ly
Spirit, without any difference or inequality. No principles of
interpretation can avoid that inference.

[Footnote 33: The genuineness of this passage has been doubted.
But I see no ground for suspicion that it is spurious. It is
found in the manuscripts of Justin's works; of which the most
ancient perhaps are in the King's Library in Paris. I examined
one there of a remote date.]

[Footnote 34: The Benedictine Editor puts this note in the
margin, "Justin teaches that angels following the Son are
worshipped by Christians."--Preface, p. xxi.] {108}

"Him the most true Father of righteousness we reverence and worship,
honouring him in reason and truth."

"The Son who came from him, and taught us these things, we reverence and
worship, honouring him in reason and truth."

"The army of the other good angels accompanying and assimilated, we
reverence and worship, honouring them in reason and truth."

"The Prophetic Spirit we reverence and worship, honouring him in reason
and truth."

Is it possible to conceive that any Christian would thus ascribe the
same religious worship to a host of God's creatures, which he would
ascribe to God, as GOD? "We are accused," said Justin, "of being
atheists, of having no God. How can this be? We do not worship your
false gods, but we have our own most true God. We are not without a God.
We have the Father, and the Son, and the Good Angels, and the Holy
Spirit." If Justin meant that they honoured the good angels, but not as
GOD, that would be no answer to those who called the Christians
atheists. The charge was, that "they had no God." The answer is, "We
have a God;" and then Justin describes the God of Christians. Can the
army of angels be included in that description? If they are, then they
are made to share in the adoration, worship, homage, and reverence of
the one only God Most High; if they are not, then Justin does not answer
the objectors[35].

[Footnote 35: And surely if Justin had intended to represent the
holy angels as objects of religious worship, he would not so
violently have thrust the mention of them among the Persons of
the ever-blessed Trinity, assigning to them a place between the
second and third Persons of the eternal hypostatic union.] {109}

To evade this charge of impiety, some writers (among others, M. Maran,
the Benedictine editor of Justin,) have attempted to draw a distinction
between the two verbs