Dissertation on the Natural Knowledge of Angelic Existence

...to the forming of the state of the controversy are to be unfolded. The hinge of the controversy turns on this: can the existence of angels be demonstrated from the light of nature? Where, before we submit a distinct thesis, it must be noted: 1. That the existence of angels drawn from the light of nature can, according to the varying acceptation of the word "Angel," be now affirmed, now denied. For it is taken in a double way: 1. For a blessed mind in heaven, which was created by God within the six days of creation, enjoys eternal beatitude and ineffable joy—which acceptation is proper to the style of Sacred Scripture when it speaks of the good ones. 2. For a finite spiritual substance, whether good or evil, possessing power, the producer of manifest actions, and distinct from the soul separated from the body. When we attempt to place the existence of angels before the eyes with arguments drawn from the sphere of reason, we do not wish to be understood as meaning Angels taken in the former signification, since faith alone teaches that these exist, and the mind left to itself, and not tinctured by the fountains of Scripture, cannot investigate them; but we mean the latter. 2. It must be noted that the discussion here is about both good and evil Angels; teaching how they became such belongs to Theology that is not Natural, but Revealed. For even if those things that are brought forward for the existence of angels look especially at the evil ones, this in no way hinders us from also arriving at a knowledge of the good ones, since this is probably inferred from that of the evil ones, because, as the Philosopher Aristotle (μ) says,

(μ) Book 8 of Physics, chapter 1, text 8.

one science seems to be of opposites. 3. It must also be observed that the question is not so much about a proof à priori from cause to effect as à posteriori from effect to cause, or that which is taken from effects. For since we are destitute of necessary arguments taken à priori, we are compelled to supply the defect of the former with these. 4. Finally, neither should it be passed over that the arguments by which the thesis to be proposed can soon be stabilized are of a double kind: some merely probable, others in a certain way necessary. We must deal with both here, for although the former beget not science but opinion—which is conjoined with some fear of the opposite—they are not to be omitted, because they are accepted by some as demonstrative and are not without their use. Therefore, let this be our thesis: The existence of Angels...