'There is great danger in doing so, but no necessity at all of doing it': Bishop Bull against invocation of the holy angels

In his first sermon on the holy angels, 'The Existence of Angels', on the text Hebrews 1.14, Bishop Bull addresses the oft-repeated defence of the invocation of angels and saints, that it is no different to asking other Christians with whom we share earthly life to pray for us. As Bull states, this defence is contrary to "sense and experience"; there is no meaningful comparison between fellow-Christians with whom I now share earthly life and the existence of the holy angels. What is more, there is "no necessity at all" of invoking the angels, for they always minister to us.

When Christians conversing together on earth mutually desire the assistance of each other's prayers, they being by sense and experience thoroughly acquainted with their common humanity, and the frailty attending it, there is no danger of idolatry in the case; or that one should ascribe that to the other, which belongs to God alone. But if we mortal men were allowed to make such applications to the holy angels of God, the brightness of the acknowledged glory and excellence of their nature and office would be apt to dazzle the eyes of our minds, and consequently to fix our devotion on them, and withdraw it from God the Fountain of blessings; especially when we see them not, and so must be forced to address ourselves to them with the same faith and abstraction of mind as we do to the invisible God. So likewise if we were permitted to have recourse to the mediation of angels in our necessities and distresses, we should upon the same account too easily place our trust and confidence in them, and be taken off from our due dependence on the one only meritorious Mediator between God and man, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ...

Upon this account, among others, we are not allowed either by Scripture, or the custom of the Church in the purest ages of it, to ask the prayers of angels, as we desire the prayers of one another. There is great danger in doing so, but no necessity at all of doing it. For we need not stir up the remembrance, or excite the charity of those blessed spirits that watch over us; who are of themselves always readily inclined to do us all the good offices they can; and the more ready, as they see us more intent on the service and worship of God in Christ, the promoting whereof is their great design and business here on earth.

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