principle. But here let us ask ourselves these few questions:--

First, if it had been intended by the Almighty to forbid any religious
application, such as is now professedly the invocation of saints and
angels, to any other being than Himself alone, what words could have
been employed more stringently prohibitory?

Secondly, had such an address to saints and angels, as the Church of
Rome now confessedly makes, been contemplated by our heavenly Lawgiver
as an exception to the general rule, would not some saving clause, some
expressions indicative of such an intended exception, have been
discovered in some page or other of his revealed will?

Thirdly, if such an appeal to the angels of heaven, or to the spirits of
the just in heaven, had been sanctioned under the elder covenant, would
not some example, some solitary instance, have been recorded of a
faithful servant of Jehovah offering such a prayer with the Divine
approbation?

Lastly, when such strong and repeated declarations and injunctions
interspersed through the entire volume of the Old Testament,
unequivocally show the will of God to be, that no other object of
religious worship should have place in the heart or on the tongue of his
own true sons and daughters, can it become a faithful child of our
Heavenly Father to be seeking for excuses and palliations, and to invent
distinctions between one kind of worship and another?

God Himself includes all in one universal prohibitory {21} mandate,
"Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." So
far from according with those general rules for the interpretation of