cation of saints. First, whereas the Christians of Smyrna are
recorded by Eusebius to have declared, without any limitation or
qualification whatever, that they could never worship any fellow-mortal
however honoured and beloved, the Parisian edition limits and qualifies
their declaration by interpolating the word "as God," implying that they
would offer a secondary worship to a saint. Again, whereas Eusebius in
contrasting the worship paid to Christ, with the feelings of the
Christians towards a martyr, employs only the word "love," Bellarmin,
following Ruffinus, interpolates the word "veneramur" after "diligimus,"
a word which may be innocently used with reference to the holy saints
and servants of God, though it is often in ancient writers employed to
mean the religious worship of man to God. Still how lamentable is it to
attempt by such tampering with ancient documents to maintain a cause,
whatever be our feelings with regard to it!

With two more brief quotations we will close our report of Eusebius.
They occur in the third chapter of the third book of his Demonstratio
Evangelica, and give the same view of the feelings and sentiments of the
primitive Christians towards the holy angels, which we have found Origen
and all the other fathers to have acknowledged.

"In the doctrine of his word we have learned that there exists, after
the most high God, certain powers, {176} in their nature incorporeal and
intellectual, rational and purely virtuous, who ([Greek: choreuousas])
keep their station around the sovereign King,--the greater part of whom,
by certain dispensations of salvation, are sent at the will of the
Father even as far as to men; whom, indeed, we have been taught to know
and to honour, according to the measure of their dignity, rendering to
God alone, the sovereign King, the honour of worship." ([Greek:
gnorizein kai timain kata to metron taes axias edidachthaemen, mono toi
pambasilei Theoi taen sebasmion timaen aponemontes]) Again: "Knowing the
divine, the serving and ministering powers of the sovereign God, and
honouring them to the extent of propriety; but confessing God alone, and
Him alone worshipping." ([Greek: theias men dynameis hypaeretikas tou
pambasileos Theou kai leitourgikas eidotes, kai kata to prosaekon
timontes monon de Theon homologountes, kai monon ekeinon sebontes])
[Demonst. Evang. Paris, 1628. p. 106.; Praepar. Evang. lib. vii. c. 15.
p. 237.]

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