nded, and to choose that which should explain
these appearances in the most plausible manner, even though it answer
in the most satisfactory manner the question asked, and the objections
formed against the facts, and against the proposed manner of stating
them.

The question is resolved, and the matter decided. The church and the
Catholic schools hold that angels, demons, and reasonable souls, are
disengaged from all matter; the same church and the same school hold
it as certain that good and bad angels, and souls separated from the
body, sometimes appear by the will and with the permission of God:
there we must stop; as to the manner of explaining these apparitions,
we must, without losing sight of the certain principle of the
immateriality of these substances, explain them according to the
analogy of the Christian and Catholic faith, acknowledged sincerely
that in this matter there are certain depths which we cannot sound,
and confine our mind and information within the limits of that
obedience which we owe to the authority of the church, that can
neither err nor deceive us.

The apparitions of good angels and of guardian angels are frequently
mentioned in the Old as in the New Testament. When the Apostle St.
Peter had left the prison by the assistance of an angel, and went and
knocked at the door where the brethren were, they believed that it was
his angel and not himself who knocked.[62] And when Cornelius the
Centurion prayed to God in his own house, an angel (apparently his
good angel) appeared to him, and told him to send and fetch Peter, who
was then at Joppa.[63]

St. Paul desires that at church no woman should appear among them
without her face being veiled, because of the angels;[64] doubtless
from respect to the good angels who presided in these assemblies. The
same St. Paul reassures those who were with him in danger of almost
inevitable shipwreck, by telling them that his angel had appeared to
him[65] and assured him that they should arrive safe at the end of
their voyage.

In the Old Testament, we likewise read of several apparitions of
angels, which can hardly be explained but as of guardian angels; for
instance, the one who appeared to Hagar in the wilderness, and
commanded her to return and submit herself to Sarah her mistress;[66]
and the angel who appeared to Abraham, as he was about to immolate
Isaac his son, and told him that God was satisfied with his
obedience;[67] and when the same Abraham