There was never a Tzaddik (as the Baal Shem Tov says, that all the holy books up till the shach and taz were written with ruach hakodesh and as the Alter Rebbe says, true dirah bitachtoinim is as the Beis Yosef (who wrote nothing less than the shulchan ) said "I am the angel speaking in me" – hence they had sublimated their ego to the Divine, hence in essence and in a manifest way they were God