ow everything that passes here below. Jesus Christ, in St. Matthew
xxiv. 36, says that the angels do not know the day of his coming. It
is still more doubtful that the angels can appear without an express
command from God, and that St. Augustine has so taught.

He says, a little while after--"That demons often appeared before
Jesus Christ in fantastic forms, which they assumed as the angels do,"
that is to say, in aerial bodies which they organized; "whilst at
present, and since the coming of Jesus Christ, those wonders and
spells have been so common that the people attributed them to sorcery
and commerce with the devil, whereas it is attested that they can be
operated only by natural magic, which is the knowledge of secret
effects from natural causes, and many of them by the subtilty of the
air alone. This is the opinion of the greater number of the fathers
who have spoken of them."

This proposition is false, and contrary to the doctrine and practice
of the church; and it is not true that it is the opinion of the
greater number of the fathers; he should have cited some of them.[659]

He says that "the Book of Job and the song of Hezekiah are full of
testimonies that the Holy Spirit seems to have taught us, that our
souls cannot return to earth after our death, until God has made
angels of them."

It is true that the Holy Scriptures speak of the resurrection and
return of souls into their bodies as of a thing that is impossible in
the natural course. Man cannot raise up himself from the dead, neither
can he raise up his fellow-man without an effort of the supreme might
of God. Neither can the spirits of the deceased appear to the living
without the command or permission of God. But it is false to say,
"that God makes angels of our souls, and that then they can appear to
the living."

Our souls will never become angels; but Jesus Christ tells us that
after our death our souls will be _as_ the angels of God, (Matt. xxii.
30); that is to say, spiritual, incorporeal, immortal, and exempt from
all the wants and weaknesses of this present life; but he does not say
that our souls must _become_ angels.

He affirms "that what Jesus Christ said, 'that spirits have neither
flesh nor bones,' far from leading us to believe that spirits can
return to earth, proves, on the contrary, evidently that they cannot
without a miracle render themselves visible to mankind; since it
requires absolutely a corporeal substance and organs o