These tenets involved certain very knotty points
respecting the fall of those angels, who, for disobedience, had
forfeited their high abode in Heaven. The gnostics of early christian
times, in imitation of a classification of the different orders of
spirits by Plato, had attempted a similar arrangement with respect to an
hierarchy of angels, the gradation of which stood as follows.
The first, and highest order, was named SERAPHINS; the second,
CHERUBINS; the third was the order of THRONES; the fourth, of DOMINIONS;
the fifth, of VIRTUES; the sixth, of POWERS; the seventh, of
PRINCIPALITIES; the eighth, of ARCHANGELS; the ninth, and lowest, of
ANGELS. This fable was, in a pointed manner, censured by the Apostles:
yet strange to say, it almost outlived the pneumatologists of the middle
ages. These schoolmen, in reference to the account that Lucifer rebelled
against heaven, and that Michael the archangel warred against him, long
agitated the momentous question, what order of angels fell on the
occasion. At length it became the prevailing opinion that Lucifer was of
the order of Seraphins.
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