'We may not, we must not pray unto them': Bishop Bull on departed saints

With All Saints' Day close, this final extract from Bishop Bull's (d.1710) first sermon on the angels, 'The Existence of Angels', on the text Hebrews 1.14, follows on from last week's extract exhorting against the invocation of angels. Bull points out that if "there is great danger in doing so, but no necessity at all of doing it", this all the more true of the invocation of saints, who do not minister to us "by thy appointment" as do the holy angels. Once again, we see a thoroughly and conventionally Reformed refutation of the practice:

And if we must not make any such religious addresses to the holy angels, then certainly not to the saints departed. For besides that there is no warrant either in Scripture or the practice of the primitive Church, for the invocation of saints, any more than of angels, as hath been already intimated; we may also, from what hath been said against the worship of angels, farther argue with advantage against the invocation of saints, thus: The saints departed are not yet equal to angels, nor shall be till the resurrection, and then they shall, as our Saviour teacheth us; if, therefore, we must not make any religious application by way of prayer to the angels, as excellent creatures as they are, then much less to the saints departed. Again, we are sure from Scripture, that the angels are ex officio, by their office, ordinarily to be present with, and to attend upon, the faithful here on earth, as shall be more fully shewn in the sequel of this subject; and yet if we regard either the Holy Scriptures, or the sense of the primitive Church, we may not, we must not pray unto them; what reason can there be then for the invocation of the saints deceased, of whom the Holy Scriptures give us not the least assurance, that they are ordinarily present with us, nay in divers places seem not obscurely to teach the directly contrary?