mpartments of
the celestial kingdom for all the angels to hasten forth together, from
their several places of indolence and carelessness and self-indulgence,
(for such he represents their state to have been,) to visit this earth.
Surely such a comment would better suit the mythology of the cave and
dens of AEolus and his imprisoned winds (velut agmine facto qua data
porta ruunt) than the awfully sublime revelation vouchsafed to the
prophet Ezekiel. And how unworthy and degrading is that representation
of the {161} heavenly host, resting inactive, and sparing themselves
from toil, until they witnessed Christ's descent and humiliation; and
then when chid and put to shame and rebuke, and mutually roused to
action by their fellows, coming down to visit this earth, and rushing
through the opened portals of heaven.

Again, we see how incoherent is the whole section which contains the
alleged prayer to angels: "Thou wast yesterday under a demon, to-day
thou art under an angel: the angels minister to thy salvation; they are
granted for the ministry of the Son of God, &c. All things are full of
angels. Come, Angel, take up one who is converted from his ancient
error, &c. And call to thee other companions of thy ministry, that all
of you alike may train up to the faith those who were once deceived."
Indeed the passage seems to carry within itself its own condemnation so
entirely, that what we have before alleged, both of internal and
external evidence, may appear superfluous. Surely the conceit of a
preacher of God's word addressing an angel, (which of them he thus
individually addresses does not appear; for he says not "My Angel," as
though he were appealing to one whom he regarded as his guardian, the
view gratuitously suggested in the marginal note of the Benedictine
editor, "the invocation of a guardian angel,") and bidding some one
angel, as a sort of summoner, to go and call to himself all the angels
of heaven to come in one body, and instruct those who are in error, is,
even as a rhetorical apostrophe, as unworthy the mind of a Christian
philosopher, as it is in the light of a prayer totally inconsistent with
the plain sentiments of Origen on the very subject of angelic
invocation. Even had Origen not left us his deliberate opinions in works
of undoubted genuineness, such a {162} strange, incoherent, and childish
rhapsody could never be relied upon by sober and upright men as a
precedent sanctioning a Christian's prayer to