'They seek not their own honour, but the honour and glory of Him that sends them': George Bull on the holy angels

Michaelmas may be past but, as the dark season approaches, we continue to consider sermons from Bishop Bull (d.1710) on the angels. The first of these sermons is entitled 'The Existence of Angels', on the text Hebrews 1.14. In this extract, Bull expounds how Revelation 22:8-9 -  "And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things. Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God" - should shape Christian piety with regards to angels, ensuring that we direct "all religious worship and veneration to the blessed Trinity" (emphasis added). Just as the angels are ordered towards the Holy Trinity alone in praise and adoration, so too must we who benefit from the ministry of the holy angels:

We may observe, that the angel styles himself the "fellowservant," not only of St. John, and those other excellent men the Prophets, (who by their office and extraordinary mission from God were themselves after a sort made angels of God,) but universally "of them which keep the sayings of this book;" i.e. of all faithful, all truly pious men. So that if the meanest sincere servant of Christ had been in St. John's room, and done as he did, the angel would, after the same manner, have refused the honour done him, and for the same reason, because he was his "fellowservant. "

It is to be remarked, that the reason in the text extends itself to all manner of religious worship, whereby we subject ourselves as servants to the holy angels, even to that lower degree of religious worship, which the Papists call cultum duliæ, "the worship of service." For this worship supposeth that we are servants to the angels; whereas the text expressly teacheth us, that we are not servants to them, but fellow servants with them to the supreme God, to Whom alone therefore we ought with them to render all religious worship and service.

... such a veneration, as, being as it were in a rapture, he thought he might not unfitly give, to testify his honour and gratitude to so glorious a messenger from God, who shewed him such wonderful things, and brought him such welcome tidings. And yet even this kind of worship, when offered by St. John, the angel refused, as unfit and unsafe for himself to receive and the other to give; as apt, being used, by insensible degrees to withdraw and alienate the minds of men from the due veneration of the supreme God, blessed for ever.

We may here see the mind and disposition of the holy angels of God, that, in all their intercourses with the sons of men, they seek not their own honour, but the honour and glory of Him that sends them ; that then we please them best, and oblige them most, when they see us paying all religious worship and veneration to the blessed Trinity; and that on the other side, when we render any thing like that worship to themselves, we greatly offend and displease them.