Chapter IX: Part III: p. 59 (4)

It is the property of the Divine Being to be unsearchable; and if he
were not so, he would not be divine. Must we therefore reject the most
certain truths concerning the Deity, only because they are
incomprehensible, &c.?

It is strange that so sound, so admirable a logician as Waterland, should have thought 'unsearchable' and 'incomprehensible' synonymous, or at least equivalent terms:--and this, though St. Paul hath made it the privilege of the full-grown Christian, 'to search out the deep things of God himself'.

Chap. IV. p. 111.

'The delivering over unto Satan' seems to have been a form of
excommunication, declaring the person reduced to the state of a
heathen; and in the Apostolical age it was accompanied with
supernatural or miraculous effects upon the bodies of the persons so
delivered.

Unless the passage, ('Acts' v. 1-11.) be an authority, I must doubt the truth of this assertion, as tending to destroy the essential spirituality of Christian motives, and, in my judgment, as irreconcilable with our Lord's declaration, that his kingdom was 'not of this world'. Let me be once convinced that St. Paul, with the elders of an Apostolic Church, knowingly and intentionally appended a palsy or a consumption to the sentence of excommunication, and I shall be obliged to reconsider my old opinion as to the anti-Christian principle of the Romish Inquisition.

Ib. p. 114.

'A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition,
reject; knowing that he that is such, is subverted, and sinneth, being
condemned of himself'.--Tit. iii. 10, 11.

This text would be among my minor arguments for doubting the Paulinity of the Epistle to Titus. It seems to me to breathe the spirit of a later age, and a more established Church power.

Ib.

Not every one that mistakes in judgment, though in matters of great
importance, in points fundamental, but he that openly espouses such
fundamental error. * * Dr. Whitby adds to the definition, the
espousing it out of disgust, pride, envy, or some worldly principle,
and against his conscience.

Whitby went too far; Waterland not far enough. Every schismatic is not necessarily a heretic; but every heretic is virtually a schismatic. As to the meaning of [Greek: autokatákritos], Waterland surely makes too much of a very plain matter. What was the sentence passed on a heretic? A public declaration that he was no longer a member of--that is, of one faith with--the Church. This the man himself, after two public notices, admits and involves in the very act of persisting. However confident as to the truth of the doctrine he has set up, he cannot, after two public admonitions, be ignorant that it is a doctrine contrary to the articles of his communion with the Church that has admitted him; and in regard of his alienation from that communion, he is necessarily [Greek: autokatákritos],--though in his pride of heart he might say with the man of old, "And I banish you."

Ib. p. 123.

--as soon as the miraculous gifts, or gift of discerning spirits,
ceased.

No one point in the New Testament perplexes me so much as these (so called) miraculous gifts. I feel a moral repugnance to the reduction of them to natural and acquired talents, ennobled and made energic by the life and convergency of faith;--and yet on no other scheme can I reconcile them with the idea of Christianity, or the particular supposed, with the general known, facts. But, thank God! it is a question which does not in the least degree affect our faith or practice. I mean, if God permit, to go through the Middletonian controversy, as soon as I can procure the loan of the books, or have health enough to become a reader in the British Museum.

Ib. p. 126.

And what if, after all, spiritual censures (for of such only I am
speaking,) should happen to fall upon such a person, he may be in some
measure hurt in his reputation by it, and that is all. And possibly
hereupon his errors, before invincible through ignorance, may be
removed by wholesome instruction and admonition, and so he is
befriended in it, &c.

Waterland is quite in the right so far;--but the penal laws, the temporal inflictions--would he have called for the repeal of these? Milton saw this subject with a mastering eye,--saw that the awful power of excommunication was degraded and weakened even to impotence by any the least connection with the law of the State.

Ib. p. 127.

--who are hereby forbidden to receive such heretics into their houses,
or to pay them so much as common civilities. This precept of the
Apostle may he further illustrated by his own practice, recorded by
Irenaeus, who had the information at second-hand from Polycarp, a
disciple of St. John's, that St. John, once meeting with Cerinthus at
the bath, retired instantly without bathing, for fear lest the bath
should fall by reason of Cerinthus being there, the enemy to truth.

Psha! The 'bidding him God speed',--[Greek: légôn autô chaírein],--(2 'John', 11,) is a spirituality, not a mere civility. If St. John knew or suspected that Cerinthus had a cutaneous disease, there would have been some sense in the refusal, or rather, as I correct myself, some probability of truth in this gossip of Irenaeus.

Ib. p. 128.

They corrupted the faith of Christ, and in effect subverted the
Gospel. That was enough to render them detestable in the eyes of all
men who sincerely loved and valued sound faith.

O, no, no, not 'them!' 'Error quidem, non tamen homo errans, abominandus': or, to pun a little, 'abhominandus'. Be bold in denouncing the heresy, but slow and timorous in denouncing the erring brother as a heretic. The unmistakable passions of a factionary and a schismatic, the ostentatious display, the ambition and dishonest arts of a sect-founder, must be superinduced on the false doctrine, before the heresy makes the man a heretic.

Ib. p. 129.

--the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.

Were the Nicolaitans a sect, properly so called? The word is the Greek rendering of 'the children of Balaam;' that is, men of grossly immoral and disorderly lives.

Ib. p. 130.

For if he who 'shall break one of the least moral commandments, and
shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven',
(Mat. v. 19,) it must be a very dangerous experiment, &c.

A sad misinterpretation of our Lord's words, which from the context most evidently had no reference to any moral, that is, universal commandment as such, but to the national institutions of the Jewish state, as long as that state should be in existence; that is to say, until 'the Heaven' or the Government, and 'the Earth' or the People or the Governed, as one 'corpus politicum', or nation, had 'passed away'. Till that time,--which was fulfilled under Titus, and more thoroughly under Hadrian,--no Jew was relieved from his duties as a citizen and subject by his having become a Christian. The text, together with the command implied in the miracle of the tribute-money in the fish's mouth, might be fairly and powerfully adduced against the Quakers, in respect of their refusal to pay their tithes, or whatever tax they please to consider as having an un-Christian destination. But are they excluded from the kingdom of heaven, that is, the Christian Church? No;--but they must be regarded as weak and injudicious members of it.

Chap. V. p. 140.

Accordingly it may be observed, how the unbelievers caress and
compliment those complying gentlemen who meet them half way, while
they are perpetually inveighing against the stiff divines, as they
call them, whom they can make no advantage of.

Lessing, an honest and frank-hearted Infidel, expresses the same sentiment. As long as a German Protestant divine keeps himself stiff and stedfast to the Augsburg Confession, to the full Creed of Melancthon, he is impregnable, and may bid defiance to sceptic and philosopher. But let him quit the citadel, and the Cossacs are upon him.

Ib. p. 187.

And therefore it is infallibly certain, as Mr. Chillingworth well
argues with respect to Christianity in general, that we ought firmly
to believe it; because wisdom and reason require that we should
believe those things which are by many degrees more credible and
probable than the contrary.

Yes, where there are but two positions, one of which must be true. When A. is presented to my mind with probability=5, and B. with probability=15, I must think that B. is three times more probable than A. And yet it is very possible that a C. may be found which will supersede both.

Chap. VI. p. 230.

The Creed of Jerusalem, preserved by Cyril, (the most ancient perhaps
of any now extant,) is very express for the divinity of God the Son,
in these words: "And in our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son
of God; true God, begotten of the Father before all ages, by whom all
things were made" * *. [Greek: Kaì eis henà Kyrion Iaesoun Christòn,
tòn uhiòn tou Theou monogenae, tòn ek tou patròs gennaethénta, Theòn
alaethinòn, prò pántôn tôn aiônôn, di' ohu tà pánta egéneto].

I regard this, both from its antiquity and from the peculiar character of the Church of Jerusalem, so far removed from the influence of the Pythagoreo-Platonic sects of Paganism, as the most important and convincing mere fact of evidence in the Trinitarian controversy.

Ib. p. 233.

--true Son of the Father, 'invisible' of invisible, &c.

How is this reconcilable with 'John' i. 18--('no one hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him',--) or with the 'express image', asserted above. 'Invisible,' I suppose, must be taken in the narrowest sense, that is, to bodily eyes. But then the one 'invisible' would not mean the same as the other.

Ib. p. 236.

'Symbola certe Ecclesiæ ex ipso Ecclesiæ sensu, non ex hæreticorum
cerebello, exponenda sunt'.--Bull. Judic. Eccl. v.

The truth of a Creed must be tried by the Holy Scriptures; but the sense of the Creed by the known sentiments and inferred intention of its compilers.

Ib. p. 238.

The very name of Father, applied in the Creed to the first Person,
intimates the relation he bears to a Son, &c.

No doubt: but the most probable solution of the apparent want of distinctness of explication on this article, in my humble judgment, is--that the so-called Apostles' Creed was at first the preparatory confession of the catechumens, the admission-ticket, as it were ('symbolum ad Baptismum'), at the gate of the Church, and gradually augmented as heresies started up. The latest of these seems to have consisted in the doubt respecting the entire death of Jesus on the Cross, as distinguished from suspended animation. Hence in the fifth or sixth century the clause--"and he descended into Hades," was inserted;--that is, the indissoluble principle of the man Jesus, was separated from, and left, the dissoluble, and subsisted apart in 'Scheol', or the abode of separated souls;--but really meaning no more than 'vere mortuus est'. Jesus was taken from the Cross dead in the very same sense in which the Baptist was dead after his beheading.

Nevertheless, well adapted as this Creed was to its purposes, I cannot but regret the high place and precedence which by means of its title, and the fable to which that title gave rise, it has usurped. It has, as it appears to me, indirectly favoured Arianism and Socinianism.

Ib. p. 250.

That St. John wrote his Gospel with a view to confute Cerinthus, among
other false teachers, is attested first by Irenæus, who was a
disciple of Polycarp, and who flourished within less than a century of
St. John's time.

I have little trust and no faith in the gossip and hearsay-anecdotes of the early Fathers, Irenæus not excepted. "Within less than a century of St. John's time." Alas! a century in the paucity of writers and of men of education in the age succeeding the Apostolic, must be reckoned more than equal to five centuries since the use of printing. Suppose, however, the truth of the Irenæan tradition;--that the Creed of Cerinthus was what Irenæus states it to have been; and that John, at the instance of the Asiatic Bishops, wrote his Gospel as an antidote to the Cerinthian heresy;--does there not thence arise, in his utter silence, an almost overwhelming argument against the Apostolicity of the 'Christopædia', both that prefixed to Luke, and that concorporated with Matthew?

Ib. p. 257.

'In him was life, and the life was the light of men'. The same Word
was life, the [Greek: logos and zôáe], both one. There was no occasion
therefore for subtilly distinguishing the Word and Life into two Sons,
as some did.

I will not deny the possibility of this interpretation. It may be,--nay, it is,--fairly deducible from the words of the great Evangelist: but I cannot help thinking that, taken as the primary intention, it degrades this most divine chapter, which unites in itself the three characters of sublime, profound, and pregnant, and alloys its universality by a mixture of time and accident.

Ib.

'And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness cometh not upon
it.' So I render the verse, conformable to the rendering of the same
Greek verb, [Greek: katalambánô], by our translators in another place
of this same Gospel. The Apostle, as I conceive, in this 5th verse of
his 1st chapter, alludes to the prevailing error of the Gentiles, &c.

O sad, sad! How must the philosopher have been eclipsed by the shadow of antiquarian erudition, in order that a mind like Waterland's could have sacrificed the profound universal import of 'comprehend' to an allusion to a worthless dream of heretical nonsense, the mushroom of the day! Had Waterland ever thought of the relation of his own understanding to his reason? But alas! the identification of these two diversities--of how many errors has it been ground and occasion!

Ib. p. 259.

'And the Word was made flesh'--became personally united with the man
Jesus; 'and dwelt among us',--resided constantly in the human nature
so assumed.

Waterland himself did but dimly see the awful import of [Greek: egéneto sàrx],--the mystery of the alien ground--and the truth, that as the ground such must be the life. He caused himself to 'become flesh', and therein assumed a mortal life into his own person and unity, in order himself to transubstantiate the corruptible into the incorruptible.

Waterland's anxiety to show the anti-heretical force of St. John's Gospel and Epistles, has caused him to overlook their Catholicity--their applicability to all countries and all times--their truth, independently of all temporary accidents and errors;--which Catholicity alone it is that constitutes their claim to Canonicity, that is, to be Canonical inspired writings.

Ib. p. 266.

Hereupon therefore the Apostle, in defence of Christ's real humanity,
says, 'This is he that came by water and blood'.

'Water and blood,' that is 'serum' and 'crassamentum', mean simply 'blood,' the blood of the animal or carnal life, which, saith Moses, 'is the life'. Hence 'flesh' is often taken as, and indeed is a form of, the blood,--blood formed or organized. Thus 'blood' often includes 'flesh,' and 'flesh' includes 'blood.' 'Flesh and blood' is equivalent to blood in its twofold form, or rather as formed and formless. 'Water and blood' has, therefore, two meanings in St. John, but which 'in idem coincidunt':

1. true animal human blood, and no celestial ichor or phantom:

2. the whole sentiently vital body, fixed or flowing, the pipe and the stream.

For the ancients, and especially the Jews, had no distinct apprehension of the use or action of the nerves: in the Old Testament 'heart' is used as we use 'head.' 'The fool hath said in his heart'--is in English: "the worthless fellow ('vaurien') hath taken it into his head," &c.

Ib. p. 268.

The Apostle having said that the Spirit is truth, or essential truth,
(which was giving him a title common to God the Father and to Christ,)
&c.

Is it clear that the distinct 'hypostasis' of the Holy Spirit, in the same sense as the only-begotten Son is hypostatically distinguished from the Father, was a truth that formed an immediate object or intention of St. John? That it is a truth implied in, and fairly deducible from, many texts, both in his Gospel and Epistles, I do not, indeed I cannot, doubt;--but only whether this article of our faith he was commissioned to declare explicitly?

It grieves me to think that such giant 'archaspistæ' of the Catholic Faith, as Bull and Waterland, should have clung to the intruded gloss (1 'John' v. 7), which, in the opulence and continuity of the evidences, as displayed by their own master-minds, would have been superfluous, had it not been worse than superfluous, that is, senseless in itself, and interruptive of the profound sense of the Apostle.

Ib. p. 272.

He is come, come in the flesh, and not merely to reside for a time, or
occasionally, and to fly off again, but to abide and dwell with man,
clothed with humanity.

Incautiously worded at best. Compare our Lord's own declaration to his disciples, that he had dwelt a brief while 'with' or 'among' them, in order to dwell 'in' them permanently.

Ib. p. 286.

It is very observable, that the Ebionites rejected three of the
Gospels, receiving only St. Matthew's (or what they called so), and
that curtailed. They rejected likewise all St. Paul's writings,
reproaching him as an apostate. How unlikely is it that Justin should
own such reprobates as those were for fellow-Christians!

I dare avow my belief--or rather I dare not withhold my avowal--that both Bull and Waterland are here hunting on the trail of an old blunder or figment, concocted by the gross ignorance of the Gentile Christians and their Fathers in all that respected Hebrew literature and the Palestine Christians. I persist in the belief that, though a refuse of the persecuted and from neglect degenerating Jew-Christians may have sunk into the mean and carnal notions of their unconverted brethren respecting the Messiah, no proper sect of Ebionites ever existed, but those to whom St. Paul travelled with the contributions of the churches, nor any such man as Ebion; unless indeed it was St. Barnabas, who in his humility may have so named himself, while soliciting relief for the distressed Palestine Christians;--"I am Barnabas the beggar." But I will go further, and confess my belief that the (so-called) Ebionites of the first and second centuries, who rejected the 'Christopædia', and whose Gospel commenced with the baptism by John, were orthodox Apostolic Christians, who received Christ as the Lord, that is, as Jehovah 'manifested in the flesh'. As to their rejection of the other Gospels and of Paul's writings, I might ask:--"Could they read them?" But the whole notion seems to rest on an anachronical misconception of the 'Evangelia'. Every great mother Church, at first, had its own Gospel.

Ib. p. 288.

To say nothing here of the truer reading ("men of your nation"), there
is no consequence in the argument. The Ebionites were Christians in a
large sense, men of Christian profession, nominal Christians, as
Justin allowed the worst of heretics to be. And this is all he could
mean by allowing the Ebionites to be Christians.

I agree with Bull in holding [Greek: apò tou hymetérou génous] the most probable reading in the passage cited from Justin, and am by no means convinced that the celebrated passage in Josephus is an interpolation. But I do not believe that such men, as are here described, ever professed themselves Christians, or were, or could have been, baptized.

Ib. p. 292.

Le Clerc would appear to doubt, whether the persons pointed to in
Justin really denied Christ's divine nature or no. It is as plain as
possible that they did.

Le Clerc is no favourite of mine, and Waterland is a prime favourite. Nevertheless, in this instance, I too doubt with Le Clerc, and more than doubt.

Ib. p. 338.

[Greek: Phúsei dè taes phthoras prosgenoménaes, anagkaion aen hóti
sôsai Boulómenos áe tàen phthoropoiòn ousían aphanísas touto dè ouk
aen hetérôs genésthai ei máeper hae katà phúsin zôàe proseplákae tô
tàen phthoràn dexaménô, aphanizousa mèn tàen phthoràn, athanatòn dè
tou loipou tò dexamenon diataerousa. k.t.l.]--Just. M.

Here Justin asserts that it was necessary for essential life, or life
by nature, to be united with human nature, in order to save it.

Waterland has not mastered the full force of [Greek: hàe katà phúsin zôáe]. If indeed he had taken in the full force of the whole of this invaluable fragment, he would never have complimented the following extract from Irenæus, as saying the same thing "in fuller and stronger words." Compared with the fragment from Justin, it is but the flat common-place logic of analogy, so common in the early Fathers.

Ib. p. 340.

'Qui nude tantum hominem eum dicunt ex Joseph generatum * * moriuntur.'

'Non nude hominem'--not a mere man do I hold Jesus to have been and to be; but a perfect man and, by personal union with the Logos, perfect God. That his having an earthly father might be requisite to his being a perfect man I can readily suppose; but why the having an earthly father should be more incompatible with his perfect divinity, than his having an earthly mother, I cannot comprehend. All that John and Paul believed, God forbid that I should not!

Chap. VII. p. 389.

It is a sufficient reason for not receiving either them ('Arian
doctrines'), or the interpretations brought to support them, that the
ancients, in the best and purest times, either knew nothing of them,
or if they did, condemned them.

As excellent means of raising a presumption in the mind of the falsehood of Arianism and Socinianism, and thus of preparing the mind for a docile reception of the great idea itself--I admit and value the testimonies from the writings of the early Fathers. But alas! the increasing dimness, ending in the final want of the idea of this all-truths- including truth of the Tetractys eternally manifested in the Triad; --this, this is the ground and cause of all the main heresies from Semi-Arianism, recalled by Dr. Samuel Clarke, to the last setting ray of departing faith in the necessitarian Psilanthropism of Dr. Priestley.

Ib. p. 41-2, &c.

I cannot but think that Waterland's defence of the Fathers in these pages against Barbeyrac, is below his great powers and characteristic vigour of judgment. It is enough that they, the Fathers of the first three centuries, were the lights of their age, and worthy of all reverence for their good gifts. But it appears to me impossible to deny their credulity; their ignorance, with one or two exceptions, in the interpretation of the Old Testament; or their hardihood in asserting the truth of whatever they thought it for the interest of the Church, and for the good of souls, to have believed as true. A whale swallowed Jonah; but a believer in all the assertions and narrations of Tertullian and Irenæus would be more wonder-working than Jonah; for such a one must have swallowed whales.

[Footnote 1: The Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity asserted, in reply to some late pamphlets. 2nd edit. Lond. 1734.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON SKELTON.[1]

1825.

Burdy's Life of Skelton, p. 22.

She lived until she was a hundred and five. The omission of his
prayers on the morning it happened, he supposed ever after to be the
cause of this unhappy accident. So early was his mind impressed with a
lively sense of religious duty.

In anecdotes of this kind, and in the instances of eminently good men, it is that my head and heart have their most obstinate falls out. The question is:--To what extent the undoubted subjective truth may legitimately influence our judgment as to the possibility of the objective.

Ib. p. 67.

The Bishop then gave him the living of Pettigo in a wild part of the
county of Donegal, having made many removals on purpose to put him in
that savage place, among mountains, rocks, and heath, * * *. When he
got this living he had been eighteen years curate of Monaghan, and two
of Newtown-Butler, during which time he saw, as he told me, many
illiterate boys put over his head, and highly preferred in the Church
without having served a cure.

Though I have heard of one or two exceptions stated in proof that nepotism is not yet extinct among our Prelates, yet it is impossible to compare the present condition of the Church, and the disposal of its dignities and emoluments with the facts recorded in this Life, without an honest exultation.

Ib. p. 106.

He once declared to me that he would resign his living, if the
Athanasian Creed were removed from the Prayer Book; and I am sure he
would have done so.

Surely there was more zeal than wisdom in this declaration. Does the Athanasian or rather the 'pseudo'-Athanasian Creed differ from the Nicene, or not? If not, it must be dispensable at least, if not superfluous. If it does differ, which of the two am I to follow;--the profession of an anonymous individual, or the solemn decision of upwards of three hundred Bishops convened from all parts of the Christian world?

Vol. I. p. 177-180.

No problem more difficult or of more delicate treatment than the 'criteria' of miracles; yet none on which young divines are fonder of displaying their gifts. Nor is this the worst. Their charity too often goes to wreck from the error of identifying the faith in Christ with the arguments by which they think it is to be supported. But surely if two believers meet at the same goal of faith, it is a very secondary question whether they travelled thither by the same road of argument. In this and other passages of Skelton, I recognize and reverence a vigorous and robust intellect; but I complain of a turbidness in his reasoning, a huddle in his sequence, and here and there a semblance of arguing in a circle--from the miracle to the doctrine, and from the doctrine to the miracle. Add to this a too little advertency to the distinction between the evidence of a miracle for A, an eye-witness, and for B, for whom it is the relation of a miracle by an asserted eye-witness; and again between B, and X, Y, Z, for whom it is a fact of history. The result of my own meditations is, that the evidence of the Gospel, taken as a total, is as great for the Christians of the nineteenth century, as for those of the Apostolic age. I should not be startled if I were told it was greater. But it does not follow, that this equally holds good of each component part. An evidence of the most cogent clearness, unknown to the primitive Christians, may compensate for the evanescence of some evidence, which they enjoyed. Evidences comparatively dim have waxed into noon-day splendour; and the comparative wane of others, once effulgent, is more than indemnified by the 'synopsis' [Greek: tou pántos], which we enjoy, and by the standing miracle of a Christendom commensurate and almost synonymous with the civilized world. I make this remark for the purpose of warning the divinity student against the disposition to overstrain particular proofs, or rest the credibility of the Gospel too exclusively on some one favourite point. I confess, that I cannot peruse page 179 without fancying that I am reading some Romish Doctor's work, dated from a community where miracles are the ordinary news of the day.

P. S. By the by, the Rev. Philip Skelton is of the true Irish breed; that is, a brave fellow, but a bit of a bully. "Arrah, by St. Pathrick! but I shall make cold mutton of you, Misther Arian."

Ib. p. 182.

If in this he appears to deal fairly by us, proving such things as
admit of it, by reason; and such as do not, by the authority of his
miracles, &c.

Are 'we' likely to have miracles performed or pretended before our eyes? If not, what may all this mean? If Skelton takes for granted the veracity of the Evangelists, and the precise verity of the Gospels, the truth and genuineness of the miracles is included:--and if not, what does he prove? The exact accordance of the miracles related with the ideal of a true miracle in the reason, does indeed furnish an argument for the probable truth of the relation. But this does not seem to be Skelton's intention.

Ib. p. 185.

But to remedy this evil, as far as the nature of the thing will
permit, a genuine record of the true religion must be kept up, that
its articles may not be in danger of total corruption in such a sink
of opinions.

Anything rather than seek a remedy in that which Scripture itself declares the only one. Alas! these bewilderments (the Romanists urge) have taken place especially through and by the misuse of the Scriptures. Whatever God has given, we ought to think necessary;--the Scriptures, the Church, the Spirit. Why disjoin them?

Ib. p. 186.

Now a perpetual miracle, considered as the evidence of any thing, is
nonsense; because were it at first ever so apparently contrary to the
known course of nature, it must in time be taken for the natural
effect of some unknown cause, as all physical 'phænomena', if far
enough traced, always are; and consequently must fall into a level, as
to a capacity of proving any thing, with the most ordinary appearances
of nature, which, though all of them miracles, as to the primary cause
of their production, can never be applied to the proof of an
inspiration, because ordinary and common.

I doubt this, though I have no doubt that it would be pernicious. The yearly blossoming of Aaron's rod is against Skelton, who confounds single facts with classes of 'phænomena', and he draws his conclusion from an arbitrary and, as seems to me, senseless definition of a miracle.

Ib. p. 214. End of Discourse II.

Skelton appears to have confounded two errors very different in kind and in magnitude;--that of the Infidel, against whom his arguments are with few exceptions irrefragable; and that of the Christian, who, sincerely believing the Law, the Prophecies, the miracles and the doctrines, all in short which in the Scriptures themselves is declared to have been revealed, does not attribute the same immediate divinity to all and every part of the remainder. It would doubtless be more Christian-like to substitute the views expressed in the next Discourse (III.); but still the latter error is not as the former.

Ib. p. 234.

But why should not the conclusion be given up, since it is possible
Christ may have had two natures in him, so as to have been less than
the Father in respect to the one, and equal to him in respect to the
other.

I understand these words ('My Father is greater than I') of the divinity--and of the Filial subordination, which does not in the least encroach on the equality necessary to the unity of Father, Son, and Spirit. Bishop Bull does the same. See too Skelton's own remarks in Discourse V. p. 265.

Ib. p. 251.

This was necessary, because their Law was ordained by angels.

Now this is an instance of what I cannot help regarding as a superstitious excess of reverence for single texts. We know that long before the Epistle to the Hebrews was written, the Alexandrian Church, which by its intercourse with Greek philosophers, chiefly Platonists, had become ashamed of the humanities of the Hebrew Scriptures, in defiance of those Scriptures had pretended, that it was not the Supreme Being who gave the Law in person to Moses, but some of his angels. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, arguing 'ad homines', avails himself of this, in order to prove that on their own grounds the Mosaic was of dignity inferior to the Christian dispensation. To get rid of this no-difficulty in a single verse or two in the Epistles, Skelton throws an insurmountable difficulty on the whole Mosaic history.

Ib. p. 265.

Therefore, he saith, 'I' (as a man) 'can of myself do nothing'.

Even of this text I do not see the necessity of Skelton's parenthesis (as a man). Nay it appears to me (I confess) to turn a sublime and most instructive truth into a truism. "But if not as the Son of God, therefore 'a fortiori' not as the Son of man, and more especially, as such, in all that refers to the redemption of mankind."

Ib. p. 267.

To this glory Christ, as God, was entitled from all eternity; but did
not acquire a right to it as man, till he had paid the purchase by his
blood.

I too hold this for a most important truth; but yet could wish it to have been somewhat differently expressed; as thus:--"but did not acquire it as man till the means had been provided and perfected by his blood."

Ib. p. 268.

If Christ in one place, ('John' xiv. 28,) says, 'My Father is greater
than I'; he must be understood of his relation to the Father as his
Son, born of a woman.

I do not see the necessity of this: does not Christ say, 'My Father and I will come and we will dwell in you?' Nay, I dare confidently affirm that in no one passage of St. John's Gospel is our Lord declared in any special sense the Son of the First Person of the Trinity in reference to his birth from a woman. And remember it is from St. John's Gospel that the words are cited. So too the answer to Philip ought to be interpreted by ch. i. 18. of the same Gospel.

Ib. p. 276.

I confess I do not agree with Skelton's interpretation of any of these texts entirely. Because I hold the Nicene Faith, and revere the doctrine of the Trinity as the fundamental article of Christianity, I apply to Christ as the Second Person, almost all the texts which Skelton explains of his humanity. At all events 1 consider 'the first-born of every creature' as a false version of the words, which (as the argument and following verse prove) should be rendered 'begotten before', (or rather 'superlatively before'), 'all that was created or made; for by him' they were made.

Ib.

'Of that day, and that hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which
are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.'

I cannot explain myself here; but I have long thought that our Saviour meant in these words [Greek: ainíttein tàen théotaeta ahutou]--and that like the problem proposed by him to the Scribes, they were intended to prepare the minds of the disciples for this awful mystery--[Greek: ei màe ho patáer]--"unless, or if not, as the Father knows it;" while in St. Matthew the equivalent sense is given by the omission of the [Greek: oud' ho uhíos], and its inclusion in the Father. 'As the Father knoweth me, so know I the Father'.

It would have been against the general rule of Scripture prophecies, and the intention of the revelation in Christ, that the first Christians should have been so influenced in their measures and particular actions, as they could not but have been by a particular foreknowledge of the express and precise time at which Jerusalem was to be destroyed. To reconcile them to this uncertainty, our Lord first teaches them to consider this destruction the close of one great epoch, or [Greek: aiôn], as the type of the final close of the whole world of time, that is, of all temporal things; and then reasons with them thus:--"Wonder not that I should leave you ignorant of the former, when even the highest order of heavenly intelligences know not the latter, [Greek: oud' ho uhíos, ei màe ho patáer]; nor should I myself, but that the Father knows it, all whose will is essentially known to me as the Eternal Son. But even to me it is not revealably communicated." Such seems to me the true sense of this controverted passage in Mark, and that it is borne out by many parallel texts in St. John, and that the correspondent text in Matthew, which omits the [Greek: oud' ho huíos], conveys the same sense in equivalent terms, the word [Greek: emou] including the Son in the [Greek: patàer mónos]. For to his only-begotten Son before all time the Father showeth all things.

Ib. p. 279.

But whether we can reconcile these words to our belief of Christ's
prescience and divinity, or not, matters little to the debate about
his divinity itself; since we can so fully prove it by innumerable
passages of Scripture, too direct, express, and positive, to be
balanced by one obscure passage, from 'whence the Arian is to draw the
consequence himself, which may possibly be wrong'.

Very good.

Ib. p. 280.

'We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an
understanding that we may know him that is true; and we are in him
that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and
eternal life.'--l John v. 20. The whole connection evidently shows the
words to be spoken of Christ.

That the words comprehend Christ is most evident. All that can be fairly concluded from 1 Cor. viii. 6, is this:--that the Apostles, Paul and John, speak of the Father as including and comprehending the Son and the Holy Ghost, as his Word and his Spirit; but of these as inferring or supposing the Father, not comprehending him. Whenever, therefore, respecting the Godhead itself, containing both deity and dominion, the term God is distinctively used, it is applied to the Father, and Lord to the Son.

Ib. p. 281.

But, farther, it is objected that Christ cannot be God, since God
calls him 'his servant' more than once, particularly 'Isaiah' xlii. 1.

The Prophets often speak of the anti-type, or person typified, in language appropriate to, and suggested by, the type itself. So, perhaps, in this passage, if, as I suppose, Hezekiah was the type immediately present to Isaiah's imagination. However, Skelton's answer is quite sufficient.

Ib. p. 287.

Hence it appears, that in the passage objected, (1 'Cor'. xv. 24, &c.)
Christ is spoken of purely as that Man whom 'God had highly exalted,
and to whom he had given a name which is above every name, that at the
name of Jesus every knee should bow.' (Phil. ii. 9, 10.)

I must confess that this exposition does not quite satisfy me. I cannot help thinking that something more and deeper was meant by the Apostle; and this must be sought for in the mystery of the Trinity itself, 'in which' (mystery) 'all treasures of knowledge are hidden'.

Ib. p. 318.

Hence, perhaps, may be best explained what St. Peter says in the
second Epistle, after pleading a miracle. 'We have also a more sure
word of prophecy, whereunto you do well that you take heed.'

I believe that St. Peter neither said it, nor meant this; but that [Greek: Bebaióteron] follows 'the prophetic word'. We have also the word of prophecy more firm;--that is; we have, in addition to the evidence of the miracles themselves, this further confirmation, that they are the fulfilment of known prophecies.

Ib. p. 327.

Agreeable to these passages of the Prophet, St. Peter tells us ('Acts'
x. 38), 'God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and
power'.

I have often to complain that too little attention is paid by commentators to the history and particular period in which certain speeches were delivered, or words written. Could St. Peter with propriety have introduced the truth to a prejudiced audience with its deepest mysteries? Must he not have begun with the most evident facts?

Ib. Disc. VIII.

The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity vindicated.

Were I a Clergyman, the paragraphs from p. 366 to p. 370, both inclusive, of this Discourse should form the conclusion of my Sermon on Trinity Sunday,--whether I preached at St. James's, or in a country village.

Ib. pp. 374-378.

As a reason why we should doubt our own judgment, it is quite fair to remind the objector, that the same difficulty occurs in the scheme of God's ordinary providence. But that a difficulty in a supposed article of revealed truth is solved by the occurrence of the same or of an equivalent difficulty in the common course of human affairs--this I find it hard to conceive. How was the religious, as distinguished from the moral, sense first awakened? What made the human soul feel the necessity of a faith in God, but the apparent incongruity of certain dispensations in this world with the idea of God, with the law written in the heart? Is not the reconciling of these facts or 'phænomena' with the divine attributes, one of the purposes of a revealed religion? But even this is not a full statement of the defect complained of in this solution. A difficulty which may be only apparent (like that other of the prosperity of the wicked) is solved by the declaration of its reality! A difficulty grounded on the fact of temporal and outward privations and sufferings, is solved by being infinitely increased, that is, by the assertion of the same principle on the determination of our inward and everlasting weal and woe. That there is nothing in the Christian Faith or in the Canonical Scriptures, when rightly interpreted, that requires such an argument, or sanctions the recourse to it, I believe myself to have proved in the Aids to Reflection. For observe that "to solve" has a scientific, and again a religious sense, and that in the latter, a difficulty is satisfactorily solved, as soon as its insolvibility for the human mind is proved and accounted for.

Ib. (Disc. XIV. pp. 500-502.)

Christianity proved by Miracles.

I cannot see and never could, the purpose, or 'cui bono', of this reasoning. To whom is it addressed? To a man who denies a God, or that God can reveal his will to mankind? If such a man be not below talking to, he must first be convinced of his miserable blindness respecting these truths; for these are clearly presupposed in every proof of miracles generally.

Again, does he admit the authenticity of the Gospels, and the veracity of the Evangelists? Does he credit the facts there related, and as related? If not, these points must be proved; for these are clearly presupposed in all reasoning on the particular miracles of the Christian dispensation. If he does, can he deny that many acts of Christ were wonderful;--that reanimating a dead body in which putrefaction had already commenced,--and feeding four thousand men with a few loaves and fishes, so that the fragments left greatly exceeded the original total quantity,--were wonderful events? Should such a man, 'compos mentis', exist, (which I more than doubt,) what could a wise man do but stare--and leave him? Christ wrought many wonderful works, implying admirable power, and directed to the most merciful and beneficent ends; and these acts were such signs of his divine mission, as rendered inattention or obstinate averseness to the truths and doctrines which he promulgated, inexcusable, and indeed on any hypothesis but that of immoral dispositions and prejudices, utterly inconceivable. In what respect, I pray, can this statement be strengthened by any reasoning about the nature and distinctive essence of miracles 'in abstracto'? What purpose can be answered by any pretended definition of a miracle? If I met with a disputatious word-catcher, or logomachist, who sought to justify his unbelief on this ground, I should not hesitate to say--"Never mind whether it is a miracle or no. Call it what you will;--but do you believe the fact? Do you believe that Christ did by force of his will and word multiply instantaneously twelve loaves and a few small fishes, into sufficient food for a hungering multitude of four thousand men and women?" When I meet with, or from credible authority hear of, a man who believes this fact, and yet thinks it no sign of Christ's mission; when I can even conceive of a man in his right senses who, believing all the facts and events related in the New Testament, and as there related, does yet remain a Deist, I may think it time to enter into a disquisition respecting the right definition of a miracle; and meantime, I humbly trust that believing with my whole heart and soul in the wonderful works of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I shall not forfeit my title of Christian, though I should not subscribe to this or that divine's right definition of his 'idea' of a miracle; which word is with me no 'idea' at all, but a general term; the common surname, as it were, of the wonderful works wrought by the messengers of God to man in the Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian dispensations.

It is to these notions and general definitions, far more than to the facts themselves, that the arguments of Infidels apply; and from which they derive their plausibility. Nor is this all. The Infidel imitates the divine, and adopts the same mode of arguing, namely, by this substantiation of mere general or collective terms. For instance, Hume's argument (stated, by the by, before he was born, and far more forcibly, by Dr. South, who places it in the mouth of Thomas,) [2]--reduce it to the particular facts in question, and its whole speciousness vanishes. I am speaking of the particular facts and actions of the Gospel; of those, and those only. Now that I should be deceived, or the eye-witnesses have been deceived, under all the circumstances of those miracles, with all antecedents, accompaniments, and consequents, is quite as contrary to, that is, unparalleled in my experience, as the return to life of a dead man.

So again in the second paragraph of page 502, [3] the position is true or false according to the definition of a miracle. In the narrower sense of the term, miracle,--that is, a consequent presented to the outward senses without an adequate antecedent, ejusdem generis,--it is not only false but detractory from the Christian religion. It is a main, nay, an indispensable evidence; but it is not the only, no, nor if comparison be at all allowable, the highest and most efficient; unless, indeed, the term evidence is itself confined to grounds of conviction offered to the senses, but then the position is a mere truism.

There is yet another way of reasoning, which I utterly dislike; namely, by putting imaginary cases of imaginary miracles, as Paley has done. "If a dozen different individuals, all men of known sense and integrity, should each independently of the other pledge their everlasting weal on the truth, that they saw a man beheaded and quartered, and that on a certain person's prayer or bidding, the quarters reunited, and then a new head grew on and from out of the stump of the neck: and should the man himself assure you of the same, shew you the junctures, and identify himself to you by some indelible mark, with which you had been previously acquainted,--could you withstand this evidence?" What could a judicious man reply but--"When such an event takes place, I will tell you; but what has this to do with the reasons for our belief in the truth of the written records of the Old and New Testament? Why do you fly off from the facts to a gigantic fiction,--when the possibility of the 'If' with respect to a much less startling narration is the point in dispute between us?"

Such and so peculiar, and to an honest mind so unmistakeable, is the character of veracity and simplicity on the very countenance, as it were, of the Gospel, that every remove of the inquirer's attention from the facts themselves is a remove of his conversion. It is your business to keep him from wandering, not to set him the example.

Never, surely, was there a more unequal writer than Skelton;--in the discourses on the Trinity, the compeer of Bull and Waterland; and yet the writer of these pages, 500-501! Natural magic! a stroke of art! for example, converting the Nile into blood! And then his definition of a miracle. Suspension of the laws of nature! suspension--laws--nature! Bless me! a chapter would be required for the explanation of each several word of this definition, and little less than omniscience for its application in any one instance. An effect presented to the senses without any adequate antecedent, 'ejusdem generis', is a miracle in the philosophic sense. Thus: the corporeal ponderable hand and arm raised with no other known causative antecedent, but a thought, a pure act of an immaterial essentially invisible imponderable will, is a miracle for a reflecting mind. Add the words, 'præter experientiam': and we have the definition of a miracle in the popular, practical, and appropriated sense.

Vol. III.

That all our thoughts and views respecting our Faith should be consistent with each other, and with the attributes of God, is most highly desirable: but when the great diversities of men's understandings, and the unavoidable influence of circumstances on the mind, are considered, we may hope from the Divine mercy, that the agreement in the result will suffice; and that he who sincerely and efficiently believes that Christ left the glory which he had with the Father before all worlds, to become man and die for our salvation,--that by him we may, and by him alone we can, be saved,--will be held a true believer,--whether he interprets the words 'sacrifice,' 'purchase,' 'bargain,' 'satisfaction,' of the creditor by full payment of the 'debt,' and the like as proper and literal expressions of the redeeming act and the cause of our salvation, as Skelton seems to have done;--or (as I do) as figurative language truly designating the effects and consequences of this adorable act and process.

Ib. p. 393.

But were the prospect of a better parish, in case of greater
diligence, set before him by his Bishop, on the music of such a
promise, like one bit by a 'tarantula', we should probably soon see
him in motion, and serving God, (O shameful!) for the sake of Mammon,
as if his torpid body had been animated anew by a returning soul.

Without any high-flying in Christian morality, I cannot keep shrinking from the wish here expressed; at all events, I cannot sympathize with, or participate in, the expectation of "an infinite advancement" from men so motived.

Ib. p. 394.

Yet excommunication, the inherent discipline of the Church, which it
exercised under persecution, which it is still permitted to exercise
under the present establishment.

Rarely I suspect, without exposing the Clergyman to the risk of an action for damages, or some abuse. There are few subjects that more need investigation, yet require more vigour and soundness of judgment to be rightly handled, than this of Christian discipline in a Church established by law. It is indeed a most difficult and delicate problem, and supplied Baxter with a most plausible and to me the only perplexing of his numerous objections to our Ecclesiastical Constitution. On the other hand, I saw clearly that he was requiring an impossibility; and that his argument carried on to its proper consequences concluded against all Church Establishment, not more against the National Church of which he complained, than the one of his own clipping and shaping which he would have substituted; consequently, every proof (and I saw many and satisfactory proofs) of the moral and political necessity of an Established Church, was at the same time a pledge that a deeper insight would detect some flaw in the reasoning of the Disciplinarians. For if A. be right and requisite, B., which is incompatible with A., cannot be rightly required. And this it was, that first led me to the distinction between the 'Ecclesia' and an 'Enclesia', concerning which see my Essay on Establishment and Dissent, in which I have met the objection to my position, that Christian discipline is incompatible with a Church established by law, from the fact of the discipline of the Church of Scotland. [4] Who denies that it is in the power of a legislature to punish certain offences by ignominy, and to make the clergy magistrates in reference to these? The question is, whether it is wise or expedient, which it may be, or rather may have been, in Scotland, and the contrary in England? Wise or unwise, this is not discipline, not Christian discipline, enforced only by spiritual motives, enacted by spiritual authority, and submitted to for conscience' sake.

Ib. p. 446.

Be this as it may, the foreknowledge and the decree were both eternal.
Here now it is a clear point that the moral actions of all accountable
agents were, with certainty, fore-known, and their doom unalterably
fixed, long before any one of them existed.