Perron's evasion: the 'religion of angels' as the law given through angels
The teachers of the Roman Church give various answers to this and invent various shifts, but anyone who weighs the matter without partisanship or prejudice will see at once how empty they are.
Cardinal Perron will not have "the religion of angels" mean the religion by which angels are worshiped. He takes it rather to mean the religion handed down by angels, and he guesses that the name stands for the Jewish religion, that is, the rites of Moses, because elsewhere Paul says the law was "ordained through angels in the hand of a mediator" (Galatians 3:19). On his reading, then, the Apostle's aim is to call the Colossians back from Jewish worship and the ceremonies of the law of Moses. (Perron, Reply to the King of Great Britain, book 5, chapter 6.)
Latin
LXXXI. Ad hoc varia respondent & comminiscuntur Doctores Ecclesiae Romanae; sed quorum vanitas statim appareat rem absque affectu & praejudicio pensanti & consideranti. Cardinalis Perronius per Religionem Angelorum intelligi non vult eam qua Angeli coluntur, sed potius eam quae ab Angelis tradita est; & eo nomine designari conjicit religionem Judaicam, seu ritus Mosaicos, quoniam aliis in locis lex a Paulo dicitur Ordinata per Angelos in manu Mediatoris. Ac proinde ex ejus mente Scopus Apostoli est Colossenses revocare a cultu Judaico, & Mosaicae legis ceremoniis. Adversus Regem Magnae Britan. lib. 5. cap. 6. Gal. 3.