nacle of the flesh, and the weakness of human
nature; and the priests and people were ready to offer to them the
wonted victims, the abomination of the heathen. Now, I am fully aware of
the wide difference, in many {54} particulars, between such an act and
the act of a Christian praying to their spirits after their departure
hence, and supplicating them to intercede with the true God in his
behalf: and on this difference Roman Catholic writers have maintained
the total inapplicability of this incident to the present state of
things. But, surely, if any such prayer to departed saints had been
familiar to their minds, instead of repelling the religious address of
the inhabitants of Lystra at once and for ever, they would have altered
the tone of their remonstrance, and not have suppressed the truth when a
good opportunity offered itself for imparting it. And, supposing that it
was part of their commission to announce and explain the invocation of
saints at all, on what occasion could an explanation of the just and
proper invocation of angels and saints departed have been more
appropriate in the Apostles, than when they were denouncing the
unjustifiable offering of sacrifice to themselves while living? But
whether the more appropriate place for such an announcement were at
Lystra, in Corinth, at Athens, or at Rome, it matters not; nor whether
it would have been more advantageously communicated by their oral
teaching, or in their epistles. Doubtless, had the Apostles, by their
example or teaching, sanctioned the invocation of saints and angels, in
the course of fifty years or more after our blessed Saviour's
resurrection, it would infallibly have appeared in some page or other of
the New Testament. Instead of this the whole tenor of the Holy Volume
breathes in perfect accordance with the spirit of the apostolical
remonstrance at Lystra, to the fullest and utmost extent of its meaning,
"We preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities to serve the
living God." {55}

Of the other instance, it well becomes every Catholic Christian to
ponder on the weight and cogency. John, the beloved disciple of our
Lord, when admitted to view with his own eyes and hear with his mortal
ears the things of heaven, rapt in amazement and awe, fell down to
worship before the feet of the angel who showed him these things. [Rev.
xxii. 8, 9.] If the adoration of angels were ever justifiable, surely it
was then; and what a testimony to the e