Chapter 7.—Of the Love of the
Holy Angels, Which Prompts Them to Desire that We Worship the One
True God, and Not Themselves.
It is very right that these blessed
and immortal spirits, who inhabit celestial dwellings, and rejoice
in the communications of their Creator’s fullness, firm in His
eternity, assured in His truth, holy by His grace, since they
compassionately and tenderly regard us miserable mortals, and wish
us to become immortal and happy, do not desire us to sacrifice to
themselves, but to Him whose sacrifice they know themselves to be
in common with us. For we and they together are the one city of
God, to which it is said in the psalm, “Glorious things are
spoken of thee, O city of God;”
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the human part sojourning here
below, the angelic aiding from above. For from that heavenly
city, in which God’s will is the intelligible and unchangeable
law, from that heavenly council-chamber,—for they sit in counsel
regarding us,—that holy Scripture, descended to us by the
ministry of angels, in which it is written, “He that sacrificeth
unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly
destroyed,”
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—this
Scripture, this law, these precepts, have been confirmed by such
miracles, that it is sufficiently evident to whom these immortal
and blessed spirits, who desire us to be like themselves, wish us
to sacrifice.
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Ps. lxxxvii. 3
.
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Ex. xxii. 20
.