Rome's third reply: worship of ministers is not divine. But the Colossian errorists also took angels for ministers
The teachers of the Roman school answer that whatever rites and acts they use in worshiping angels and saints, that worship is not divine. They worship angels and saints, they say, not as gods but as God's servants and our intercessors with God, whereas threskeia, or religion, is the worship that belongs to God and is given to someone as God.
But the Apostle's own text shows well enough that the people he rebukes there, and warns us against, did not take angels for gods. They took them for messengers and servants of the supreme God, and for our mediators and advocates with God. The very name they gave them shows this, since "angel" means messenger.
Besides, those seducers professed to be Christians, and they worshiped angels on the pretext of humility, as if they were unworthy to come to God directly and so needed the mediation and intercession of angels with him. So it is clear enough that they worshiped angels with a subordinate worship, lower than the worship they thought due to the supreme God. On the Apostle's meaning, then, people who worship angels with a lower worship, without taking them for gods, are still giving angels threskeia.
Latin
LXXXV. Regerunt Scholae Romanae Doctores quibuscunque ritibus & actibus Angeli & Sancti apud ipsos colantur, cultum illum divinum non esse: quoniam Angelos & Sanctos non ut Deos, sed ut Dei Ministros, & nostros apud Deum intercessores colunt: θρησκείαν autem seu Religionem esse cultum Deo proprium, & qui alicui ut Deo exhibetur. Sed ex ipso Apostoli textu satis colligi potest illos quos ibi arguit, & a quibus cavendum docet, non habuisse Angelos pro Diis, sed pro summi Dei nunciis & Ministris, nostrisque apud Deum Mediatoribus & deprecatoribus, quod arguit ipsum Angelorum nomen quod illis tribuebant: Angelus enim nuncium significat. Adde quod seductores illi Christianos se profitebantur, & colebant Angelos sub humilitatis praetextu, quasi indigni essent, qui immediate ad Deum accederent, & propterea opus apud ipsum haberent Angelorum mediatione & intercessione. Unde satis liquet ipsos Angelos coluisse cultu quodam subalterno, infra illum quem summo Deo deberi putabant: Adeoque, juxta Apostoli mentem, Angelis θρησκείαν deferre etiam eos qui colunt Angelos cultu quodam inferiori, nec Angelos pro Diis habent.