our salvation on the part of the Son, or the Holy Spirit, but on account of the negligence of cooperation on our part.

You will say 3. The blessed angel has his seat in the empyrean heaven, as in a place congruent, and most suitable, to himself, and consequently desires to be there: therefore if he is sent outside the empyrean heaven, his desire is frustrated, and thus he will not be perfectly blessed: but this consequence is absurd: therefore also that from which it follows. — He answers the same, that a place is not owed to the Angel on account of his necessity, or need, but only on account of a certain congruity. But this congruity can be compensated, and then it posits no imperfection or indecency through his own absence: and so it is in the matter at hand. For the Angel delights more in fulfilling the will of his Lord, and in pleasing God by helping man, than he delights in being in the empyrean.

You will ask 1. Whether God also sometimes sends the evil angels to men. I affirm it; for Scripture signifies this expressly. For we read in 3. Kings, last chapter, that, addressing the demon, who had it in mind to ask permission that he might deceive Achab: And the Spirit went forth before the Lord, and said: I will deceive him: to whom the Lord said: wherein? And he said: I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. Since therefore that angel offered himself for deceiving, it follows that he is evil, and that he was sent by God, as is signified by the following words: Thou shalt deceive, and shalt prevail: go forth, and do so. Therefore the evil ones are sometimes sent to men. Gregory explains this very point insistently in lib. 2. Moralium, where, speaking of the good angels, and the evil ones, he says: Just as from the good angels the aid of piety is bestowed upon those laboring in this life: so these, unknowingly serving his hidden justice, strive to execute the ministry of reprobation: for not they alone minister to God, the good ones who help, but also the evil ones, who test; not only those who lift up those returning from fault, but also those who burden those wishing to return. Nor does it matter, that the perverse angels intend the seduction of men and the perdition of souls: for although, says our Alensis, q. 41. membro 2., the intention of the devil himself is contrary to the divine intention, insofar as the one is good, and the other evil, nevertheless the Lord uses the temptation of the devil for good; for the temptation by which the Devil tempted Job, as far as concerned the will of the devil, was for seducing: but the Lord ordered it to good, so that the patience of Job might be proved. The mission of the Lord therefore regards the ordination of power to tempting, which is under divine power, not in relation to the will of God; but God orders his evil will to good.

You will ask 2. Whether the lower angels are sometimes sent by the higher ones to men. I affirm it, and S. Gregory proves it in the Moralia from those words of Zacharias the Prophet, where the Prophet says, that the Angel, who spoke in me, went forth, and another Angel went forth to meet him, and said to him: speak to this young man, saying: Jerusalem shall be inhabited without walls. From which it is gathered, that one angel sends [another], whence he says: In the sight of the Creator the angelic ministries are ordered, so that, seeing their Maker, they may rejoice for the common happiness of beatitude: while for the disposition of dignity some minister to others. The Angel sends an Angel to the Prophet, and teaches and chooses what he contemplates in common with himself concerning God, because he excels in the more excellent science by the power of knowledge, and in the more eminent grace by the summit of power. Thus S. Gregory. From which it is manifestly gathered, that one angel is sometimes sent by another.

It is confirmed. because it is likely that when God wishes to reveal something to the lower angels, he reveals it first to the higher ones, generally speaking, and through these as mediators to the lower ones: therefore the higher ones are sent to illuminate the lower ones: but the lower ones likewise illuminate others lower than themselves, until one arrives at the last order, from which some are likely sent to illuminate men.

You will say. That although the higher ones illuminate the lower ones, it nevertheless does not follow from this, that they are sent, because for the mission here in question local motion is required: but that the higher ones illuminate the lower ones, it is not necessary that they be moved locally, otherwise they could not illuminate those nearest to themselves. — I answer, perhaps the higher angelic choirs are so distant from the lower ones, that they cannot illuminate them without being moved locally. Then it could be said, that any mission whatsoever does not necessarily import local motion, but the ordination of the Angel to illuminate another, so that that Angel is said to be sent to another, whom God commands to instruct another, whether meanwhile this is done with, or without local motion.

Second conclusion. — Not only the lower angels, but also each of the higher ones are sometimes deputed by God to men. Thus the Doctor in the place cited above, num. 2., where he says: It seems that the supreme ones, or some of the supreme ones, are sometimes sent abroad.

And the Conclusion is proved from Sacred Scripture, chiefly from that passage of Isaiah 6. where we read: The Seraphim stood upon it: the one had six wings, and the other had six wings, and he immediately adds: And one of the Seraphim flew to me, and in his hand was a live coal, which he had taken with the tongs off the altar, and he touched my mouth. But the Seraphim are of the higher order, as was proved above, and the holy Damascene indicates, lib. 2. c. 4., where, referring to the teaching of S. Dionysius, he says: The first order of angels is that which always stands around God, and is joined to him assiduously, and without the intervention of any thing: namely the six-winged Seraphim. Likewise Gen. 3. we read, that God placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubim, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. We said, however, above, that the Cherubim are of the second order of angels, who are nearer to God, whence also 4. Kings 19., O Lord God, King of Israel, who sittest upon Cherubim, thou art the only God of Israel. — The same thing is also evinced from that passage of Daniel 10.³ Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me: and below: there is none that helps me, but Michael your prince. Hence the Church in the office of the angels prays: We beseech that Michael, the angel of peace, be sent from heaven to this hall. And again: Michael the Archangel, come to the help of the people of God. But indeed Michael, one of the first, is believed to be, if not the first, of the Seraphim, as Pantaleon the Deacon judges, in hom. De S. Michaele, in Surius, 29. Septembris, as also S. Basil, hom. 1. De Angelis, where we read these words: Michael, Leader of the supernal Spirits, who art set above all the Spirits in dignity, and honors, I beseech thee. Laurence Justinian holds the same, saying in a sermon on S. Michael: In the first spiritual conflict Michael was set above the other holy Spirits, just as Lucifer above the evil ones. This can also be strengthened by reason; for in the angelic war, which was at the beginning of the world, Michael was the leader of the good, who roused them to obey God, just as Lucifer led his companions into defection.

It is confirmed. it is likely that the mind of the Church is to venerate the supreme of all the angels more than the rest: because this can also be deservedly presumed to be more in accord with the divine will: but the Church venerates Michael most highly, as it professes in the office of the angels, and dedicates temples to him above the others: therefore she holds that he is the supreme of the Seraphim.

It does not, however, escape me, that S. Thomas, in 2. dist. 1., asserts that Michael is of the order of the Principalities, and understands literally the words of Daniel cap. 10. where Michael is called, One of the chief princes: which opinion Toletus follows in his commentary on the first chapter of Luke, and Pererius lib. 12. on Daniel: there are also not wanting those who place him among the Powers, because it belongs to that order to vanquish, and drive away demons, in which the greatest power is attributed to Michael, Apoc. 12. Which opinion the Church seems to favor in the office of S. Michael himself, saying: whenever something of marvelous power is done, Michael is said to be sent. But the more probable opinion has now prevailed, that he is the supreme among the Seraphim, and so the prince of all the angels whatsoever; and since he is sent to us, it must be certain that not only the lower, but also the higher angels are sometimes delegated by God to men.

Finally, S. Paul teaches this very point excellently, where without any exception he testifies that all the angels are sent by God, and take up and fulfill the ministries committed to them: Are they not all, he says to the Hebrews 1., ministering spirits, sent to minister for them, who shall receive the inheritance of salvation? which words most expressly confirm the truth of the conclusion; especially if one attends to the whole series of S. Paul's discourse: for he intends to prove that Christ excels all created things; especially the angels, who surpass all other created things: Being made, he says, so much better than the angels, as he hath inherited a more excellent name than they, namely that he is called the Son of God, and sits at his right hand, as equal to the Father: whence he adds: to which of the angels hath he said at any time: sit on my right hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool? which prerogatives of dignity, in order that the Apostle may evince that they do not befit the angels, he adds: they are all ministering spirits, etc. which reason would certainly appear weak, and entirely null, unless it comprised all the angels without any exception of dignity, or order; for if the highest orders be excepted, Christ could indeed be seen to excel the angels, and Archangels, or certain others; not, however, the Cherubim, and Seraphim, who would neither be sent by God with the rest, nor come into the role of ministering. Wherefore what Paul says of the angels in that place pertains to all, even the supreme angels. It must therefore be certain, that all the angels, even the higher ones, are sometimes deputed by God to us.

The same truth is proved by the holy Fathers, especially St. Athanasius in his Second Oration against the Arians, where he demonstrates that the Son of God is truly God, from the fact that He is superior to the angels, who are sent to minister. And the angels who attend God above and below offer themselves as ministers; but of the Son it says: and let all his angels adore him. These last words, taken from the Apostle, denote absolutely all the angels, even the superior ones; indeed not only the lowest angels but also all the princely angels have been commanded to venerate Christ.

Most explicit too is the passage of Chrysostom, Hom. 8. on Gen., where he proves that those words, Let us make man, are not referred to the angels, as the Hebrews think, because the angels are not principals of the divine mysteries but ministers: It is not, he says, granted to the angels that they be partakers of counsel, but that they stand by and perform ministry; that you may learn this, hear Isaiah, most eloquent of speakers, speaking of the superior powers of the angels: I saw Cherubim standing at the right hand of God, and Seraphim.

Gregory Nazianzen agrees in Oration 34. Having enumerated both the highest and the lowest orders of angels, he at once says universally: They are the ministers of the divine will, traversing every place, present everywhere to all with ready alacrity of ministry and with the agility of their nature, some holding one part of the world, others assigned to any other part or to the whole universe.

I pass over very many other Fathers affirming the same thing, and I will bring forward for each one St. Bernard, who, addressing Lucifer in a sermon on St. Benedict, says: The Cherubim, says the Prophet, stood, and did not sit: why have you labored, that now you sit! All are ministering spirits sent in ministry for the sake of those who shall inherit salvation, and will you sit? And in his First Sermon on St. Michael, having said that although Michael is among the superior angels, yet he keeps watch over us and comes to our aid, he adds: Nor should this seem anything incredible, seeing that the Creator Himself, and King of the angels, came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.

The same truth the Subtle Doctor proves in the place cited, from the fact that Gabriel, sent to the Blessed Virgin, was one of the supreme angels, since he knew the mystery of the Incarnation, which was hidden (as he thinks) from many inferior angels.

For, he says, many angels did not know of the Incarnation before the time of the Incarnation or of the Passion of Christ, as is clear from that passage of Isaiah 63., where in the person of the inferior angels there is asked: Who is this that cometh from Edom with dyed garments? etc.; and from that verse of the Psalm: Who is this King of glory? and the Lord answered, strong and mighty, etc. It appears also from the Apostle to the Ephesians 3.: and that the Principalities and Powers may be made known through the Church, etc., where Jerome's gloss says that the angelic powers or dignities did not fully know the aforementioned mystery of the Incarnation until the Passion of Christ had been completed and the preaching of the Apostles had been spread among the Gentiles; which nevertheless up to that time was not hidden from the greater angels, according to Augustine's gloss in the same place, who says: It is established, moreover, that the angel sent to the blessed Virgin was not ignorant of this message: therefore he to whom this was revealed was of the superior angels, and not of the lower ones, from whom that sacred mystery was hidden.

Thus the Doctor.

You will say. St. Dionysius, chapter 13. De Coelesti Hierarchia, judges that the supreme angels never descend to these lowest ministries: and as for the fact that one of the Seraphim is read to have descended to purify Isaiah, he explains it thus, that no one of the highest order undertook this office, but some interior angel, upon whom the name proper to the Seraphim is imposed, because he was performing the function proper to that order when he burned the Prophet's lips with a burning coal. This interpretation St. Gregory the Great also embraces in his commentary on the first chapter of Hebrews, and proves it from the fact that sometimes angels too are called by the name of God when, acting in His stead, they carry out works of greater moment: therefore these Fathers judge that the superior angels are not sent to us. — I answer indeed that such was their opinion; but in this matter they do not seem to be heeded, especially since Sacred Scripture quite clearly establishes our opinion, and the other Fathers side with us, as has been said above.

I add that that exposition of St. Dionysius seems to conflict with the very words of the Prophet: Seraphim stood over it: six wings to one, and six wings to the other, of the Seraphim who were represented by those images: for just as the Prophet says: I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, so he says he saw Seraphim attending Him: therefore just as the former words are understood of God Himself represented in that imaginary vision, so the latter are understood of true Seraphim attending God and praising Him. Add what Suarez says, lib. 6. c. 10., that in no other place of Scripture is mention made of the Seraphim except in that one, as Jerome notes there: therefore if there Seraphim does not signify the proper order, but generally an ascending angel, we shall have no mention in Scripture of that order, nor anything whence we might prove it; for what is said in Psalm 103.: Who makest thy angels spirits, and thy ministers a burning fire, although expounded by some concerning the Seraphim, as if the sense were that God makes even the supreme angels, burning within themselves like a flame of fire, His ministers; yet the true sense is that David speaks of all the angels, whom he calls a flame of fire, either because they burn with charity, or because they have the power of spiritually burning and inflaming men, as Augustine, Theodoret, and Gregory hom. 31. on the Gospel expound there. Hence the argument is rather strengthened; for since all the angels are ministers of God and by a general designation a flame of fire, if for this reason alone they are called Seraphim by Isaiah, no place remains from which from the name Seraphim we could prove a proper order of Seraphim.

You will say 2. The angels, as we said in the first Note, are customarily divided into assistants and ministrants: but that division would be null if all were chosen for ministry: therefore it must necessarily be granted that the superior angels, who are said to assist God, are deputed to ministries. — It is confirmed from St. Gregory, lib. 17. Moral., where, explaining those words of Daniel: Thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him, he writes thus: To assist is one thing, to minister another: those Powers undoubtedly assist which do not go forth to announce certain things to men; but those minister who come to fulfill the offices of messengers; and yet even these do not depart from the innermost things by contemplation: and because more minister than those who principally assist, the number of the assistants is shown as it were definite, but that of the ministers infinite.

— I distinguish the major: the angels are divided into assistants and ministrants according to the ordinary disposition of divine providence, I concede; according to the extraordinary, and as regards extraordinary works, I deny.

Ordinarily indeed only the inferior angels are deputed to guardianship and custody. Nevertheless at times even the superior ones are sent forth; which certainly is clear from the testimony of Scripture, which teaches that certain angels who are expressly said to stand before God are sent from heaven to earth and discharge various embassies and ministries: such was Raphael, who confesses himself to be one of the seven who stand before God, and yet, being sent to Tobias, refused not even the lowest services of servants; thus Gabriel presented himself to Zacharias the Priest in the temple: I am, he says, Gabriel, who stand before God: the same angel, at the command of another, stood by Daniel and foretold to him things to come: while Michael, one of the chief princes, is nevertheless read in the same Daniel to come to bring aid, and in the canonical Epistle of Jude to have contended with the devil about the body of Moses: for of the Seraphim, who are held to be the highest of all, it is sufficiently clear from Isaiah that they are sent and work various functions. Likewise the Cherub placed before the paradise of pleasure is reported by Moses. But that which Dionysius writes, following the opinion of some, namely that they were not of the orders of the Seraphim or Cherubim, but of an inferior order, acting in the place of the greater, seems not at all consistent, and very many ancients cry out against it, who think that those called by the names of these belong to their orders; I shall be content with the testimony of Jerome alone out of them all, who speaks thus of the Seraphim: A certain Greek exceedingly learned in the Scriptures explained that the Seraphim are certain powers in heaven which, assisting before the tribunal of God, praise Him, and are sent into diverse ministries, especially those concerned with those who need purification and deserve to be cleansed by punishments in some measure on account of former sins.

Third conclusion. — The ordinary and principal effect of the mission of angels to men is the purification of the soul, the illumination of the intellect, and the kindling of the affection. Thus the Seraphic Doctor dist. 10. art. 2. qu. 1. et 2. And this truth he himself sets forth luminously, whoever may be the author of the Compendium Theologicae Veritatis, whether he himself or another drawn from him, lib. 2. cap. 18., where he says:

St. Dionysius attributes three acts to the angel, namely to purge, to illuminate, and to perfect: therefore the angels purge by removing phantasms, which impede the illumination which the angel intends to effect in us. Whence they remove three things from the soul, namely ignorance, and the clouds of phantasies, and false opinions of philosophical reasons contrary to revelation. But they illuminate the soul in a threefold way, namely as regards sense, as is clear when something is manifested in an assumed body; likewise as regards imagination, namely when they transmit into diverse phantasms the fumes which are raised through the animal spirit to the brain; and this power the devil also has; likewise as regards the intellect, and such illumination alone is perfect. Now the angel does not illuminate the intellect by effecting a new cognition in the soul, because he cannot imprint a new species in the intellect, nor give the habit of new light, nor can he turn its intention whither he wills, because this is against the nature of free will. For these three things are required that our intellect understand something, namely the species whereby it is known, and the light in which it is known, and the intention whereby the intellect is turned upon the species. But the angel illuminates our intellect by exciting and disposing, and by transferring the divine light into us: for he effects, as has been said, a transmutation of species in the phantasy, composing and dividing according to the exigency of the thing which he wishes to reveal. Likewise he irradiates the light of his own intellect upon those species, that they may move our intellect, and thus they can see more things and subtler ones in a doubled light. Likewise he excites the intention of the soul by some motion, that it may turn itself upon those phantasms, abstracting itself from others: and he perfects, that is, promotes to better things.

He teaches the same as regards the kindling of the affection, while proving, after premising, that the human intellect can be kindled in a threefold way: namely by effecting, or by exciting and aiding, or by moving.

In the first mode, God alone can inflame the affection, namely by effect. In the second mode, the thing desired itself inflames the affection, namely by exciting and aiding. In the third mode the angel can set our affection ablaze by moving. Of these we have examples in natural things: because in the first mode fire kindles wood; in the second mode wood kindles fire; and in the third mode, he who puts wood to the fire kindles the fire. But there is a difference between sending a thought, setting ablaze, and illuminating the mind: because to send a thought is, as Bede says, to create and make a thought within; but to set ablaze is to inflame a thought already made; while to illuminate is to give a revelation of some hidden intelligible thing.

Note however 1., with the Subtle Doctor in 2. dist. 11. n. 4., that the angels, in illuminating the human intellect, cannot in any way cause any actual intellection or intelligible species as total causes. The reason, he says, is not from any impotence on the part of the angel, because he is sufficiently in first act and can cause in another angel the act in second act: but the reason is from our intellect, which in this state is passive determined to a determinate active cause, namely to phantasms and the agent intellect: and therefore it is prevented from being able to receive immediately an impression from any intelligible act without a phantasm; because phantasms in this state stand to our intellect as sensibles to sense, namely in this respect, that just as sense is not impressed first except by a sensible outside, so neither is our intellect impressed in the first impression except by a phantasm. From these he infers that no angel can naturally ravish a man into ecstasy by intellection or intellectual vision, and that every rapture effected by the power of the devil takes place first and directly toward some vehement imagination, which is accompanied, or can be accompanied, by an intellectual cognition of the same object; and that this imagination can be so vehement as to distract a man from attention to any other object; and finally that the rapture of a man to which a man can dispose himself by habituation is also toward considering something imaginable. Although perhaps God may sometimes ravish the soul accustomed to withdraw itself from all other objects to the consideration of some single good object, e.g. the passion of Christ, or the glory of Paradise, from that consideration to a consideration purely intellectual independent of phantasms, namely such as the soul would have outside the body.

Note 2. from the same place ibidem n. 5., as Poncius explains him, that an angel cannot produce in man any cognition independent of phantasms, nor even one dependent as a total or partial cause immediately concurring effectively to that cognition; he could nevertheless teach a man; which opinion is common, and is proved: because just as a man teaches a man by proposing signs ordered among themselves in such a way that he can know what he did not know before, so also an angel can do; because in an assumed body he could speak as well as a man, and because he knows better the natures of things, he could lead more easily and more quickly to knowledge than a man. Next, the angel can excite those species which one has, in that order whereby they can determine him to knowing something previously unknown, and by doing this he would teach and instruct. Again, he could propose the very things themselves according to such a reason that from them one could know something which he previously did not know; and thus also he would teach, wherein there is no difficulty. — Whether, however, an angel could teach a man more quickly by using signs instituted at pleasure than he could be taught by another man, the Doctor thinks would be marvelous; For it would seem marvelous, he says, if sight could be changed more quickly by many sensibles or visibles, from which the species necessary for one great argumentation of man would be abstracted, than he himself or a man could use those signs instituted at pleasure representing those objects. Yet this ought not only to seem marvelous, but even impossible, if we speak of a cognition which would require the proposition of varied things; but I do not doubt that he can teach more quickly by showing the very thing itself, one or another aspect of its nature, than a man could by speaking.

Note 3. from the same place ibidem n. 6., that an angel cannot produce a new phantasm in the phantasy of a man except through the mediation of the object naturally causative of it; and the reason is, because he cannot produce a vision of whiteness with the eye without the concurrence of the whiteness itself, nor consequently can he produce its visible species without the whiteness, as all confess; and certainly that power would be granted to him gratuitously: therefore equally he cannot produce an act of phantasy, or the species required for such an act, without the concurrence of the object: given, however, the concurrence of the object, the concurrence of the faculty itself suffices, and thus the angel ought to have no immediate concurrence to the act or the species. Therefore he can concur only in the manner of one proposing the object, or its species, and also in the manner of one removing an impediment.

Note 1. That although God, just as He produced all things through Himself immediately, likewise governs, directs, preserves all things by His particular providence, and orders and leads them to certain ends due to Him; nevertheless He does not intend, nor effect, the execution of this providence, which we call governance or direction, alone and immediately; but sometimes makes use of certain creatures for preserving and moderating others. For He judged it consonant with His divine goodness not only to make creatures partakers of Himself, but He willed also to impart to them the power of acting and of communicating themselves to others, insofar as they could somewhat imitate and share in the divine goodness and its manner of communication. Therefore He influences some creatures upon others, as through the Sun He diffuses light and splendor upon other bodies, and as St. Augustine says lib. 3. De Trinitate, cap. 4.:

Just as grosser and lower bodies are ruled in a certain order by subtler and more powerful ones: so all bodies are governed by the spirit of life, and irrational spirits of life by the rational spirit of life, and the apostate spirit by the pious and just spirit, and that one by God Himself... For nothing is done visibly and sensibly that is not either commanded or permitted from the inner, invisible, and intelligible court of the supreme Emperor.

Note 2. That there are chiefly two ways of guarding a thing: The first is when there are removed and eliminated from it all the causes or occasions which can harm it, and can take away its good, whether already acquired, or impede its acquisition. The second is when its good is promoted, namely by rousing the thing itself to a more perfect state, or by helping it attain that state through internal powers superadded, or through an inwardly inspired greater knowledge of that good, from which an ardent desire for its attainment may be kindled. Thus the good Shepherd is said to guard His sheep, not only by removing from them the wolf and everything harmful: but also by providing with watchful care richer and better pastures and other advantages for them. Whether however the angels guard us in both these ways must be determined here.

Note 3. That the angels keep watch over us and serve us especially on account of three things, as the Seraphic Doctor observes, or whoever is the other author of the Compendium Theologicae veritatis lib. 2. cap. 18., namely, on account of the reparation of their ruin, because men to be saved shall enter into the place of the fallen angels. Also on account of the accumulation of accidental merit, which is increased in them until the day of Judgment. Also on account of the demonstration of their love toward us. As we shall demonstrate more fully below.

These points premised, three things must be determined here: First, whether the angels are truly appointed to the guardianship of men. Second, whether every man has assigned to him a special angel guardian. Third, whether even the other creatures are endowed with a guardian angel.

Although this truth plainly appears from very many texts of Holy Scripture; nevertheless Calvin, 1. 1. Instit. c. 14. sect. 7., lest he leave any Catholic dogma untouched, first called into doubt whether an angel has been constituted and designated by God for each individual man for their guardianship. Then, becoming bolder, in his comment. on Genes. chap. 32 he flatly denies that individual guardian angels are given to individual men, and says that those affirming this wickedly diminish the grace of God; and he feigns no doubt that the devil attempted by this cunning to diminish our confidence in some measure. That we may refute this error, let

First conclusion. — It is of faith that the holy Angels are appointed by the ineffable providence of God to the guardianship of men who are wayfarers.

Proof 1. From Scripture, indeed above all from those words of Psalm 33, The Angel of the Lord shall encamp round about them that fear him, and shall deliver them; or as St. Jerome translates from the Hebrew, The Angel of the Lord shall surround those who fear him round about. Or as another version has it, The Angel of the Lord encamps round about those who fear him. After the manner indeed of commanders, who establish and order their camps near a fortress or city, that they may defend it from enemies. Hence Salmeron translates from the Greek, The Angel pitched his camp with battle lines arrayed round about those who fear him. Namely, that he may drive back the assaults of bad angels on every side. Hence St. Basil on the same words of the Psalm, Just as, he says, the walls of a city drawn round about repel on every side the thrusting hostile attacks: so the angel fortifies you in front, guards you behind: and leaves nothing unguarded on either side. The royal Psalmist describes and sets forth more clearly this angelic protection and guardianship in Psalm 90 in these words: God hath given his angels charge over thee, that they keep thee in all thy ways, in their hands they shall bear thee up, etc.: and although S. Ambrose, Luc. 4, and Augustine interpret that Psalm literally of Christ, referring to those words of the Psalmist, nevertheless other holy Fathers and Doctors judge with S. Jerome that there the discourse is general concerning all men, especially the Just: since the beginning of the Psalm designates all the Just in these words: He that dwelleth in the aid of the Most High. Wherefore S. Bernard, expounding the aforesaid words wondrously in the Psalm Qui habitat, says: A wonderful dignity, and truly great love of charity; let us consider, brethren, whom, for whom, concerning what, what He commanded. Then he weighs each of those four things, and

First, whom? and how great is He who gave such a command, namely God, who is great and exceedingly to be praised, and whose greatness hath no end. — Second, to whom did He give command? To the angels themselves, assuredly creatures most noble, most powerful, most wise: so lofty, so blessed, and adhering to Him so closely and familiarly, truly His domestics. — Third, concerning whom did God command? Concerning man assuredly; whence the same Bernard exclaims with David: Lord what is man, that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him? As though man were not rottenness, and the son of man ashes. Yet Thou settest Thy heart upon him, Thou bearest solicitude for him, Thou hast care of him, nor dost Thou merely send him Thine Only-begotten, nay Thou sendest Thy Spirit, Thou promisest Thy countenance: but meanwhile, lest anything be lacking in the heavens for works of solicitude for us, Thou sendest those blessed Spirits for our sake into ministry, Thou appointest them to our guardianship, and biddest them become our Teachers.

I add, what is more admirable than that the most beautiful nobles of the starry Court, the honored ones of the Triad, the Palatine heaven-dwellers? Those magnificent Genii, noble in the adornment of all graces, those enjoying divine honors and made blessed, should fly down to men, join themselves most benignly to them, protect and embrace them with the greatest humanity? Men, I say, impious toward God, children of wrath, stained with many crimes, beasts in cruelty, cattle in senselessness, ungrateful toward those very guardians? For the angels are the Olympian Dynasts and the purple-clad ones of the Empyrean house, in favor with Augustus the maker and Lord of the orb of the earth. Prefects of the Universe, and Overseers of all created things, to whom God ruling within us, the supreme Emperor, has given the care and providence of men and of all things that are under Heaven, says Justin Martyr Apol. 1. — Fourthly finally there occurs for consideration from S. Bernard: what did God command His angels concerning us? Namely that they keep us in all our ways, namely in all the lanes, streets, and squares in which like the Spouse of the Canticles we seek God: in all journeys, places, affairs, and exercises, seeing that in all things the stone of offense, the rock of scandal, and the snare of temptation is cast by the enemy.

This same truth is confirmed by many oracles drawn from the New Testament; but above all from that of Matthew 18, where Christ speaking under the name of the little ones, that is, the humble, concerning the faithful, says: See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in Heaven always see the face of my Father who is in Heaven. As though He would say, they are not to be despised, especially because they are of such great merit with God that He did not disdain to grant them the guardianship of angels: for, says Euthymius on these words, Those whom angels serve ought not to be despised, if not on account of their virtue, at least on account of their Guardians. Whence S. Hilarius: That man is dangerously despised whose desires and petitions are conveyed to God by the ministry of angels. It is confirmed from that saying of Paul to the Hebrews: All are ministering spirits, sent to minister for them who shall receive the inheritance of salvation.

This same truth is proven by the testimony of the holy Fathers, first indeed by Dionysius, who in chap. 9. De Caelesti Hierarchia, said specially of the third, or lowest Hierarchy of angels that it presides over human orders, that they may be referred to God and converted. Hermas also, another disciple of S. Paul, as is related in the book called Ecclesia, division 3, writes that he was guarded and preserved through a good angel named Hegri from a certain great beast which had appeared in the form of a Net, from whose mouth fiery locusts were issuing. Clement of Alexandria lib. 6. Stromatum near the end: Divine power, he says, supplies good things through angels, whether they appear, etc. Origen hom. 8. on Genesis: Angels have the care of our souls, and what from infancy we commit to them as to Tutors and Curators. The same lib. 3. Periarchon, cap. 2. Judith, a heroine most illustrious, openly confesses and proclaims her angel as director of her journey, defender and preserver of her chastity among the barbarous and impure hands of the profane, and keeper of her salvation.

To these accedes S. Cyril writing lib. 4. contra Iulianum:

Through the benefit of his tutelary angel, Elias fleeing the furies of Jezabel even into the desert, and sleeping under the juniper tree, is first aroused and refreshed with bread and water: secondly too he is aroused, refreshed, and admonished concerning the great journey which yet remained for him to accomplish.

There accedes Chrysostom, who proves from the same and similar passages of Scripture that each one of us has a guardian angel; for he writes: Each one of the faithful has an angel. For from the beginning each of celebrated and approved men had an angel; as Jacob said: The angel who feeds me, and who delivered me from my youth.

And the same again, homil. de Ascens. Domini: That you may know that angels are everywhere present, hear what Paul, providing for feminine modesty, says: Women ought to have a veil over the head because of the angels. And again Jacob says: The angel who delivered me from my youth. And those who were with the Apostles say to Rhoda: It is his angel. — So far S. Chrysostom, who leaning on the Scriptures we have adduced confidently asserted that a singular angel is designated for each of us.

Nazianz. carm. 6. De substantiis separatis, De ministrantibus Angelis thus says: One half of the world prone to obedience sustains the globe, and by its aid preserves it, etc.

Gregory of Nyssa lib. De Vita Moysis:

There is, he says, a saying claiming faith for itself from the tradition of the Elders, that after our nature fell into sin, God provided for this fall of ours, and by no means left us destitute of His care: but employed a certain angel from among those allotted a nature exempt from body for the protection and defense of each one. But on the contrary, the corrupter of nature strives against us with equal contrivance, and bringing destruction upon human life joined to him is a certain perverse and malicious demon. Moreover man, placed between the two, is rendered stronger by his own impulse to bring either one to a definite goal and purpose contrary to the purpose of the other.

Ambrose lib. De Viduis after the middle: The angels are to be besought for us, who have been given to us for protection: and on Psalm 37, How far off stand, he says, those who have been attributed for our aid? And Psal. 43. on him who commits salvations to Jacob: Salvation, he says, lies in the ministries of angels, who are deputed to the protection of men.

The Seraphic Doctor urges this truth dist. 11. art. 1. qu. 1. with a triple reason;

It was fitting, he says, for fallen man to be entrusted to angelic guardianship: both because it befits the height of divine power: then because it befits the order of wisdom; and then also because it befits the sweetness of mercy. For the height of power befits it from a double cause; one is, because God wills to be honored not only in Himself, but also in His servants: whence it does not suffice the height of divine power that angels minister to Himself, but also for the manifestation of His excellent power He exacts this from them, that they minister even to His creatures: the other reason is, because since God has the devil and his demons as adversaries, it is more fitting that He Himself conquer them through His own ministers, that thereby the power of the hand of God be shown, because He is not only powerful in Himself, but also in His servants; and lest the Lord of hosts be undeservedly so called. But the order of wisdom similarly befits it; for this is the order which the divine law executes and conserves in its works, that it lead the lowest through means to the highest; therefore since the angel, both by reason of the immortality of nature, and also by reason of grace perfected, holds the middle between God and fallen man, it was fitting that God aid and guard man through an angel. The sweetness also of divine mercy befits it, which opened its bosom to fallen man, and did not fail him in anything pertaining to the promotion of his salvation; and therefore since man having fallen was sold to do evil, it ministered to him the price of the blood of His Son, by which he is redeemed, that he might do good; and because he has an adversary assailing him, it gave him a minister guarding, or a guardian aiding; that so from no side might human misery remain without the aid and benefit of divine mercy. There was fitting therefore, from this triple reason, that angelic guardianship be given to fallen man.

William of Paris proves and confirms this same truth in a marvelous manner in the second part De Universo c. 108.

First indeed because, he says, natural piety and love exist among men toward one another, and a natural love of honorableness and comeliness of life, through which every father of a family intends this, that the morals of his household be composed outwardly and its life adorned. Piety and love also show themselves, moving and reproving men from vices and sins by which the morals of men are disfigured and life disturbed: and no one has yet doubted that this is both good and pleasing to God most high. How much more strongly therefore does this natural piety and love exist in the Saints and most blessed Angels, and so much greater than in men, how much more expeditious and superior is their nobility for these and all other good things than are men themselves in the misery of the present life. If therefore human nature in that depression and misery of men does not suffer good men to abstain from the correction and governance of men, which is possible: how much more will the most noble nature of those good angels, from incomparably greater piety and love, not allow most miserable men to lack their counsels, and aids, and all other things pertaining to their governance? — Secondly, if natural piety and love have such power among men that, as I said before, some counsel others, some aid others, and bestow upon others the office of governance; how much more will piety and love be able to do this, so that the blessed and holy Angels are unwilling to fail men in such misery and desolation? — Thirdly, if justice is that which neither makes miserable nor abandons the miserable, therefore there will be no justice of the saints and blessed angels, if they do not exercise care for men. — Fourthly, if power over men is given to men, and Rulers of men are set over them, and men do this publicly and privately against disturbers: how much more strongly are Rulers and Defenders necessary to them against evil spirits, which are most hostile, most harmful to men? If therefore it is the care of the Creator, namely of God most high, that all should have Rulers and Defenders, whether Kings and Princes against the assailers and disturbers of men: how much more strongly is it the care of the same blessed Creator that there be for them rulers and defenders against spiritual assailers and disturbers, namely evil spirits, where they so much more need such governance and care, how much greater are spiritual goods and evils than bodily and temporal ones. — Fifthly, since the universal governance of God most high is ordered, and He suffers nothing beyond His own governance, permits nothing to lack due governance, He has subjected each single thing according to its mode and order to congruent rulers: but it is manifest that men exist neither wholly congruent nor sufficient rulers for men, especially since in the greater and better part of their governance they fail, namely against the princes of the spiritual militia; for against them they are incomparably less able by their own strength or wisdom than the care of the governance of men requires. Therefore that the governance of God most high be perfect, by which the whole universe needs to be ruled, it is necessary that there be for men rulers wiser and stronger and in all ways better; especially on account of the infestations and disturbances which come to men and human affairs from spirits; especially since it is manifest through the governance of Rectors, that is, of those ruling, that men can resist neither the cunning nor the power of evil spirits; otherwise, what else would become of men? Except that given to evil spirits like animals of slaughter without Shepherds and Guardians they would be delivered up for prey and devouring, which the goodness and benignity of the blessed Creator suffers in no way. Thus William.

This truth was also manifest to the pagan Philosophers; whether they drew it from the Jews teaching, or from the sacred Books, or received it through tradition from their ancestors. On which matter Apuleius thus writes in the book De Deo Socratis:

From this sublimer multitude of demons, Plato asserts, individuals singly assigned to individual men in the conducting of life as witnesses and guardians: who, conspicuous to no one, are always present, witnesses not only of all deeds but even of thoughts. And when life has been lived out and return is to be made, that same one who was bestowed upon us seizes and drags straightway his own charge as it were to judgment, and there stands forth to plead the cause; if anything is contrived falsely, he rebuts it; if anything true is said, he confirms it; in short the verdict is rendered by his testimony.

Hence he adds that wholesome admonition:

Wherefore you all who listen with me as interpreter to this divine sentiment of Plato, form your minds toward whatsoever you would do or meditate in such a way that you know that before these guardians nothing at all is secret, neither within the soul nor without: since he curiously partakes of all things, sees all things, understands all things, and dwells in those most hidden recesses of minds with the voice of conscience.

— Afterwards he subjoins the example of Socrates in honoring this angel in these words:

This thoroughly guardian, singular prefect, domestic watcher, inseparable arbiter, inseparable witness, disapprover of the greater evils, approver of goods, if rightly attended to, diligently known, religiously cultivated, as it was cultivated by Socrates with justice and innocence, a looker-out in uncertain things, a forewarner in doubtful ones, a wayfarer in perilous ones, a helper of the needy, who can for you both in dreams, then in signs, then even perhaps face to face when use demands, turn away evils, prosper goods. And soon: Socrates knew and worshipped this his God most excellently perfectly.

— That moreover the ancients worshipped genii with the highest religion Censorinus thus declares, cap. 3:

Therefore to the Genius especially we sacrifice yearly through every age. Although not only this one, but besides there are several other gods supporting the life of men, each according to his portion, which books of indigitamenta sufficiently taught whoever wished to know them; but all these represent once in each man the effect of their divinities, wherefore they are not summoned throughout the whole space of life by new Religious rites. But the Genius has been appointed our observer in such a way that he withdraws not even for a point of time farther away, but accompanies us from the womb of our mother, when received, to the last day of life.

You will say 1. Angelic guardianship detracts from man's liberty, and from the excellence of his merits: therefore it does not seem to be admitted. The antecedent is proved: man cannot be compelled to evil by free will, nor be violently acted upon: therefore of himself he is sufficient to resist his adversaries: in vain, then, are Angels deputed to his guardianship, or else that angelic guardianship detracts something from the glory of his liberty. Moreover, the greater the glory of the victor, the fewer the aids with which he triumphs over his adversary. Therefore it would be more glorious for man to conquer the devil by himself, than with an Angel assisting and fighting alongside him: and thereupon that very angelic guardianship detracts something from his glory, just as from his liberty.

I deny the antecedent, as to both parts; for although perhaps man, strengthened by the aid and benefit of grace through free will, would suffice of himself to resist those who oppose him, and to win a splendid triumph over them: nevertheless, since his struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against Principalities and Powers, and against the spirits of wickedness in the heavenly places, and since he himself is weak and infirm, he would more often be conquered by them than conquer them, unless he had holy Angels fighting alongside him against the evil Angels. For neither, says Peter Damian in his Epistle to Alexander II, supreme Pontiff, could human frailty resist the cunning of so subtle and practiced an enemy, unless angelic virtue drove him back from the temptations of the Elect. Therefore it is far better and more glorious for him to conquer enemies so formidable with the aid of angels, than to be conquered without aid.

You will say 2. From that oracle of Christ the Lord, Luke 22, He who sits at table is greater than he who serves: therefore, if an Angel serves man by guarding him, it follows that man is superior to the Angel: but the consequence is false: therefore so is the antecedent. Moreover, if an Angel guards man, either he has this from nature, or from grace: if from nature, it follows that demons too ought to be reckoned guardians of men, for their natural gifts remained intact in them: if from grace, since one soul surpasses another in grace, he ought to be deputed to the guardianship of that one.

I deny both consequences, and to the antecedent of the first, I say that it is indeed true of the ministry of subjection, but not of the ministry of presidency: but an Angel, in guarding man, ministers to him by presiding over him, and by ruling and teaching him, as a pedagogue a little child; not by serving and obeying, as a servant his lord. To the antecedent of the second consequence, I say that the Angel has from both nature and grace that he can guard man: from nature indeed, because he is stronger and more powerful than man: but from grace, because he is more excellent and firmer: therefore on both counts it belongs to him to rule and protect man.

You will say 3. To God alone does it belong to guard man: therefore not to an Angel. The antecedent is proved; both because God is said in Scripture to be the guardian of men; thus Job 7, What shall I do to thee, O guardian of men? And in Psalm 120, Behold, he who guards Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep... The Lord guards you from all evil; may the Lord guard your soul. The Lord guards your going in and your coming out. And also because guardianship is ordered to preserving man, lest he fall into the captivity of the devil: but it belongs to the same one to preserve in liberty as to liberate and redeem from captivity: therefore since to redeem from captivity belongs to God alone, to guard and preserve in liberty also belongs to him alone.

I deny the antecedent, and to its first proof I say with the Seraphic Doctor praised above at 5, that the perfection of divine guardianship does not exclude the utility of angelic guardianship. For just as God, for the manifestation of his goodness and the manifestation of the wisdom of his order, communicated to creatures the power to act, and to produce other creatures effectively, himself nevertheless producing and cooperating; so he gave the Angels the power to guard man, yet he himself never ceases from the guardianship of his servants, because such a power of guarding befitted the dignity of angelic grace and nature: therefore divine guardiansship does not hinder angelic: nay, the divine contributes to the perfection of the angelic; and the angelic to the commendation and manifestation of the divine.

To the second proof, I deny the parity, with the same Seraphic Doctor: for to redeem is to quicken the dead; but to confer life in the first instance, and to restore it anew when lost, belongs to God alone: to guard, however, signifies only some external act of beneficence, which can be conferred by a more excellent nature and a more powerful virtue: therefore it is no wonder if the Angels, who could not free man from the captivity of the demon, can nevertheless guard and preserve him, lest he again rush headlong into it through sin.

Second conclusion. — To each and every man, whether little ones or adults, whether faithful or infidels, predestined or reprobate, sinners or just, individual guardian Angels are deputed.

This is most widely received among Catholics against Calvin, book 1 of the Institutes, chapter 14, where he most mendaciously affirms that it is uncertain whether individual Angels are assigned to individual men: and on Psalm 90 he adds that it is a false invention. St. Basil gathers this truth from Sacred Scripture in book 3 against Eunomius:

But that an Angel is present to each of the faithful, as it were some Pedagogue and Pastor governing his life, let no one contradict who remembers the Lord's words saying: Despise not one of these little ones, for their Angels always see the face of my Father who is in Heaven. And the Psalmist says: The Angel of the Lord shall encamp round about them that fear him. And: The Angel who delivered me from my youth, and so forth of that kind.

With these passages of Scripture Basil establishes the common dogma of Catholics against Calvin. Hilary subscribes to him, who, weighing the same passage, says: Great is the dignity of souls, that each one should have an Angel delegated to guard it from the beginning of its birth. First he says pointedly "each one," for not one Angel guards several men: then because an Angel cannot be guardian at once in several places, and it can often happen that two men distant in place need the local presence and assistance of their Angel: whence if there were one and the same Angel, he could not suitably help both: then because this more greatly commends the magnificence and liberality of God: finally, because it is likely that in the lowest Hierarchy there are more Angels than there are men actually and in fact existing, and thereupon it does not appear necessary that one Angel guard several men.

The Conclusion is proved moreover; and that first concerning infants and little ones. For this St. Jerome first teaches expressly, saying: Above this, each soul from the beginning of its birth has an Angel deputed to it. Although some, as St. Thomas 1. p. q. 113. a. 5. ad 3, expound these words of birth not in the womb, but outside the womb; because, they say, when the child is in the womb it is like a part and fruit of the mother; whence just as he who guards the body, or the tree, also guards a part of the body, and the fruit joined to the tree, so the Angel guarding the mother also guards the child as long as it is in her womb; nevertheless nearly all now agree that that deputation of the Angel is made at once when the soul is infused into the body. And this St. Anselm taught openly in the Elucidarium, writing: Each soul, when it is sent into the body, is entrusted to an Angel: but the soul is infused at conception: therefore at conception an Angel is deputed to its guardianship.

* Tertullian had anticipated this in the book De Anima, chapter 37, where he writes: but the whole apparatus of man's sowing, framing, and fashioning in the womb is molded by some power ministering to the divine will, whatever reason it has had allotted to exercise. By which words he signifies not only that an Angel is destined for each man when formed in the womb, but even while being formed by God: which truth he declares was known even to the pagans; for he adds, estimating thus: Even the Roman superstition fashioned a Goddess Alemona to feed the fetus in the womb, and Nona and Decima from the more solicitous months; and Partula, who governs the birth, and Lucina truly, who brings it forth into the light. We believe the Angels to discharge the divine offices.

He thought, therefore, that Angels were destined by divine Providence to watch over children being formed in the maternal womb and being brought to birth, and to discharge those offices which the ancient Romans raved were exhibited by fabricated divinities, whose madness St. Augustine pursues and elegantly mocks lib. 4. De Civit. Dei, cap. 11, where he assails the teachers of the gentiles because they ascribed to Jupiter, whom they called the supreme God, those tasks which were attributed to plebeian divinities.

He himself, he says, should preside under the name Liber, over the seeds of men, and under the name Libera, over those of women. He himself should be Diespiter who brings the birth to the day, he himself should be the Goddess Mena whom they set over the monthly courses of women. He himself should be Lucina, who is invoked by women in labor. He himself should bring help to the newborn, receiving them into the bosom of the earth, and be called Ops. He himself should open the mouth in the cry, and be called the god Vaticanus. He himself should lift from the earth, and be called the goddess Levana. He himself should guard the cradle, and be called the goddess Cunina, etc.

— Origen explains this matter thus, tractate 5 on Matthew:

Further you ask, of these little ones, the Angels who preside over them, when they begin to have care of them: whether from the time when they were born in Christ through the laver of regeneration, as then newborn infants, and no longer subject to a certain adverse power; or from the time of their carnal birth, according to the foreknowledge of God and his preordination, those whom he foreknew and predestined, that they might be conformed to the glory of Christ. You see, that whoever has carefully weighed both, it belongs to him to affirm which of the two is true, and to bring forward the Scripture consenting to one of the two. For on each side much can be said, nevertheless let us bring forward from the many a little something. Those who wish that as soon as anyone has been born he should receive an Angel set over him, of those who have been foreknown by God, use the voice of the Apostle saying: who separated me from my mother's womb, that he might reveal his Son in me; as if from that time he has need of an Angel ruling him, because he was separated according to the foreknowledge of God. Likewise in the Epistle of Jude it is written thus: In God the Father beloved, and in Jesus Christ preserved and called. By whom preserved, unless by the Angels to whom they had been handed over, that they might be preserved, and rescued from all evil, who were held as foreknown and preordained? Further he will bring forward also that which is said in the psalms: From my mother's womb you are my protector; so that God may be the protector of the foreknown, through Angels deputed for this very ministry. So also he will take that: You took me from my mother's womb; likewise: upon you was I cast from the womb; and a thousand others of this kind having the same sense, etc.

* — Moreover this truth is urged by reason: first, because as soon as the little one is formed, he begins to be man the wayfarer: whence although physically he is as it were a part of the mother, nevertheless in the order of the salvation of the soul, he is a distinct person; whence he is capable of original sin, even if the mother is holy; and by the grace of God he is capable of merit, as is seen in John the Baptist. Likewise, it is credible that a demon is at once joined to him, who may procure to harm and injure him specially: therefore also an Angel ought from then to be deputed to him, that he may ward off the demon, and from then guard against other impediments, both corporal and spiritual. Nor does it stand in the way that the guardian Angel of the mother could take up this care: because it pertains to him only as long as it is necessary for the good of the mother. But it can redound to the utility of the son alone, and his own Angel will have it with a special and more proper affection. And sometimes the mother, not attending to her Angel, can attempt something harmful to the child, which the Angel guardian of the child will be able to impede. Finally, this providence is more generous; and therefore I gladly adhere to this part.

— But how, and for what cause this angelic guardianship is made toward the little one, whether existing in the womb or outside the mother's womb, Alensis teaches, qu. 41. memb. 4. art. 3.

But the reason of this guardianship is taken, he says, both on the part of the Angel guarding, and on the part of the man guarded. On the part of the Angel, the reason is merit, for he merits an accidental reward from such guardianship. On the part of the little one the reason is taken, both on the part of the body, namely that the good Angel guards the body of the little one from the vexation of the adverse power: and on the part of the soul, and this in two ways; because the reason is taken of the soul in itself, and from the conjunction of the soul to the body. On the part of the soul in itself, because as soon as the soul is created, it is convertible to good or to evil, and can profit, not then, but afterward: and therefore a guardian Angel is given to it, not for this time, that is, not that it then make it profit, or withdraw it from evil, but that he order it, and dispose it, and fit it for this, that it may profit afterward, when the time will be of using reason. But on the part of the soul as it is joined to the body, the reason of guardianship can be taken in the little one, because the soul, as soon as it is united to the body, is corrupted with a vitious corruption; thence it contracts corruption: whence the soul, as soon as it is joined to the body, suddenly proceeds into another habilitation, either to evil or to good; although such habilitation is not known, and to such habilitation the good Angel helps and orders, who is given to it as guardian: as perhaps that corruption, which it contracted from the body, helped to habilitate to evil,

You will say. Little ones cannot fail through fault, nor profit into the better through a good work, since they lack the use of reason: therefore angelic guardianship is fruitless for them.

I distinguish the antecedent; they cannot profit for that time, and as long as they do not obtain the use of reason, I concede: they cannot profit for the future time, when they will be endowed with the perfect use of reason, I deny; as Alensis expounded above.

The Conclusion is proved similarly as to the remaining parts: namely, that all adults whatsoever, whether predestined or reprobate, whether sinners or just, have a special Angel deputed to them for guardianship. And indeed first it is clear concerning the reprobate; both because there is conceded to them sufficient aid for salvation: but angelic guardianship is not outside the latitude of such sufficient aid: therefore it must be conceded to them. The major is clear: the minor is proved: God permits the reprobate to be tempted by the demon; and consequently he ought to afford them protection and sufficient defense: but this he supplies through guardian Angels: therefore he ought not to have denied it to them: And also because although this guardianship have no effect of merit of eternal life; nevertheless through it they are recalled from many evils, which without doubt they would perpetrate, unless the good Angel withdrew them. And because God permits the predestined to have demons lying in wait for their salvation: therefore by equal right he ought to concede angelic guardianship to the reprobate, that they may watch over their salvation by every way they can. Finally, because this guardianship redounds to the good of the predestined; for through it the demons instigating reprobate men are held off, lest they harm the Elect as much as they desire.

— By these can be solved and explained St. Paul, when he asserts in Hebrews 1, that Angels are sent in ministry for the sake of those who shall inherit salvation: for thus the ministries of the Angels concerning the reprobate redound to the good of those who shall inherit salvation: for by the aforesaid words St. Paul wished to signify, that the end of the angelic ministry universally is the salvation of men, and therefore it is exercised concerning men, although the fruit is chiefly completed in those who are saved effectively.

This same truth holds concerning sinners of every kind: And indeed, says the Seraphic Doctor, dist. 11. qu. 1,

The good Angel is no more sparing in preserving in good, than the evil Angel is in precipitating into evil: but the evil Angel, however good a man may be, does not cease to assail him even until death: therefore it seems that neither does the good Angel cease to guard even an evil man however wicked, even until death: And because the worse anyone is, the more prone he is to evil, and the more prone to evil, the more he needs one to draw him back: therefore since the Angel deputed to guardianship is ordered to this, that he draw back from evil, it seems that he ought not desert a man however great a sinner: Finally, because of no one is one to despair, while he still exists as wayfarer: therefore however obstinate anyone may be in sin, there always shines forth some hope of his salvation: therefore as the physician deserts no sick man, unless he has first lost all hope of restoring his health: so neither ought the Angels, physicians of souls, to desert anyone, as long as any hope of salvation flourishes.

But this flourishes as long as man exists as wayfarer: therefore the guardian Angel ought to desert no one before death.

You will say 1. Very many of the holy Fathers affirm that not all men, but only the just, have guardian Angels. Thus Didymus indicates, in Damascenus book 4. Parallel. c. 7. saying: Upright and holy men have lucid Angels as guardians: but the wicked, dark ones. The same Evagrius indicates in the same, writing: The sponsors of Knowledge and Wisdom join many Angels to you: but the impious and scandalous man is disjoined even from that angel who was given to him from boyhood. This very thing St. Basil signifies on Psalm 33. where he teaches that Angels assist only the faithful and pious, but desert sinners: To everyone believing in the Lord, he says, an Angel assists, unless perhaps we drive him away ourselves by wicked deeds: for as smoke drives bees in flight, and a bad odor repels doves: so a fetid sin repels the Angel, the tearful guardian of our life. And in the Commentaries on Isaiah, expounding those words of the Prophet, and I will take away the hedge thereof, he interprets of the guardianship of the Angels, writing: It can also happen that the Angel, since each one of us has a holy one, who encamps round about them that fear the Lord, when caught in sins, becomes liable to this plague which he threatens, and is deprived of the gift, that is, the guardianship of the holy virtues. It can be confirmed from those words of Jeremiah 51. We have cured Babylon, but she is not healed: let us leave her alone.

I answer, The holy Fathers can be expounded thus, that they wish the Angels to guard only pious men, and to desert sinners, not because they have no care of these at all, but because they sometimes relax the actual operation and exercise of guarding on account of the incapacity or resistance of men. But they do not wish that they desert him entirely, nor any longer have any care of him, for we read the contrary in Exodus 23. where God, promising the Jewish people a guardian Angel, adds: he will not dismiss you when you have sinned. And this very thing is urged by reason: since the demon does not cease from tempting the just on account of his outstanding works of justice, so neither will the holy Angel desert the sinner: for, as Ambrose said on that Psalm 38. I was dumb and was humbled, etc., the Angel is round about man, lest anyone harm him; the Angel does not depart, unless commanded by the Lord. Moreover this care was given to the Angel independently of the faith or grace of the wayfarer man; therefore just as the Angels guard those men who never had either grace or faith: so also those who lost them. Finally, God does not desert these sinners as to sufficient internal and external aids: therefore neither can the Angels desert them on account of sins, since this is not consonant with the will of God; therefore the Angel does not entirely desert the sinner: but he bears himself toward him remissively, and perhaps with lesser solicitude, on account of his continual resistance toward him.

Hence it also sometimes happens that the guardian Angel seems in a certain way to abandon, or assist more remissly, the just man, that this may at last redound to his greater good; thus Ambrose on those words of Psalm 35. They who were near me stood afar off.

Let not the mystical affection of piety recoil, he says, as if it were said of the Angels, who present themselves to those who fear the Lord, that they may snatch them from temptations, which they cannot bear: how then do they stand afar off, who are attributed for help? But they do not separate themselves, but he who is pressed by temptations thinks them far away, whom he desires to be nearer at hand, and judges them to dissemble, while they await the time of helping by the nod of him above them, who commanded his athlete to contend the longer, that he might conquer the more gloriously.

Corollary. — From these gather, that every hardened sinner is not without a guardian Angel, nay, that even Antichrist himself will not be without one, as Alensis, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas teach; and this is gathered from this, that God wills all men to be saved, and excepts no one, but comprehends all, even the worst; and consequently Antichrist himself also. Reason also favors it, for he who proposes to anyone an end, ought to provide the means for obtaining it; but eternal life is proposed to all men however impious, and angelic guardianship is a means for obtaining and acquiring it: therefore, etc. and consequently it will not be denied to Antichrist. Add that just as the evil Angels always lie in wait, so on the contrary the good, with the charity with which they burn, will to aid continually, and in this they imitate God, the fountain of mercy and charity. — Nor is it to be said, that guardian Angels desert men however great sinners, as long as they are in this life. For just as common supernatural aid is denied to no wayfarer entirely, so neither, while he is on the way, is he entirely destitute of the guardianship of the Angels. But as on account of the sins of men certain particular and more efficacious aids are sometimes denied to them, which God is not bound to give, so the guardianship of the Angels is denied as to certain special effects.

We must know, says Alexander of Hales, that the effect of angelic guardianship over souls is manifold: one is that the soul may advance in the good of grace; another that it may not fall into the evil of guilt; a third is that, if it falls, it may afterwards rise again; or that it may not fall so often, or into so great an evil. Hence he concludes: we say therefore that Antichrist will have angelic guardianship, not for the first effects, that is, the Guardian Angel will not have those effects with regard to him, but only the last, namely, that he may not fall as often as he would fall without a Guardian Angel. For no wayfarer, inasmuch as he is a wayfarer, is lacking in the mercy of God, which consists in giving a Guardian Angel.

— Yet John Altestaing of Mindelheim, in his Vocabulario Theologico, holds that a good angel will first be assigned to Antichrist as guardian; but when he shall be so obstinate in sin that he will call himself God and exalt himself above everything that is called God or is worshipped, as the Apostle says, then at last the angel will wholly forsake him, and will not thereafter have him under protection.

* It does not escape me that Origen denies that good angels are destined by God to the guardianship of wicked and lost men; for in tract. 5. in Matth., after writing that it is uncertain whether angels are destined by God to the guardianship of men from their formation in the womb, or only from their regeneration through baptism, he adds:

But whoever wishes an angel helper to be given to men from the time when, through the laver of regeneration, they have become infants newly born in Christ, will say that it is not credible that a holy angel should preside over the senseless and unbelieving, those erring and serving various and unclean desires, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another, fornicators and adulterers, sometimes even abusers of themselves with men, robbers and drunkards and plunderers: lest he be defiled by such acts of the man to whom he has been given as guardian. But a man indeed, in the time of his unbelief and his sins, because born of unbelievers, is under the angels of Satan and malignant spirits and unclean demons. But when they have received the faith, then Christ, who is the Redeemer, who redeems by the price of his blood the believer in God from wicked lords, hands him over to a holy angel, on account of its purity always beholding the face of the Father.

Yet he teaches the contrary elsewhere, namely in tomo 13. in Matth. and hom. 35 in Lucam, where he teaches that angels are designated for individual men. *

Collect 2. That Christ the Lord had no Guardian Angel:

because, as the Seraphic Doctor says at dist. 11. quaest. 3, Christ had no need of the guardianship of an angel, nor did it become him; he had no need, he says, because his adversary could neither oppress by violence the Body united to the Divinity, nor seduce by cunning an intellect fully illumined by the Word, nor allure by blandishments an affection confirmed by the fullness of grace: therefore Christ had no need of a good angel, neither for the defense of his Body, nor for the instruction of his operation, nor for the incitement of his affection. But not only did he not need angelic guardianship, but neither did it even befit him. For guardianship, in the guardian with respect to the one guarded, implies a certain presidency: and since the angels were subject to Christ the Lord, not set over him; therefore no office of presidency ought to be committed to those angels with respect to Christ, and for this reason no angel ought to have been deputed to guard Christ, but rather a multitude of angels ought to have been deputed to his ministry.

It is confirmed, by the fact that we need a Guardian Angel chiefly for three causes: first, that he may teach and instruct us lest we be deceived; second, that he may admonish and exhort us to act well; third, that he may remove occasions and dangers of sinning: but Christ needed none of these: first, because he was endowed with greater knowledge than all the angels; second, because, being full of grace, he could stir himself up to act well; third, because he was intrinsically impeccable by reason of the hypostatic union, grace, and glory: he therefore who keeps Israel, nay rather who is the Keeper of all, had no need of a Guardian Angel.

You will say. Angels were delegated to the guardianship of Christ: therefore he truly had Guardian Angels. The antecedent is proved from that Psal. 90. Angelis suis Deus mandavit de te, ut custodiant te, etc. which Psalm very many of the Holy Fathers testify to have been written of Christ. — Moreover, to console the sorrowful and to strengthen the failing is the office and function of a guarding angel; but we read Luc. 22. that while the soul of Christ was sorrowful even unto death, the Angel of the Lord stood by him, strengthening him; therefore Christ had a Guardian Angel. — Finally, Christ according to his human nature was made a little lower than the angels: therefore, like other men, he needed their ministry and guardianship.

I deny all these consequences, and to the first antecedent I say that although some of the Holy Fathers interpret those words of the Psalm of Christ, nevertheless the others contend that they were written by David not of Christ, but of any just man whatsoever. Add that if they are taken of Christ, they can be understood not of the guardianship of Christ against the demons, whose conqueror he was; for he had no need of the aid of the angels in order to conquer them, but only of a certain external ministry which they rendered. Hence we read Matthew 4. that when the devil had been vanquished, angels came and ministered unto him, namely Christ.

To the second antecedent, I say with the aforesaid Alexander of Hales at art. 2. that comfort is twofold, one authoritative, the other ministerial; the former imports authority, the latter sounds of friendship and reverence: in the former way a lord consoles a servant, namely by bestowing upon him favors and benefits; in the latter way a servant can console the Lord by supplying him with certain things exciting him to mitigate pain. Thus, as S. Damascenus says lib. De Fide cap. 3. the Angel strengthened Christ the Lord, not indeed by proposing to him anything of which he was unaware, but only by representing to him what had been decreed by the Divine Father to be brought about; whence there arose supreme glory to God and salvation to men.

To the third, I say that although Christ is said to have been made lower than the angels by reason of his passible human nature, yet he was never so made lower as to need their protection and governance: for in every state, even of passion and death, he remained the supreme Lord of the angels, and commanded them at his nod.

Collect 3. That the Most Blessed Virgin, although illumined by graces and attended by virtues, because she was not intrinsically impeccable, but only extrinsically through special protection, and insofar as she was confirmed in grace, all Theologians hold with S. Bernard 17. to have had a Guardian Angel, whom they judge to have been S. Gabriel, who, as S. Ambrosius writes, consoled her in her straits, and disclosed to her divine commands and mysteries. Andreas Cretensis moreover writes that she had not only the Angel Gabriel as Guardian, but that, as she was Queen of heaven and Lady of the angels, she was surrounded by many troops of them, which angelic host S. Gabriel governed and ordered, as Gregorius Nicomediensis says in the oration de Maria in templo praesentata. And this seems to have been foretold in Canticles 7. where the Sunamitis, who bore the likeness of the most holy Virgin, is called terrible as an army set in array: for the choirs of camps are the hosts of the heavenly Citizens, and the celestial legions, which protected and comforted that most holy Virgin.

Collect finally, That Guardian Angels were also deputed to the First Parents in the state of innocence, as Alexander of Hales teaches, and likewise the Seraphic Doctor: both because God is more prone to pity and to succor than to condemn: therefore if in the state of innocent nature he permitted an evil angel to infest and tempt man, with stronger right he ought to delegate to him a Guardian Angel, who might fight along with him against the assailing devil; especially since he wrote Ecclesiast. 23. Against evil is good, and against life death, and so look upon all the works of the Most High, one against one, and two against two. And also because Guardian Angels are deputed to us for this reason, that through their aid we may be recalled from evil: but man in the state of innocence needed to be removed from evil, seeing he could sin: therefore he needed angelic guardianship for that. Finally, the same good angel is deputed to man in guardianship, that he may defend him from oppression against violence, says the Seraphic Doctor qu. 2, that he may instruct and direct him against deceit, and exhort and lead him on to good against blandishments: since therefore in the state of innocence of the First Parents the devil could seduce the reason by cunning, lead the will to evil by blandishments, and crush the virtues by a kind of violence, seeing he was stronger and more cunning than innocent man, and more pertinacious in his purpose of malice; therefore it was fitting that angelic guardianship be granted to innocent man, that he might be able to resist so formidable an enemy.

Third conclusion. — Angels are deputed not only to men, but also to other things, as Rulers, Administrators, and Guardians.

This truth is proved, first indeed by the authority of the Holy Fathers, above all S. Augustini, who lib. 83. qu. 79. says: Every visible thing has an angelic power set over it. Which sentiment certainly can be confirmed from Scripture; for Apocalypse 14. it is said: Et alius Angelus exivit de altari qui habebat potestatem super ignem: and cap. 15: Audivi Angelum aquarum dicentem: iustus es Domine, etc., where Arethas says: Hence we know that angelic powers are set over creatures: this one indeed over the waters, that one over fire, and another over some other particular creature. Hence Origenes 8. in Ieremiam teaches that angels preside over all things, both earth and water, and air and fire, that is, the principal elements, and in this order come down to all animals, to every plant, to the very stars of Heaven. The same Homilia 23. says:

The celestial powers have undertaken the ministries of this world, that one may preside over the germinations of the earth or of trees, another over rivers and fountains, another over winds, another over the seas, another over earthly animals, or over each thing born of the earth; and that in each of these there are ineffable Sacraments of the divine dispensation, all things being ordered in their place, and each office discharged by its proper power.

— *And lib. 8. contra Celsum, answering his assertion in which he contended that demons preside over all the parts of the world and over their dispensation, he writes:

But we say that without the protection of invisible husbandmen, so to speak, and other administrators, who provide not only for the produce of the earth but also for water and air, the earth would not bear those things which are said to be ruled by nature, the water in springs and rivers would not of itself spring forth and flow, the air would not be preserved incorrupt, nor impart life to breathing things; yet we do not say that those invisible administrators are demons. And if anything must be said boldly, if demons have any part in these matters, we must attribute to them famine, the barrenness of trees and vines, immoderate heats, corruption of the air for bringing ruin upon fruits, and sometimes bringing death upon living things and pestilence upon men. Of all these demons are the authors... We do not receive from demons the several things necessary for sustenance, especially we who have learned to use them decently, nor do they banquet with demons who enjoy the fruits, wine, the produce of trees, waters, air, but rather with the divine Angels, to whom the care of all these things has been entrusted... Therefore when we eat, drink, breathe to the glory of God, and do the other things on the same account, we do not banquet with that demon, but with the Angels of God, because every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. But it would not have been fitting, nor would it have been lawful, for these things to be consecrated, if they had been entrusted to the care of demons.*

But especially the holy angels are deputed to the guardianship of Provinces, Churches, and Communities. For that particular angels are dispatched for the guardianship of Kingdoms, we gather quite plainly from Daniel 10. where Daniel addressing Gabriel says:

Princeps Regni Persarum restitit mihi viginti et uno diebus, et ecce Michael unus de Principibus primis venit in adiutorium mihi, et ego remansi ibi cum Principe Regni Persarum; and further on: Nunc revertar ut proelier adversus Principem Persarum; Cum ergo egrederer, apparuit Princeps Graecorum veniens, etc.

In which words mention is made of angels destined to the guardianship of the Jews, Persians, and Greeks, as S. Dionysius interprets c. 9. De Caelesti Hierarchia; and Theodorus lib. 5. De Divino decreto cap. 7; Hieron. on those words, and Gregorius lib. 17. Moral. All of whom hold that mention is there made of holy angels, among whom although there is no battle nor discord, but all enjoy perfect peace, according to that Job. 25. Qui facit concordiam in Sublimibus suis; nevertheless without prejudice to peace and charity, they fought for one another before

God by their prayers: Gabriel indeed, acting on behalf of the Jews, besought God to release the Israelites from captivity, inasmuch as he had promised that such captivity would last no longer than seventy years, which time had now almost elapsed. But the other two angels assigned to the guardianship of the Persians and Greeks earnestly entreated God to prolong the sojourn of the Jews among the Greeks and Persians; because very many of the unbelieving Jews, enlightened by doctrine, rejected the worship of idols and venerated the true God: and thus they fought against one another by prayers, because what God had decreed to keep silent was not yet known to them: whence after S. Michael, who was superior to those three Princes, had manifested to them the divine will, then above all they were of one accord.

— This truth is confirmed from that chapter 2. and 30. of Deuteronomy, where we read: Quando dividebat Altissimus gentes, quando separabat filios Adam, constituit terminos populorum, iuxta numerum filiorum Israel. The Seventy Interpreters render: Iuxta numerum Angelorum Dei. Hence Origenes Hom. 35. in Lucam concludes from that passage: that Princes, that is, Angels, were appointed from the beginning of the divided earth. So also Theodoretus on that chapter of Daniel, when he had said: Singulis Angelis uniuscuiusque nostrum creditam esse curam, ut custodiant, et tueantur, et a pravis daemonum insidiis nos liberent: concludes from Matth. 18. cap.: Archangelis vero illud munus impositum, ut Gentium sint praefecti, sicut beatus Moyses docuit, with whose words blessed Daniel likewise agrees, when he speaks himself of the Prince of the kingdom of the Persians: and again a little later of the Prince of the Greeks.

This same all the Holy Fathers attest, and above all Clem. Alex. lib. 6. Strom. where he says: Per Gentes, et Civitates divisae sunt Angelorum praefecturae: and lib. 7. Iussu divino, et antiquo per Gentes sunt distributi Angeli. This same S. Basilius teaches lib. 3. adversus Eunomium, where he affirms: Singulis fidelium adesse comites Angelos, sive Gentibus alios praeesse; and the more excellent a whole nation is by some singular man, by so much the more excellent in dignity is the angel set over the nation than him to whose care any single person is committed. Similarly Epiphanius haeresi 51. Regna, inquit, et Gentes sub Angelis posita sunt. The same the other Holy Fathers teach everywhere.

— Similarly the Theological Doctors hold, not without reason, that if angels preside over nations and peoples, much more over Churches, temples, and religious communities. Of Churches indeed there stands the testimony of Apoc. 1. cap., where to the seven Churches so many presiding angels are named, as Origenes interprets Hom. 20. in Numeros: Secundum ea, quae Ioannes in Apoc. scripsit, he says, an angel presides generally over each Church. And Hom. 13. in Lucam he says that in each Church two Bishops preside, one visible, the other invisible.

*Therefore, he says, angels are present also in our assembly, not only generally for every Church, but also severally, of whom the Savior: Angeli eorum semper vident faciem Patris mei qui in Caelis est. Here there is a twofold Church, one of men, the other of angels. If we speak according to reason and according to the will of the Scriptures, the angels rejoice and pray with us. And because the angels are present in the Church, in that alone which rejoices and is Christ's, therefore praying women are bidden to have a veil upon their head because of the angels, namely those who assist the saints and rejoice in the Church.

This same* Ambrosius confirms lib. 2. in Lucam, where he says: Non solum Episcopus ad tuendum gregem Dominus ordinavit, sed etiam Angelos destinavit. Greg. Naz. subscribes oratione 32. Nec enim, inquit, mihi dubium est, quin alii aliarum Ecclesiarum Praesides, ac Patroni sint, quemadmodum in Apocalypsi Ioannes me docet. — Hence it is no wonder if very many most holy men, Prelates of Churches, had angels as guardians of their own Churches laboring even sensibly in their ministries: nor ought it equally to be called into doubt what most Histories relate, namely that holy Angels have often appeared in Temples to whose guardianship they were destined. Thus in Prato spirituali cap. 4. we read that Leontinus Abbot of the Monastery of Laura saw standing at the corner of the altar an Angel, who said to him: Ex quo sanctificatum est altare istud, ego ei iugiter adstare iussus sum. Lanspergius relates similar things of S. Geltrude Virgin, etc. — But that they are present above all for guarding the communities of Religious, our Le Petit proves by many arguments cap. 17. sect. 1. De SS. Angelis; especially from the fact that religious emulate the angelic life; for the angels love their fellow-citizens, and take the greatest care of their table-companions.

* APPENDIX.

To these must be added the opinion of the ancient Philosophers disapproved by the Theologians, namely that to each individual man a twofold angel is assigned by God, one good, the other bad, of which the former meditates the salvation of men, the latter their ruin and destruction. Which opinion Origenes had imbibed, as appears from lib. 1. in epist. ad Romanos; and likewise homil. 23. in Iosue, and 35. in Lucam; and also lib. 3. De principiis, cap. 2. Nay, he joins to individual men not merely a single Angel or a single demon, but whole cohorts of Angels and demons, homil. 1. in Ps. 36: Nunquam enim, inquit, solus est iustus, sed ne unius quidem, aut duorum vel trium tantummodo Angelorum societate subnixus est, sed exercitus ei virtutum coelestium praesto est. Which he does not restrict to the conferring of spiritual goods, but extends also to corporeal ones, homil. 20. in Ios. It is evident therefore that there are many powers within us, to which the care either of our souls or of our bodies has been entrusted. In defending this he uses a certain apocryphal writing, which you might suspect to be the book of Enoch, homil. 35. in Luc. Legimus, inquit, si tamen cui placet huiusmodi scripturam recipere, iustitiae et iniquitatis Angelos super Abrahae salute disceptantes, dum utraeque turmae suo eum coetui volunt vindicare. He brings forward besides, for the confirmation of these, the example of that demoniac of whom mention is made Luc. 8. v. 30; and Marc. 5. v. 9.¹ For when the demon who tormented that wretched man was asked by Christ questioning him what name he bore, he answered: Legio, by which word he signified that so many infesting demons were present to that man as combatants are wont to be numbered in a military legion. Whence Origenes gathers that by vice one demon presides over each man as dominator and prince, to whom several inferior demons serve as subordinates for propagating that vice. But when a man labors under many vices at once, then he is besieged and infested by many demons at once. — Now that doctrine concerning a twofold attendant angel, good and bad, which he confirms from the book of Hermes entitled Pastore, and from the epistle of S. Barnabae, he seems to have drawn from the Platonists. For Theodoretus, Serm. 3. de curandis Graecorum affectionibus brought forth these words from Plato, libro 10. Legum:

But when you say that the soul governing and implanted in all things that move everywhere governs also the heavens, that soul must necessarily be said to govern them. What then? One or many? I will answer for you: Let us suppose not fewer than two, the one which confers goods, and the other which can effect contraries.

The same was the opinion of the followers of Plato concerning the many genii assigned to individual men. For Porphyrius assigns various demons or genii to each man, of which one has the regimen and care of the body, another of the soul, another of the mind. Nay, he pronounces that far more demons are present to each man, in such wise namely that one cares for the health of the newborn, another for his beauty, others for a certain aptitude in these things, and each of them presides over them equally. To whom Iamblicus answers by denying: that one demon does not preside merely over some part of us, but is present to the whole at once, leads the whole, just as he is attributed by the whole orders that are in the world. Again Porphyrius introduces contrariety as belonging to the ruling demons, for he makes some good, others bad, although, as Iamblicus testifies, nowhere do evil spirits obtain the lot of prefecture, nor are they distributed over against the good with equal authority or number. Many however more eminent, striving against the Monas of Iamblicus, attribute three guardians or demons to each man at his birth: the first of which they call Sacred, which, according to the doctrine of the Egyptians, descends neither from the fixed stars nor from the wandering ones, but from the superior heaven, namely from the empyrean, through God himself the president of demons, and is assigned to the rational soul; and they say that the office of this one is to direct the life of the soul, always to exhibit good thoughts to the mind, and to act within us unceasingly by illuminating, although we do not always perceive him, but when we have been purified and live tranquilly, then he is perceived by us, and speaks as it were with us, and strives unceasingly to bring us to sacred perfection. The second is named Genius, insofar as he is a begotten demon, who descends from the disposition of the world and the circuits of the stars, which are involved in generation. The third indeed they will have to be the demon of birth presiding over profession and mastership, whom they hand down as infused from the stars, furnishing the manners of the soul and the way to worldly dignities and honors. And indeed they assert this to have been found out and approved by experience, that if the profession accord with our nature, and a demon of profession like to us and concordant with the Genius be present, the life becomes more tranquil, happy and prosperous. But if we are engaged in a profession contrary to or unlike the nature of the Genius, life is rendered laborious for us, and disturbed by actions at variance, etc. These are their teachings, in which there are some things savoring of paganism.*

Note 1. This was Origen's paradox, for he thought that the guardian angels of men obtain the vision of God on no other condition than if they lead to salvation those committed to their faith. For that reason, he says in homilies 28. and 35. on Luke,

The angels are anxious about us, knowing > that if they have governed us well, and led us on even unto salvation, they themselves too may have the confidence of seeing the face of the Father: For just as, if salvation is procured for men through their care and diligence, they attend always upon the face of the Father: so if through their negligence a man perishes, they are not unaware that it is a matter of their own peril as well. And just as a good Bishop, and the best Dispenser of the Church knows it to be a matter of his own merit and virtue if the sheep of the flock entrusted to him have been guarded; so understand it also of the angels. It is a disgrace to an angel if a man entrusted to him has been just, and has sinned: while conversely it is glory to an angel if the least one in the Church entrusted to him has at least been faithful. For they shall see not sometimes, but always the face of the Father who is in Heaven, while others shall not see it always. For according to the merit of those whose angels they are, the angels will contemplate the face of God either always or never, or little, or more.

But homily 20. on Numbers also taught the same thing, that angels are blamed, as Pedagogues, if those committed to their care have turned aside from their office. The Apocalypse proves this by its testimony: where one angel is said to preside over each Church, who, it says, is either praised for the benefits of the people, or even blamed for its offenses. The error of Origen, long since lulled to sleep and extinguished, Calvin raised up again, for our Fevardentius in his Theomachia Calvinistica lib. 9. cap. 19. reports Calvin saying in lib. 3. of the Institutes cap. 14., that the angels cannot satisfy the justice of God; because, as the same Calvin wrote in serm. 16. on Job, If God deal with the angels by supreme right, he will find what he desires in them; constant and perpetual firmness will not stand in them. And further on: God does not find solid truth in the angels, but folly, vanity, and inconstancy. Below, however, he declares himself to be speaking of the angels who persevered in obedience to God and behold his face. But

Note 2. This error was long since proscribed by the Holy Fathers, who teach most constantly that the good angels, though they could previously sin, by not sinning in the way merited that they be no longer able to sin. Thus teaches Augustine in the Enchiridion 57: Fulgentius, De Fide ad Petrum cap. 23. Gregory lib. 34. Mor. c. 4. And this truth is gathered especially from the words of Christ, by which he taught us to pray to God in this manner, Thy will be done as in Heaven, and on earth; for by these words we ask that we fulfill the will of the Father on earth, as the angels fulfill it in Heaven. Nor indeed could Christ have spoken those words except on account of the angels; since at that time there were no creatures in Heaven except the angels alone: therefore he supposes that the divine will is being fulfilled by the angels most faithfully, and most perfectly; and forthwith that they cannot sin. Add what David preaches of the angels Psal. 102. Bless the Lord, all his angels, mighty in strength, doing his word. Whence he adds, as it were by Antonomasia: His ministers, who do his will. Finally, if in order for anyone to enter the heavenly Jerusalem he had to be pure from every stain, according to that word of the Apocalypse 21. 27.¹ There shall not enter into it anything defiled; much more must he who is forever gifted with the vision of God be forever innocent: since David says to God Psal. 5. The wicked shall not dwell near thee, nor shall the unjust remain before thy eyes; whereas the angels remain always with God, since Christ says of them: Their angels always see the face of the Father. It follows, therefore, that they can in no way sin, nor lose their beatitude. Vain, then, and utterly erroneous is the conceit of thinking that because men fall into sin, the angels are to be blamed and punished, as if they had not guarded those entrusted to them with the vigilance that befitted them. There remains, therefore, only to examine whether they receive anything of reward from God on account of the care of their guardianship bestowed upon us: and that it may be done more plainly,

Note 3. Beatitudes are customarily distinguished as twofold, namely essential, and accidental: For there is, says the Seraphic Doctor dist. 11. art. 2. quaest. 2, a twofold joy in the Blessed: the first, in which the substantial reward consists, and this is joy over the uncreated good, which the angel has of God, and in God; namely, enjoying God through union with him, and love. Another is accidental joy, which the angel has over created good, whether his own or another's: of which indeed Scripture often makes mention: as Psalm. 149. where it is said; The Saints shall exult in glory, they shall rejoice in their beds. And Luke 15. There shall be joy in Heaven over one sinner doing penance. To this also belongs the judicial power which Christ voluntarily promises to the poor; nay, even that hundredfold which the same Lord promises in Matthew 19., besides eternal life, to those who have left all things for his sake. To that accidental glory also belong the aureole of Virgins, Martyrs, and Doctors, and similar things, which are common to the angels in their own manner, and with due proportion. For although aureolae properly do not befit them, because they are not capable of Virginity or Martyrdom, nevertheless they have other proportionate objects over which they can rejoice accidentally.

— It must further be known that by the name of accidental beatitude we here do not understand those things which infallibly follow of themselves upon the vision, love, and joy of God, either universally, or in each individual Blessed one according to his own measure; such as, e.g., the memory of past good works together with the joy arising from it, likewise the honor and glory of the Blessed among themselves and before God; just as the glory of the rising bodies, in respect of the beatitude of the soul, is also numbered among the accidental beatitudes.

Of this genus, then, of accidental beatitude we do not speak at present; for although it is found also in the angels, yet it is not receptive of increase; because this accidental beatitude follows essential beatitude infallibly, whether from the nature of the thing, or from the divine ordination; and therefore since the former is not receptive of increase, neither can the latter grow.

— Here, therefore, the discourse is only about that accidental beatitude which consists in a certain act of the intellect and will regarding created objects, which does not follow upon essential beatitude; but is granted by the particular favor of God, such as the revelations through the Word concerning the effects of grace and contingent futures, which the angels did not know from the beginning of beatitude. Of the same kind are joys and other affections regarding things thus known, such as that joy over a sinner doing penance. Glory, therefore, and the joy resulting from these is called accidental beatitude; because it not only surrounds the essential, but is also separable from it after the manner of an accident.

These things thus premised, three things remain to be determined: First, what benefits the holy angels bestow upon us through their guardianship. Second, what sort of beatitude God renders to them on account of that guardianship. Third, what offices of gratitude and veneration we ought to render back to those most faithful guardians.

First conclusion. — There are six principal benefits which the holy angels bestow upon us through their guardianship.

This Conclusion is gathered from the Seraphic Doctor in 2. dist. 11. art. 2. quaest. 1. ad 7. where, having said:

it must be believed that the angels who guard us strive in many ways to promote us toward good, and to withdraw us from evil, although the dullness of our spirit does not perceive this: on account of which many become proud, many become ungrateful, and frequently attribute to themselves what is from the angelic benefit, and thereby become less worthy to be helped by the angels: it is therefore most useful to know and understand the effects of angelic guardianship: twelve effects are accustomed to be assigned by the Masters: yet all of these can be reduced to six principal ones.

The first is to rebuke for faults. Thus Judges 2.

And an Angel of the Lord ascended from Galgal to the place of weepers, and said: I brought you out of Egypt, and led you into the land for which I swore to your fathers, and promised that I would never make void my covenant with you: Only thus far, that you should not strike a compact with the inhabitants of this land, but should overthrow their altars: and you would not hear my voice: Why have you done this? etc.:

Nay, sometimes it happens that they even send punishments upon the men whom they guard: for certain punishments of this life proceed from the pure vindictive justice of God, and are called chastisements: others are ordained from the mercy of God, and are called medicinal punishments: punishments of the former kind God sends through demons, according to that word of Psalm 77. He sends upon them the wrath of his indignation.... sendings through evil angels: For God makes use of evil angels, says St. August. on these words, not only to punish the wicked, as in King Achab whom a Spirit of deceit, by the will of God, seduced that he might fall in battle: but also to prove and manifest the good, as he did in Job.

Punishments of the latter kind God sometimes also sends through good angels, as the same August. teaches, lib. 9. De Civit. Dei, cap. 5. where he says, The holy angels punish without anger those whom they receive under the eternal law as deserving punishment, and succor the wretched without compassion of mercy. This same truth is gathered quite openly from Holy Scripture; for according to the more common opinion of Interpreters God executes at times the office of punishing sinful men through holy angels: for holy were the Angels sent to overturn Sodom Genesis 19. Holy was the Angel who stretched out his hand over the Israelites, to exterminate them on account of the sin of David. Whence with better right God sometimes chastises a just man with medicinal punishments through a good angel; since this punishment is a work of mercy, and pertains especially to the office of a Pedagogue or guardian; both that the guarded person may pay the punishment owed to divine justice on account of his negligences, and that by these tribulations and afflictions he may merit eternal life and increase his merit.

The second effect is to absolve from the bonds of sins, of which matter that angel gave an example who, Acts 12.² stood by Peter when cast into bonds by Herod, and loosed the chains from his hands, and restored him to his former liberty. Which loosing of sins, indeed, the angels perform neither effectively nor authoritatively, but only dispositively, while namely, says Cresolius lib. 3. Mystag. c. 3., they exhibit to men defiled by sin the state they ought to mourn, with a light implanted from heaven, in such wise that the minds of men see the turpitude of crimes, and, as it were, the monstrous image full of horror and contempt, and behold set before their eyes the pestilence, the cruel ruin, the fatal calamity, and eternal damnation, if suddenly they should be snatched from the dwelling of the body in that state.

Whence it comes about that sinners perceive the wrathfulness of the Divine Majesty, the secret judgments dreadful to the human race, that sword painted in the divine oracles: like lightning polished and vibrating, that eye penetrating all things and irradiating the hidden thoughts of the mind: the insuperable power, the strong hand, which no man's force or cunning escapes as it exacts punishments. Then the angel casting more sweetly the ray of his light upon the mind of the sinful man shows him clearly the infamy of his crime, the stain of his soul, the inexplicable folly of men rejoicing in their own evil, the indignity of an ungrateful mind: moreover he demonstrates the power and strength of divine grace, which wickedness destroys, and which when destroyed makes man the mockery of the demon, the spoil of hell, an exile from Heaven: he sets also before the eyes of conscience the joy of a good conscience, which surpasses every bodily pleasure clearly in spiritual gladness and delight. These and similar things our guardian angel sometimes impresses upon us, that he may remove us from, or recall us from, the foul state of sins.

The third effect is to coerce the demons lest they urge us too heavily with temptations, or implant so many depraved thoughts, or subject occasions of sinning: for, as Granadensis says in the sermon on St. Michael,

As long as we militate in the body, wicked spirits do not fail, who are inciters to evil: so also angels do not fail, who are exhorters to good, who namely hold out to us light for the knowledge of truth, who show the way by which one goes to Heaven; who defend us from enemies, who withdraw us from crimes, and always lead us to what is honorable.

Therefore as those always suggest evils, so on the contrary these always counsel honorable things, and repress the forces and venom of the devil who opposes us. Therefore as we read of the holy Angel Raphael with Tobias, that he seized the demon and bound it in the desert of upper Egypt: so our guardian angels are a terror to the demons themselves, our enemies, and restrain their fury with the greatest power; for they are those sixty valiant ones of the mightiest of Israel, who surround the bed of mystical Solomon, namely the faithful soul, the triclinium, and sanctuary of Christ the Lord: For strong, says St. Athanasius lib. qq. q. 22., are the angels of God, who go around the perfect man, and walk about him, that namely they may guard and preserve him from the incursions and encounters of demons.

The fourth effect is to remove obstacles to virtue, and to pave an easy way to its attainment: which indeed is signified in Exodus, where we read that the Angel struck the firstborn of Egypt: since to their guardianship belongs especially to take away impediments to spiritual progress: for in the way of virtue not to advance is to fall behind; hence with reason the Royal Bard sang of the guardian angel: In their hands they shall bear you up, lest perhaps you dash your foot against a stone. Whence St. Augustine in the Soliloquy cap. 27:

The holy angels walk with us in all our ways, enter and go out with us, attentively considering how piously, how honorably we converse in the midst of a wicked nation: with how much zeal and desire we seek your kingdom and its justice; with how much fear and trembling we serve, and exult to you in the gladness of our heart.

They help the laboring, protect the resting, encourage the fighting, crown the conquering, etc. Whence St. Bernard admonishes in serm. 2. on the aforesaid Psalm: Our holy guardians are faithful, they are prudent, they are powerful; why do we tremble? Only let us follow them, let us adhere to them, that we may dwell in the protection of the God of Heaven.

The fifth effect is to offer to God the prayers of those whom they guard, as long as they live this mortal life on earth, and to be present to them in the instant of death, so as to lead their souls, if they be free from any debt and fault, to Heaven. And this is gathered from Tobias 12. I offered your prayer to the Lord; expending which words St. Augustine says in sermon 3. De Natali Domini: Offering our vows, and good works to God, namely alms, fastings, and finally other things, as is clear of Raphael, who offered to God not only the prayers of Tobias, but also his alms, and other good works which he exercised around the dead, whom he buried. Whence in Acts the Angel says: Your prayers and your alms ascended into memory in the sight of God; as if to say: I offered them to God.

Moreover, when they offer prayers and announce desires, they also allege reasons to God that he may hear us, and join their prayers to ours; and the more fervent they are, and the more ardent and purer the desires, the more willingly do they announce and offer them to God: and this they accomplish with the greatest eloquence, as we gather from what is found in Job cap. 33.³ If, he says, there shall be for him an Angel speaking, one of thousands, announcing the equity of the man. Pagninus, and the Royal edition render "eloquent"; for as Orators are wont to use a well-composed and premeditated speech, that they may lead those whom they address to what they intend; so there is no doubt that the angels, when they offer our prayers to God, accomplish this with the greatest eloquence, that God may deign to hear them.

— The same is urged by St. Bernard from those words of the Psalmist 67. The Princes went before joined with them singing psalms: We believe, he says, that the holy angels stand by those praying, offering to God the prayers and vows of men. To which also pertains the vision of Jacob, of which we read in Genesis cap. 28.: And he saw in sleep a ladder standing upon the earth, and the top of it touching Heaven; the angels also of God ascending and descending by it, etc.

Expounding which passage Origen lib. 5. Contra Celsum, says: *

We confess indeed that there are certain ministering spirits, going to and fro as God frequently sends them, to those men upon whom awaits the inheritance of salvation, and these now ascend to the purest heavenly places, and purer even above the heavens, about to offer the prayers of men; now again descend to men, carrying back thence something else for the use of each one, as each is worthy of the benefit.

Similarly St. Augustine lib. 2. Medit. cap. 3:

The angels are said to offer our prayers and vows to God, not because they teach God, who knows all things before they come to be, as well as after they have been made; but because they consult his will concerning these things, and what they have known to be completed by God's command, that they report back to us evidentially, or hiddenly.

Whence he says to men: When you have prayed your prayer I offered it to God. Similarly we also pray, not that we may teach God, as if he knew not what we wish, and wherein we have need, but rational creature has need to refer temporal causes to eternal truth, either by asking what be done toward itself, or by consulting what be done.

— Similar things Tertullianus has, lib. De oratione, cap. 12.; he writes, inveighing against those who approach to make adoration to God without due religion, modesty and attention. Since indeed, he says, it is irreverent to sit in the sight, and opposite to the gaze of him whom you would reverence and venerate as much as possible: how much more irreverent, then, is this act done in the sight of the living God while the angel of prayer still stands by, unless we reproach God because our prayer has wearied us. Where he calls the angel of prayer either because he himself presides over our prayers, or because he receives them themselves and offers them to God most powerful.

On which matter St. Augustine must be heard, serm. 7. de tempore, where he writes thus: We consider how sweet it is, when our vows, such as I have said, the angels who are guardians of our life, have offered before the sight of the divine Majesty. Luc. 1. The whole multitude of the people was praying outside, at the hour of incense. And there appeared to him an Angel of the Lord standing at the right hand of the altar of incense. Act. 10. Cornelius the centurion saw in vision manifestly, as it were at the ninth hour of the day, an Angel of God entering in unto him and saying to him etc: Your prayers and your alms ascended into memory in the sight of God. And in Soliloq. c. 27: They love, he says, their fellow-citizens, through whom they await that the breach of their fall be restored. Therefore* with great care and vigilant zeal they are present to us, solicitous, running to and fro between us and thee, O Lord; bearing back our groans and sighs to thee, that they may obtain for us an easy propitiation of thy benignity, and bear back to us the desired blessing of thy grace.

— This same truth St. Hilarius declares excellently on Matthew c. 18. The angels, he says, of the little ones preside over the prayers of the faithful. That angels preside is absolute authority. Therefore the angels daily offer to God the prayers of those to be saved through Christ. Therefore dangerously is he despised whose desires and petitions are conveyed to the eternal and invisible God by the ambitious servitude and ministry of angels.

— *This same truth was discovered by the ethnic Philosophers. For Appuleius writes in the book De Deo Socratis:

Moreover there are certain middle divine powers, between the highest aether and the lowest lands, in this intervening space of air, through which both our desires and our merits pass to the Gods. These they name by the Greek word δαίμονας, carriers between mortals and dwellers in heaven, hence of prayers, thence of gifts.

— Finally the same is urged from these words Apoc. 8. And the smoke of the censers ascended from the prayers of the Saints, from the hand of the Angel before God: by which he signifies how great force prayers and good works receive, when they are offered by the angels. For just as incense and aromatics, unless placed upon coals, smell but little; but when cast upon fire, breathe fragrance far and wide; not otherwise our prayers and works, which perhaps of themselves would avail but little, yet when they are intermixed with the prayers of the angels, and join their commendations to those, and so are offered by them to God, receive great value from the offerers. Which indeed St. Thomas explains luminously 2. 2. q. 83. art. 1. where he says, by their prayers and merits our prayers obtain effect, and our good works are accepted by His divine majesty.

— *Hence the Patriarch Jacob in a mystical sleep saw a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, and on it angels ascending and descending: ascending indeed to God, so that they might offer to Him the prayers and petitions and good works of men; but descending from God to men, so that they might bestow divine benefits upon them; which S. Augustine admirably explains in his commentary on psalm 44: *The Angels of God, he says, ascend and descend upon the son of man, because above is he to whom they ascend in heart, that is, his head, and below is the son of man, that is, his body. One ascends to the head, and descends to the members.

— But they who during this mortal life assist us with such great charity do not fail even our souls when loosened from their bodies. For if they depart from this life altogether pure, without stain or wrinkle of venial fault, or the guilt of any punishment, they are led by their guardian Angels up to Heaven, and sometimes at the same time by others besides, according to their varied merits and the disposition of divine Providence. But if they need some purgation, the holy Angels lead them down to the place of Purgatory, and there visit them and console them.

This is gathered above all from Luke 16., where Christ the Lord says of the Beggar: And it came to pass that the Beggar died, and was carried by the Angels into Abraham's bosom. Where Chrysostom in his special Homily says: He was carried, he says, on the shoulders of the Angels, lest he should labor even by walking: Would one Angel suffice to carry him? but therefore several come, that they may make a choir of joy. Each of the Angels rejoices to touch such a burden; they are gladly weighed down with such loads, that they may bring men to the kingdoms of Heaven.

Sixthly, finally, the effect is the consolation of mourners. Thus we read Genes. 16.⁴ that an Angel consoled Agar fleeing from the face of the Lord, and said to her: Return to thy mistress, and humble thyself under her hand: and thus he wiped away her grief and sorrow while she was a fugitive in the wilderness. It is established also of Gedeon, to console whom God sent an Angel, who saluted him honorably, saying: The Lord be with thee, O most valiant of men, that he might revive him who was faint-hearted, and detain him who was thinking of flight. Thus the Angel Raphael consoled Tobias when he said to him, speaking of his son whom he was undertaking to conduct on his journey, Tobias 5.: I will bring thy son safe, and restore him. Thus on the return, when he presented his son to him safe and sound, he refreshed him with no lesser consolation. Thus one Angel appeared to Elias, pouring over his spirit, spent with bitterness, the heavenly dew of consolation, and restoring the strength of his body, worn out by the fatigue of the journey and the hunger of famine, by offering him the hearth-cake.

Sacred Scripture supplies many other proofs of angelic consolation, whereby it is established that the benefits of the holy Angels toward us are immense, which they bestow upon us with so much the greater affection because not only do they obey the divine commands in this matter, but they also burn with most ardent charity toward us:

For neither, says Blosius in the Sayings of the Fathers, did any mother ever keep watch over her only beloved son, to govern, guard, and protect him, as these most blessed Spirits keep vigil for our salvation, and especially each man's own Angel specially deputed by the Lord for our guardianship; for night and day, in every place and time, in all our causes and necessities, he stands by us with the utmost fidelity, nor ever withdraws from us even for a moment.

Truly, since those heavenly Spirits see and know how admirably, immensely, and ardently both our Lord and theirs pursues us with love, so also do they themselves embrace us with such affection as can be worthily expressed by none.

— All these things holy Bernard clearly declares in sermon 1. De sancto Michaële;

this is, most beloved, the threefold cord, whereby the supereminent charity of the Angels is drawn down from the lofty habitation of Heaven to console, to visit, to help us: for God's sake, for our sake, for their own sake. For God's sake indeed, whose > such great bowels of mercy toward us they too imitate as is fitting. For our sake, in whom surely they compassionate their own likeness. For their own sake, whose orders they await with all desire to be filled up from among us. For in the mouth of little ones, who now feed on milk and not yet on solid food, that praise of the divine majesty is to be perfected, of which the Angelic Spirits, possessing the firstfruits, enjoy blessed delight without doubt: but they await us with so much the more eagerness as they are stirred by the expectation and manifestation of its consummation.

Second conclusion. — Guardian angels, on account of the heavenly benefits lavished upon us through their services, receive from God an increase of accidental joy: so commonly teach the Scholastic Doctors, together with our Alensis 2. part. quaest. 41. membro 6. and the Seraphic Doctor dist. 11. art. 2., where, after he had reported two opinions on this matter — of which the first affirmed that in the blessed angels, from the salvation of men, there grows essential joy together with accidental joy, not only extensively but also intensively, because the Followers of this opinion held that the angels were not yet perfectly blessed, although confirmed in grace — while the second contended that neither joy, essential as well as accidental, grows intensively, but only extensively, just as their charity is not now greater than it was from the beginning, although they now love more persons than then — he concludes at last and establishes the third opinion, namely that in the angels the reward, and essential joy, is by no means increased:

because, he says, as regards that, they are perfectly blessed: but the joy, in which the accidental reward consists, increases not only extensively but also intensively, both in respect of their own good and in respect of what is joined to it; because while ministering to others they perform good works, in which they merit the accidental reward, and they also lead their fellow citizens to beatitude, over whom without doubt they rejoice and exult: and this third position seems the more probable, and according to it the answer to the opposing parts is clear: for the arguments showing that from our beatification there accrues to the angels joy conclude only about accidental joy, which is concerned with created good, in which nevertheless the essential increase of the reward does not consist.

Gabriel embraces and teaches the same opinion, art. 3. dubio 2., and affirms that the angels, as regards that accidental joy, are not in the term but in the way; because before it is given they lack it, whence they can merit it, and therefore it is granted them by God on account of merit.

— Yet I can scarcely be brought to believe that the angels are still in some part Wayfarers, and able to some extent to merit a new reward. For in order that anyone be in the state of meriting, it is not enough that he lack some thing; but beyond this it is necessary that he be in a way destined for meriting by divine ordination; which way, regularly, in angels and men, is the state of faith, opposed to the intuitive vision of God.

Adde. that that accidental joy can sufficiently be understood to be granted to the angels by God without their meriting it; for the angels receive that joy anew either from the new presence of objects, and without any special revelation or illumination on the part of God or of the Superior Angels, as they rejoice over one sinner doing penance, because they can know his penitence by their proper knowledge: whence since they love men with the highest charity, so they rejoice over their salvation; for, says Augustine cap. 27. Soliloquiorum:

As often as we act well, the angels rejoice, and the demons are saddened: as often as we decline from good, we make glad the devil, and defraud thine angels of their joy; for there is joy to them over one sinner doing penance; but to the devil over one just man abandoning penitence.

In this manner, however, the angels obtain joy without any merit of their own. — Or it can be said that the increase of that joy proceeds from this, that something new is revealed to the angels in order to their ministries; as when the Incarnation was revealed to Gabriel the Archangel, to be carried out at such a time and in such a manner that he might announce it to the Virgin; and then too he had no need of any new merit for receiving that joy; since it proceeded from that new revelation made to him. Or finally it can be conceived that that new joy is granted to an angel on account of a new revelation made to him, pertaining to his ministry, as when it is revealed to him that a man entrusted to his guardianship is about to perform such a penitence at such a time, or about to perform such or other meritorious works. In this manner, however, that joy likewise does not come on account of any special merit of the angel; but only on account of the divine revelation and the conversion of the sinner; and therefore the merit of the angel does not seem necessary for attaining that accidental beatitude. More truly, therefore, I judge it must be said that the increase of that beatific joy, or that accidental beatitude, proceeds both on the part of God liberally granting that joy to the angel, and also on the part of the angels, who on account of the supreme charity with which they pursue men are steeped in surpassing gladness, and conceive immense joy, as often as they see them strive and keep vigil for their salvation.

Rogabis. How does the angel stand toward the man deputed to his guardianship, whom he knows, God revealing it, to be about to be damned?

Our Alensis answers, membro 6. art. 2.:

That although to some angel the damnation of him to whom he is deputed is revealed: nevertheless the quantity of the damnation is not revealed to him, namely how great his damnation is going to be: for this is among the most secret things of God. Hence although he may know by revelation that he is to be damned; and know that he will accomplish nothing as regards him so far as being saved: nevertheless because he does not know how great his damnation is going to be, therefore he does not know whether he will accomplish anything as regards him in this, that his punishment, or damnation, be less. Hence he still applies care concerning him, nor does he abandon him altogether; nor does this disagree with the divine will. Hence although he does not act concerning him so as to draw him to salvation; nevertheless he acts so as to withdraw him from a greater damnation, which namely he would incur unless the angel guarded him.

Third conclusion. — We must repay three things above all to our most holy tutelary angels in gratitude of soul; namely veneration, love, and invocation. So S. Bernardus serm. 12.*:

He himself, God, commanded these very ones, who obey Him out of such great charity, and succor us in such great necessity, that they must not be ungrateful; let us therefore be devout, let us be grateful to such great guardians, let us love them again, let us honor them as much as we can, as much as we ought; yet let both love and honor be rendered wholly to Him, from whom is all things to them as well as to us, whence we can honor, or love, whence we deserve to be loved and honored.

But how great a reverence we owe to the holy angels, the same mellifluous Doctor admirably explains on Psalm 90., sermon 12., where among other things he admonishes thus: In whatsoever lodging, in whatsoever corner, have reverence for thy angel: dare not thou, in his presence, what thou wouldst not dare before me seeing.

And in the first sermon on Saint Michaël he inculcates that we must hold the greatest reverence toward those most loving Tutelaries:

Consider how much solicitude we need, most beloved, that we may show ourselves worthy of their company, and that we may converse in that manner in the sight of the angels, lest perhaps we offend the sacred gaze. For you, if ever the angels provoked by our sins and negligences shall have judged us unworthy of their presence and visitation, so that already we must needs lament with the Prophet and say: my friends and my neighbors drew near and stood against me; and they who were near me stood afar off; and they exerted violence who sought my soul; too far removed are they whose presence could protect us and drive back the enemy.

But if we have so necessary a familiarity of angelic condescension, their offense must be avoided by us, and this exercised chiefly in those things wherein we know they take delight. For there are many things that please them, and that delight them to find in us: as sobriety, chastity, voluntary poverty, frequent groans toward heaven, and prayers with tears and intention of heart: yet above all these things, the angels of peace require of us unity and peace.

— How great gratitude we owe equally to those most blessed Guardians Bernard himself declares in the prefaced Sermon 12. on Psalm 90., where, after he had said: They are present therefore, and present to themselves, not only with themselves but also for themselves: they are present that they may profit: what shall I render to the Lord for all things that he hath rendered to me? he adds: Let us therefore be devout, let us be grateful to such great Guardians, let us love them again, let us honor them, as much as we can, as much as we ought: and the sequel, which he has cited above.

— Finally, they are to be invoked by our invocations and prayers as often as spiritual and corporal straits press upon us. For so did the most holy Patriarchs: above all indeed Jacob, who blessing the sons of Joseph said Genes. 48.: The angel who delivered me from all evils, bless these boys, by which words it is established that he invokes the angel as his protector. The same we read cap. 5. Job, where Eliphaz reproaching Job says: Call therefore, if there be any that answereth, and turn to some one of the Saints: where by the name of Saints he understands the blessed angels, as S. Augustine interprets in his Annotations on Job, who also thinks that that passage: Have pity on me, have pity on me, at least you my friends, is said of the angels, according to what is said in the same Job chapter 33.: If there shall be an angel speaking for him, one of thousands, he shall pity him, and say, Deliver him, that he go not down into corruption. Which certainly is confirmed by that passage Oseae 12. where we read of Jacob the Patriarch that he prevailed over the angel, and was strengthened, he wept, and prayed to him: for so is explained that struggle which the same Patriarch had throughout the whole night with the angel Genes. 32. But when the angel asked him to let him go at dawn, he answered: I will not let thee go except thou bless me.

The same truth the holy Fathers teach, above all indeed saint Chrysostomus in his Liturgy, thus as he writes: Prince of the celestial militia, Michael, we ask thee now unworthy, that thou fortify us by thy intercessions. And more clearly lib. De Incomprehensibili Dei natura, speaking of the angels he says:

They pray for the human race, as if they said: For these we pray thee, Lord, whom thou hast loved so much that for their salvation thou didst undergo death, didst breathe forth thy soul on the cross; for these we supplicate, for whom thou thyself didst bestow thy blood; for these we pray, for whom thou didst immolate thy body, etc.

The same the Church performs, which in the sacred Canon of the Mass after the consecration prescribed these words to be pronounced by the Priest: Supplices te rogamus, omnipotens Deus, iube haec perferri per manus sancti Angeli tui in sublime altare tuum, in conspectu divinae maiestatis tuae. And that this plainly happened to a certain Priest of his time, the Blessed Climacus relates in the Speculo exemplorum, writing that when a certain Priest of his time had pronounced the aforesaid words while celebrating, immediately a great multitude of celestial spirits was present visibly, among whom one more illustrious in appearance and more sublime in majesty was seen to take the sacramental Host, and to present it to the divine gaze, then, when offered, with all the other angels congratulating with supreme reverence, to deposit it again upon the altar for the consummation of the sacrifice.

Hence saint Bernardus, in the sermon de triplici genere bonorum, devoutly admonishes: From the holy angels, he says, aid must be sought, that with hidden sighs and frequent tears they offer our prayers to that supereminent majesty, may bear back grace; because they are ministering spirits sent for us, that we may take possession of the inheritance of salvation. Which he certainly confirms in sermon 12. on Psalm. Qui habitat: As often therefore the gravest temptation is seen to press, and violent tribulation to impend, invoke thy Guardian Angel, thy Doctor, thy Helper in opportunities and tribulations, cry out to him, and say, Lord save us: we perish.

Thence it is no wonder if our Seraphic Father Franciscus, as S. Bonaventura says in his life, was joined to those angelic spirits with so great a bond of love, and venerated them so much, that out of devotion to them, from the assumption of the glorious Virgin, persisting he fasted forty days; but to the blessed Michael the Archangel, because he had the office of representing souls, he was more devoted with spiritual love, on account of the fervent zeal he had for the salvation of all to be saved.

Dices. Sanctus Paulus ad Coloss. 2. forbade every religious cult of angels, writing thus: Let no man seduce you, willing in humility and religion of angels, walking in the things which he hath not seen, in vain puffed up by the sense of his flesh. Whence Theodoretus, expounding these words of the following chapter, in which Paul exhorts: All things whatsoever you do in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ; following this law, he says, the Synod of Laodicea, that it might bring a remedy to that old disease, decreed that supplication was not to be made to angels, nor was our Lord Jesus Christ to be abandoned: therefore, say the Calvinists, angels are not to be invoked.

— Nego consequentiam. for neither do the words of saint Paul and of the Council of Laodicea convey this sense: for what the Apostle wished, saint Chrysost. Homil. 6. in idem cap. explains openly: What, he says, do these words altogether mean? He answers: There were some saying: We ought not to have access to God through Christ, but through the angels; for that surpasses our capacity. Hence the Apostle everywhere strives to inculcate those things which he had said of Christ: Through the blood of his cross we are reconciled, and he suffered for us. Which same thing Theophylactus has: they asserted, he says, that it was unworthy of the majesty of the Only-begotten to bring us to the Father; and greater than for human weakness: Whence, they say, it is more consonant to reason to say that the angels served for our reconciliation. Against this cult of the angels they inveighed, and persuaded the simpler sort, that they should apply their mind to these, as to those who had saved us. Nor does Theodoretus shrink from this interpretation, for he says, These things pertain to the heresy of certain men: who, as if led by humility, since they assert that God invisible to all cannot be touched nor comprehended, hold that divine benevolence must be conciliated for themselves through the angels: he adds however that they had been accustomed to Jewish rites, and had boasted that the law was handed down through angels, and therefore seemed worthy of cult and veneration. Hence he subjoins, This disease, he says, lingered long in Phrygia and Pisidia: on whose account, a Synod held at Laodicea, a town of Phrygia, willed by law that angels be prayed to; even today oratories of saint Michael may be seen among them and their neighbors. By which it is clear that it was not Theodoretus' mind, as he willed that through the Synod of Laodicea the cult of angels had been proscribed, but only that those condemned heretics, who, Christ despised, employed angels as if principal and sole intercessors with God, as the last words in the objection set forth relate.

But what he mentions, that in those regions there are frequent oratories sacred to S. Michaël, does not pertain to condemning them, such as they were then celebrated with popular cult: but that it may be an indication that those peoples were most inclined to the veneration of the angels, because frequent oratories of saint Michael were in those places, which had been instituted long before; not indeed that superstitious honor was there paid to the angels, as those heretics afterward did, but that it might become manifest that the holy angels were held by the faithful in supreme veneration from the very beginnings of the Church itself.

But that such was also the judgment of Laodicea, it is clear from Canone 37. in which we read the constitution:

That Christians ought not to leave the Church of God, and go and name angels, and make Congregations, which are known to be forbidden. If anyone therefore be found serving this occult idolatry, let him be anathema, because he has left our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, and delivered himself over to idolatry.

By which words it is perspicuous that every cult and invocation of angels is not prohibited; but only that one which pertains to the contempt of our Lord Jesus Christ, as those humble cultores of angels were doing. Moreover, that the veneration of the angels, and especially of saint Michaël, had grown widespread in the age of Theodoretus, and that frequent oratories in his honor had been instituted throughout the whole East, Sozomenus, contemporary of Theodoretus, testifies lib. 2. c. 3., where he reports the Michaëlia, that is, basilicas and oratories dedicated to saint Michaël, and the immense miracles wrought in them, whence Nicephorus lib. 7. cap. ult. By these things therefore it is established how slight are the grounds by which the Calvinists are led to upbraid us with the cult of angels.