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: Kai eis hena Kyrion Iaesoun Christon, ton uhion tou Theou monogenae, ton ek tou patros gennaethenta, Theon alaethinon, pro panton ton aionon, di' ohu ta panta egeneto].

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 Ecclesiae ex ipso Ecclesiae sensu, non ex haereticorum 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 Irenaeus, 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, Irenaeus 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 Irenaean tradition;—that the Creed of Cerinthus was what Irenaeus 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 'Christopaedia', 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 zoae], 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: katalambano], 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: egeneto sarx],—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 'archaspistae' 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 'Christopaedia', 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: apo tou hymeterou genous] 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: Phusei de taes phthoras prosgenomenaes, anagkaion aen hoti sosai Boulomenos ae taen phthoropoion ousian aphanisas touto de ouk aen heteros genesthai ei maeper hae kata phusin zoae proseplakae to taen phthoran dexameno, aphanizousa men taen phthoran, athanaton de tou loipou to 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: hae kata phusin zoae]. 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 Irenaeus, 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 Irenaeus 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 pantos], 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 'phaenomena', 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 'phaenomena', 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: ainittein taen theotaeta 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 mae ho pataer]—"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 uhios], 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: aion], 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 uhios, ei mae ho pataer]; 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 huios], conveys the same sense in equivalent terms, the word [Greek: emou] including the Son in the [Greek: pataer monos]. 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: Bebaioteron] 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 'phaenomena' 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, 'praeter 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.

Strange that so great a man as Skelton should first affirm eternity of both, yet in the next sentence talk of "long before." These Reflections [5] are excellent, but here Skelton offends against his own canons. I should feel no reluctance, moral or speculative, in accepting the apparent necessity of both propositions, as a sufficient reason for believing both; and the transcendancy of the subject as a sufficient solution of their apparent incompatibility. But yet I think that another view of the subject, not less congruous with universal reason and more agreeable to the light of reason in the human understanding, might be defended, without detracting from any perfection of the Divine Being. Nay, I think that Skelton needed but one step more to have seen it.

Ib. p. 478.

'In fine.'

To what purpose were these Reflections, taken as a whole, written? I cannot answer. To dissuade men from reasoning on a subject beyond our faculties? Then why all this reasoning?

Vol. IV. p. 28. Deism Revealed.

'Shepherd'. Were you ever at Constantinople, Sir?

'Dechaine'. Never.

'Shep.' Yet I believe you have no more doubt there is such a city, than that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones.

'Temp.' I am sure 1 have not.

'Dech.' Nor I; but what then?

'Shep.' Pray, Mr. Dechaine, did you see Julius Caesar assassinated in the Capitol?

'Dech.' A pretty question! No indeed, Sir.

'Shep.' Have you any doubts about the truth of what is told us by the historians concerning that memorable transaction?

'Dech.' Not the least.

'Shep.' Pray, is it either self-evident or demonstrable to you, at this time and place, that there is any such city as Constantinople, or that there ever was such a man as Caesar?

'Dech.' By no means.

'Shep.' And you have all you know concerning the being of either the city, or the man, merely from the report of others, who had it from others, and so on, through many links of tradition?

'Dech.' I have.

'Shep.' You see then, that there are certain cases, in which the evidence of things not seen nor either sensibly or demonstrably perceived, can justly challenge so entire an assent, that he who should pretend to refuse it in the fullest measure of acquiescence, would be deservedly esteemed the most stupid or perverse of mankind.

That there is a sophism here, every one must feel in the very fact of being 'non-plus'd' without being convinced. The sophism consists in the instance being 'haud ejusdem generis' ([Greek: elegchos metabaseos eis allo genos]); and what the allogeneity is between the assurance of the being of Madrid or Constantinople, and the belief of the fact of the resurrection of Christ, I have shown elsewhere. The universal belief of the 'tyrannicidium' of Julius Caesar is doubtless a fairer instance, but the whole mode of argument is unsound and unsatisfying. Why run off from the fact in question, or the class at least to which it belongs? The victory can be but accidental—a victory obtained by the unguarded logic, or want of logical foresight of the antagonist, who needs only narrow his positions to narrations of facts and events, in our judgment of which we are not aided by the analogy of previous and succeeding experience, to deprive you of the opportunity of skirmishing thus on No Man's land. But this is Skelton's ruling passion, sometimes his strength—too often his weakness. He must force the reader to believe: or rather he has an antagonist, a wilful infidel or heretic always and exclusively before his imagination; or if he thinks of the reader at all, it is as of a partizan enjoying every hard thump, and smashing 'fister' he gives the adversary, whom Skelton hates too cordially to endure to obtain any thing from him with his own liking. No! It must be against his will, and in spite of it. No thanks to him—the dog could not help himself! How much more effectual would he have found it to have commenced by placing himself in a state of sympathy with the supposed sceptic or unbeliever;—to have stated to him his own feelings, and the real grounds on which they rested;—to have shown himself the difference between the historical facts which the sceptic takes for granted and believes spontaneously, as it were,—and those, which are to be the subject of discussion; and this brings the question at once to the proof. And here, after all, lies the strength of Skelton's reasoning, which would have worked far more powerfully, had it come first and single, and with the whole attention directed towards it.

Ib. p. 35.

'Templeton.' Surely the resurrection of Christ, or any other man, cannot be a thing impossible with God. It is neither above his power, nor, when employed for a sufficient purpose, inconsistent with his majesty, wisdom, and goodness.

This is the ever open and vulnerable part of Deism. The Deist, as a Deist, believes, 'implicite' at least, so many and stupendous miracles as to render his disbelief of lesser miracles, simply because they are miraculous, gross inconsistencies. To have the battle fairly fought out, Spinoza, or a Bhuddist, or a Burmese Gymnosoph, should be challenged. Then, I am deeply persuaded, would the truth appear in full evidence, that no Christ, no God,—and, conversely, if the Father, then the Son. I can never too often repeat, that revealed religion is a pleonasm. —Religion is revelation, and revelation the only religion.

Ib. p. 37.

'Shep.' Those believers, whose faith is to rely on the truth of the Christian history, rest their assent on a written report made by eye-witnesses; which report the various Churches and sects, jealous of one another, took care to preserve genuine and uncorrupted, at least in all material points, and all the religious writers in every age since have amply attested.

A divine of the present day who shall undertake the demonstration of the truth of Christianity by external evidences, or historically, must not content himself with assuming or asserting this. He must either prove it; or prove that such proof is not necessary. I myself should be quite satisfied if I proved the former position in respect to the fourth Gospel, and showed that the evidence of the other three was equivalent to a record by an eye-witness: which would not be at all inconsistent with my contending at the same time for the authenticity of the first Gospel, or rather for the Catholic interpretation of the title-words [Greek: Kata Matthaion], as the more probable opinion, which a sound divine will neither abandon nor overload, neither place it in the foundation, nor on the other hand suffer it to be extruded from the wall. Believe me, there is great, very great, danger in these broad unqualified assertions that Skelton deals in. Even though the balance of evidence should be on his side, yet the inquirer will be unfavourably affected by the numerous doubts and difficulties which an acquaintance with the more modern works of Biblical criticism will pour upon him, and for which his mind is wholly unprepared. To meet with a far weaker evidence than we had taken it for granted we were to find, gives the same shake to the mind, that missing a stair gives to the body.

Ib. p. 243.

'Temp.' You, Mr. Dechaine, seem to forget that God is just; and you, Mr. Shepherd, that he is merciful

'Dech.' I insist, that, as God is merciful, he will forgive.

'Shep.' And I insist, that, as he is just, he will punish.

'Temp.' Pray Mr. Dechaine, are you able, upon the Deistical scheme to rid yourself of this difficulty?

'Dech.' I see no difficulty in it at all. God gives us laws only for our good, and will never suffer those laws to become a snare to us, and the occasion of our eternal misery.

Here is the 'cardo'! The man of sense asserts that it is necessary for the good of all, that a code of laws should exist, while yet it is impossible that all should at all times be obeyed by each person: but what is impossible cannot be required. Nevertheless, it may be required that no 'iota' of any one of these laws should be wilfully and deliberately transgressed, nor is there any one for the transgression of which the transgressor must not hold himself punishable. "And yet" (says our man of sense,) "what may not be said of any one point, or any one moment, cannot be denied of the collective agency of a whole life, or any considerable section of it. Here we find ourselves constrained by our best feelings to praise or condemn, to reward or punish, according as a great predominance of acts of obedience or disobedience, and a continued love of the better, or the lusting after the worst, manifests the maxim ('regula maxima'), the radical will and proper character of the individual. So parents judge of their children; so schoolmasters of their scholars; so friends of friends, and even so will God judge his creatures, if we are to trust in our common sense, or believe the repeated declarations in the Old Testament." And now I should be glad to hear any satisfactory 'sensible' reply to this, or any answer that does not fly higher than 'sense' can follow, and pierce into "the thick clouds" of decried metaphysics! For no fair reply can be imagined, but one which would find the root of the moral evil, the true [Greek: ponaeron], in this very impossibility.

Ib. p. 249.

'Cunningham.' But how does all this discourse about sacrifices and the natural light show that your faith does not ascribe injustice to God in putting an innocent person to death for the transgressions of the guilty?

'Shep.' Was Christ innocent?

'Cunn.' 'He was without sin.'

'Shep.' And he was put to death by the appointment and predetermination of God?

'Cunn.' The Jews put him to death.

'Shep.' Do not evade the question. Was he not 'the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world'? Was he not 'so delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, that the Jews, having taken him, by wicked hands crucified and slew him?'

'Cunn'. And what then?

'Shep'. Nothing; but that you are to answer, as well as I, for saying that God predetermined the death of this only innocent person.

I am less pleased with this volume than with any of the preceding. Ask your own heart and conscience whether (for instance,) they are satisfied with this defence 'duri per durius': or whether frightening a modest query into silence by perverting it into an accusation of the Almighty, by virtue of a conclusion borrowed from the Calvinistic theory of Predestination, is not more in the spirit of Job's comforters, than becomes a minister of the Apostolic Church of England and Ireland? Such arguments are but edge-tools at the safest, but more often they may rather be likened to the two-edged blade of Parysatis's knife, the one of which was poisoned. Leave them to Calvin, or those who dare appropriate Calvin's words, that "God's absolute will is the only rule of his justice;"—thus dividing the divine attributes. Yet Calvin himself distinguishes the hidden from the revealed God, even as the Greek Fathers distinguished the [Greek: thelaema Theou], the absolute ground of all being, from the [Greek: Boulae tou Theou], as the cause and disposing providence of all existence.

But I disapprove of the plan and spirit of this work, (Deism Revealed.) The cold-hearted, worldly-minded, cunning Deist, or the coarse sensual Infidel, is of all men the least likely to be converted; and the conscientious, inquiring, though misled and perplexed, Sceptic will throw aside a book at once, as not applicable to his case, which treats every doubt as a crime, and supposes that there is no doubt at all possible but in a bad heart and from wicked wishes. Compare this with St. Paul's language concerning the Jews.

So again, pp. 225, &c. of this volume. Do not the plainest intuitions of our moral and rational being confirm the positions here attributed to the Deist, Dechaine? Are they not the same by which Melancthon de-Calvinized, at least de-Augustinized, the heroic Luther;—those which constitute one of the only two essential differences between the Augsburg Confession and the Calvinistic Articles of Faith? And can anything be more flittery and special-pleading than Skelton's objections? And again, p. 507, "and that prayer which he (Tindal) is reported to have used a little before his death, 'If there is a God, I desire he may have mercy on me;'"—was it Christian-like to publish and circulate a blind report—so improbable and disgusting, as to demand the strongest and most unsuspicious testimony for its reception?

Ib. p. 268.

'Shep'. Pray, Mr. Dechaine, if a person, whom you knew to be an honest and clear-sighted man, should solemnly assure you he saw a dead man restored to life, what would you think of his testimony?

'Dech'. As I could not possibly have as strong an assurance of his honesty, clear-sightedness, and penetration, as of the great improbability of the fact, I should not believe him.

'Shep'. Well; it is true he might be deceived himself, or intend to impose on you. But in case ten such persons should all, at different times, confirm the same report, how would this affect you?

There is one inconvenience, not to say danger, in this argument of Mr. Shepherd's; namely, that of its not standing in the same force, when it comes to be repeated in the particular miraculous facts in support of which it is adduced.

Ib. p. 281.

No other ancient book can be so well proved to have been the work of the author it is now ascribed to, as every book of the New Testament can be proved to have been written by him whose name it hath all along borne.

This is true to the full extent that the defence of the divinity of our religion needs, or perhaps permits, and I see no advantage gained by asserting more. I must lose all power of distinction, before I can affirm that the genuineness of the first Gospel,—that in its present form it was written by Matthew, or is a literal translation of a Gospel written by him,—rests on as strong external evidence as Luke's, or on as strong internal evidence as St. John's. Sufficient that the evidence greatly preponderates in its favor.



[Footnote 1: The complete Works of the late Rev. Philip Skelton, Rector of Fintona. 6. vols. 8vo. London, 1824. 'Ed.']

[Footnote 2: See South's Works, vol. iii. p. 500. Clarendon edit. 1823 —Ed.]

[Footnote 3: But it will be proper to observe, that it strikes directly at the very root of Revelation, which cannot possibly give any other evidence of itself, as the dictate of God, but what must be drawn from miracles, wrought to prove the divine mission of those who publish it to the world.]

[Footnote 4: The Editor is not aware of the existence of the Essay here mentioned. But see for the distinction of the 'Ecclesia' and 'Enclesia', the Church and State, 3rd edit.—Ed.]

[Footnote 5: On Predestination, as far as p. 445.]



* * * * *



NOTES ON ANDREW FULLER'S CALVINISTIC AND SOCINIAN SYSTEMS EXAMINED AND COMPARED. [1] 1807.

Letter III. p. 38.

They (the Jews) did not deny that to be God's own Son was to be equal with the Father, nor did they allege that such an equality would destroy the divine unity: a thought of this kind never seems to have occurred to their minds.

In so truly excellent a book as this is, I regret that this position should rest on an assertion. The equality of Christ would not, indeed, destroy the unity of God the Father, considered as one Person: but, unless we presume the Jews in question acquainted with the great truth of the Tri-unity, we must admit that it would be considered as implying Ditheism. Now that some among the Jews had made very near approaches, though blended with errors, to the doctrine taught in John, c. i., we can prove from the writings of Philo;—and the Socinians can never prove that these Jews did not know at least of the doctrine of their schools concerning the only-begotten Word—[Greek: Logos monogenaes],—not as an attribute, much less as an abstraction or personification—but as a distinct 'Hypostasis' [Greek: symphysikae]:-and hence it might be shown that their offence was that the carpenter's son, the Galilean, should call himself the [Greek: Theos phaneros]. This might have been rendered more than probable by the concluding sentence of Christ's answer to the disciples of John;—'and blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me' (Luke vii. 23.); which appears to have no adequate or even tolerable meaning, unless in reference to the passage in Isaiah, (lxi. 1, 2.) prophesying that Jehovah himself would come among them, and do the things which our Saviour states himself to have done. Thus, too, I regret that the answer of our Lord, (John x. 34-36.) being one of the imagined strong-holds of the Socinians, should not have been more fully cleared up. I doubt not that Fuller's is a true interpretation; and that no other is consistent with our Lord's various other declarations. But the words in and by themselves admit a more plausible misinterpretation than is elsewhere the case of Socinian displanations. In short, I think both passages would have been better deferred to a further part of the work.

Let me add that a mighty and comparatively new argument against the Socinians may be most unanswerably deduced from this reply of our Lord's, even were it considered as a mere 'argumentum ad homines': —namely, that it was not his Messiahship that so offended the Jews, but his Sonship; otherwise, our Saviour's language would have neither force, motive, or object. "Even were I no more than the Messiah, in your meanest conceptions of that character, yet after what I have done before your eyes, nothing but malignant hearts could have prevented you from adopting a milder interpretation of my words, when in your own Scriptures there exists a precedent that so much more than merely justifies me." And this I believe to be the meaning of the words as intended to be understood by the Jews in question; though, doubtless, Fuller's sense exists 'implicite'. No candid person would ever call it an evasion, to prove the injustice and malignity of an accuser even from his own grounds:—"You charge me falsely; but even were your charge true, namely, that I am a mere man, and yet call myself the Son of God, still it would not follow that I have been guilty of blasphemy." But as understood by the modern Unicists, it would verily, verily, be an evasive ambiguity, most unworthy of Christian belief concerning his Saviour. Common charity would have demanded of him to have said:—"I am a mere man: I do not pretend to be more; but I used the words in analogy to the words, 'Ye are as Gods'; and I have a right to do so: for though a mere man, I am the great Prophet and Messenger which Moses promised you."

Letter V. p. 72.

If Dr. Priestley had formed his estimate of human virtue by that great standard which requires love to God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves,—instead of representing men by nature as having "more virtue than vice,"—he must have acknowledged with the Scripture, that 'the whole world lieth in wickedness—that every thought and imagination of their heart is only evil continually'—and that 'there is none of them that doeth good, no not one'.

To this the Unicists would answer, that by 'the whole world' is meant all the worldly-minded;—no matter in how direct opposition to half a score other texts! "One text at a time!" sufficient for the day is the evil thereof!—and in this way they go on pulling out hair by hair from the horse's tail, (say rather, dreaming that they do so,) and then conclude with a shout that the horse never had a tail! For why? This hair is not a tail, nor that, nor the third, and so on to the very last; and how can all do what none of all does?—Ridiculous as this is, it is a fair image of Socinian logic. Thank God, their plucking out is a mere fancy;—and the sole miserable reality is the bare rump which they call their religion;—but that is the ape's own growth.

Ib. p. 77.

First, that all punishments are designed for the good of the whole, and less or corrective punishments for the good of the offender, is admitted. * * God never inflicts punishment for the sake of punishing.

This is not, [Greek: hos emoige dokei], sufficiently guarded. That all punishments work for the good of the whole, and that the good of the whole is included in God's design, I admit: but that this is the sole cause, and the sole justification of divine punishment, I cannot, I dare not, concede;—because I should thus deny the essential evil of guilt, and its inherent incompatibility with the presence of a Being of infinite holiness. Now, exclusion from God implies the sum and utmost of punishment; and this would follow from the very essence of guilt and holiness, independently of example, consequence, or circumstance.

Letter VI. p. 90.

(The systems compared as to their tendency to promote morality in general.)

I have hitherto made no objection to, no remark on, any one part of this Letter; for I object to the whole—not as Calvinism, but—as what Calvin would have recoiled from. How was it that so good and shrewd a man as Andrew Fuller should not have seen, that the difference between a Calvinist and a Priestleyan Materialist-Necessitarian consists in this:—The former not only believes a will, but that it is equivalent to the 'ego ipse', to the actual self, in every moral agent; though he believes that in human nature it is an enslaved, because a corrupt, will. In denying free will to the unregenerated he no more denies will, than in asserting the poor negroes in the West Indies to be slaves I deny them to be men. Now the latter, the Priestleyan, uses the word will,—not for any real, distinct, correspondent power, but,—for the mere result and aggregate of fibres, motions, and sensations; in short, it is a mere generic term with him, just as when we say, the main current in a river.

Now by not adverting to this, and alas! misled by Jonathan Edwards's book, Fuller has hidden from himself and his readers the damnable nature of the doctrine—not of necessity (for that in its highest sense is identical with perfect freedom; they are definitions each of the other); but—of extraneous compulsion. O! even this is not adequate to the monstrosity of the thought. A denial of all agency;—or an assertion of a world of agents that never act, but are always acted upon, and yet without any one being that acts;—this is the hybrid of Death and Sin, which throughout this letter is treated so amicably! Another fearful mistake, and which is the ground of the former, lies in conceding to the Materialist, 'explicite et implicite', that the [Greek: noumenon], the 'intelligibile', the 'ipseitas super sensibilis', of guilt is in time, and of time, and, consequently, a mechanism of cause and effect;—in other words, in confounding the [Greek: phainomena, ta rheonta, ta mae ontos onta],—all which belong to time, and cannot be even thought of except as effects necessarily predetermined by the precedent causes, (themselves in their turn effects of other causes),—with the transsensual ground or actual power.

After such admissions, no other possible defence can be made for Calvinism or any other 'ism' than the wretched recrimination: "Why, yours, Dr. Priestley, is just as bad!"—Yea, and no wonder:—for in essentials both are the same. But there was no reason for Fuller's meddling with the subject at all,—metaphysically, I mean.

Ib. p. 95.

If the unconditionality of election render it unfriendly to virtue, it must be upon the supposition of that view of things, "which attributes more to God, and less to man," having such ascendancy; which is the very reverse of what Dr. Priestley elsewhere teaches, and that in the same performance.

But in both systems, as Fuller has erroneously stated his own, man is annihilated. There is neither more nor less; it is all God; all, all are but 'Deus infinite modificatus':—in brief, both systems are not Spinosism, for no other reason than that the logic and logical consequency of 10 Fullers + 10 X 10 Dr. Priestleys, piled on each other, would not reach the calf of Spinoza's leg. Both systems of necessity lead to Spinosism, nay, to all the horrible consequences attributed to it by Spinoza's enemies. O, why did Andrew Fuller quit the high vantage ground of notorious facts, plain durable common sense, and express Scripture, to delve in the dark in order to countermine mines under a spot, on which he had no business to have wall, tent, temple, or even standing-ground!



[Footnote 1: The Calvinistic and Socinian Systems examined and compared, as to their moral tendency; in a series of Letters addressed to the friends of vital and practical religion; especially those amongst Protestant Dissenters. By Andrew Fuller. Market Harborough. 1793.]



* * * * *



NOTES ON WHITAKER'S ORIGIN OF ARIANISM DISCLOSED. [1] 1810.

Chap. I. 4. p. 30.

'Making himself equal with God'.

Whoever reads the four verses (John v. 16-19,) attentively, judging of the meaning of each part by the context, must needs, I think, see that the [Greek: ison heauton poion ton Theo] (18) refers,—not to the [Greek: patera idion elege ton Theon], (18) or the [Greek: ho pataer mou] (17), but—to the [Greek: ergazetai, kago ergazomai] (17). The 19th verse, which is directly called Jesus' reply, takes no notice whatever of the [Greek: ho pataer mou] (17), but consists wholly of a justification of the [Greek: kago ergazomai].

1803.

The above was written many years ago. I still think the remark plausible, though I should not now express myself so positively. I imagined the Jews to mean: "he has evidently used the words [Greek: ho pataer mou]—not in the sense in which all good men may use them, but—in a literal sense, because by the words that followed, [Greek: ergazetai, kago ergazomai], he makes himself equal to God." To justify these words seemed to me to be the purport of Christ's reply.

Chap. II. 1. p. 34.

[Greek: (Philon)—peri men oun ta theia kai patria mathaemata, poson te kai paelikon eisenaenektai ponon, ergo pasi daelos kai peri ta philosopha de kai eleutheria taes exothen paideias oios tis aen, ouden dei legein hoti kai malista taen kata Platona kai Pythagoran ezaelokos agogaen, dienegken apantas tous kath' heauton, historeitai].

Euseb. Hist. II. 4.

Philo's acquaintance with the doctrines of the heathens was known only by historical report to Eusebius; while the writings of Philo displayed his knowledge in the religion of the Jews.

Strange comment. Might I not, after having spoken of Dun Scotus's works, say;—"he is reported to have surpassed all his contemporaries in subtlety of logic:"—yet still mean no other works than those before mentioned? Are not Philo's works full of, crowded with, Platonic and Pythagorean philosophy? Eusebius knew from his works that he was a great Platonic scholar; but that he was greater than any other man of his age, he could only learn from report or history. That Virgil is a great poet I know from his poems; but that he was the greatest of the Augustan age, I must learn from Quinctilian and others.

Ib. p. 35.

Philo and the author of the Wisdom of Solomon,—(or rather, perhaps, authors; for the first ten chapters form a complete work of themselves,)—were both Cabalistico-Platonizing Jews of Alexandria. As far as, being such, they must agree, so far they do agree; and as widely as such men could differ, do they differ. Not only the style of the Wisdom of Solomon is generically different from Philo's,—so much so that I should deem it a free translation from a Hebrew original,—but also in all the 'minutiae' of traditional history and dogma it contradicts Philo. Philo attributes the creation of man to angels; and they infused the evil principle through their own imperfections. In the Book of Wisdom, God created man spotless, and the Devil tempting him occasioned the Fall. So the whole account of the plagues of Egypt differs as widely as possible, even to absolute contradiction. The origin of idolatry is explained altogether differently by Philo, and by the Book of Wisdom. In short, so unsupported is the tradition that many have supposed an elder Philo as the author. That the second and third chapters allude to Christ is a groundless hypothesis. The 'just man' is called 'the son of God', Jehovah, [Greek: pais Kyrion];—but Christ's specific title which was deemed blasphemous by the Jews, was 'Ben Elohim', [Greek: uhios tou Theou];—and the fancy that Philo was a Christian in heart, but dared not openly profess himself such, is too absurd. Why no traces in his latest work, or those of his middle age? Why not the least variation in his religious or philosophical creeds in his latter works, written long after the resurrection, from those composed by him before, or a few years after, Christ's birth? Some of Philo's earlier works must have been written when our Lord was in his infancy, or at least boyhood.

In short, just take all those passages of Philo which most closely resemble others in the Wisdom of Solomon, and contain the same or nearly the same thoughts, and write them in opposite columns, and no doubt will remain that Philo was not the composer of the Book of Wisdom. Philo subtle, and with long involved periods knit together by logical connectives: the Book of Wisdom sententious, full of parallelisms, assertory and Hebraistic throughout. It was either composed by a man who tried to Hebraize the Greek, or, if a translator, by one who tried to Greecise the Hebraisms of his original—not to disguise or hide them—but only so as to prevent them from repelling or misleading the Greek reader. The different use of the Greek particles in the Wisdom of Solomon, and in the works of Philo, is sufficient to confute the hypothesis of Philo being the author. As little could it have been written by a Christian. For it could not have been a Christian of Palestine, from the overflowing Alexandrine Platonism;—nor a Christian at all; for it contradicts the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and in no wise connects any redemptory or sacrificial virtue with the death of his 'just man';—denies original sin in the Christian sense, and explains the vice and virtue of mankind by the actions of the souls of men in a state of pre-existence. No signs or miracles are referred to in the account of 'the just man'; and that it was intended as a generalization is evident from the change of the singular into the plural number in the third chapter.

The result is, in my judgment, that this Book was composed by an unknown Jew of Alexandria, either sometime before, or at the same time with, Christ. I do not think St. Paul's parallel passages amount to any proof of quotation or allusion;—they contain the common doctrine of the spiritualized Judaism in the Cabala;—and yet the work could scarcely have been written long before Christ, or it would certainly have been quoted or mentioned by Philo, and most probably by Josephus. And this, too, is an answer to the splendid and well-supported hypothesis of its being a translation from a Chaldaic original, composed by Jerubbabel. The variations of the Syriac translation,—which are so easily explained by translating the passage into the Chaldaic, when the cause of the mistake in the Greek or of the variation in the Syriac, is seen at once,—are certainly startling; but they are too free; and how could the Fathers, Jerome for example, remain ignorant of the existence of this Chaldaic original? My own opinion is, as I said before, that the Book was written in Greek by an Alexandrian Jew, who had formed his style on that of the LXX., and was led still further to an imitation of the Old Testament manner by the nature of his fiction, and as a dramatic propriety, and yet deviated from it partly on account of the very remoteness of his Platonic conceptions from the simplicity and poverty of the Hebrew; and partly because of the wordy rhetoric epidemic in Alexandria: and that it was written before the death, if not the birth, of Christ, I am induced to believe, because I do not think it probable that a book composed by a Jew, who had confessed Christ after the resurrection, would so soon have been received by the Christians, and so early placed in the very next rank to works of full inspiration.

Taken, therefore, as a work 'ante', or at least 'extra, Christum', it is most valuable as ascertaining the opinions of the learned Jews on many subjects, and the general belief concerning immortality, and a day of judgment. On this ground Whitaker might have erected a most formidable battery, that would have played on the very camp and battle-array of the Socinians, that is, of those who consider Christ only as a teacher of important truths.

In referring to the Cabala, I am not ignorant of the date of the oldest Rabbinical writings which contain or refer to this philosophy, but I coincide with Eichorn, and very many before Eichorn, that the foundations of the Cabala were laid and well known long before Christ, though not all the fanciful superstructure. I am persuaded that new light might be thrown on the Apocalypse by a careful study of the Book Sohar, and of whatever else there may be of that kind. The introduction (i. 4,) is clearly Cabala:—the [Greek: ho on, kai ho aen, kai ho erchomenos]= 3, and the 'seven spirits' = 10 'Sephiroth', constituting together the 'Adam Kadmon', the second Adam of St. Paul, the incarnate one in the Messiah.

Were it not for the silence of Philo and Josephus, which I am unable to explain if the Wisdom of Solomon was written so long before Christ, I might perhaps incline to believe it composed shortly after, if not during, the persecution of the Jews in Egypt under Ptolemy Philopator. This hypothesis would give a particular point to the bitter exposure of idolatry, to the comparison between the sufferings of the Jews, and those of idolatrous nations, to the long rehearsal and rhetorical declaration of the plagues of Egypt, and to the reward of 'the just man' after a death of martyrdom; and would besides help to explain the putting together of the first ten chapters, and the fragment contained in the remaining chapters. They were works written at the same time, and by the same author: nay, I do not think it absurd to suppose, that the chapters after the tenth were annexed by the writer himself, as a long explanatory appendix; or, possibly, if they were once a separate work, these nine concluding chapters were parts of a book composed during the persecution in Egypt, the introduction and termination of which, being personal and of local application, were afterwards omitted or expunged in order not to give offence to the other Egyptians,—perhaps, to spare the shame of such Jews as had apostatized through fear, and in general not to revive heart-burnings. In modern language I should call these chapters in their present state a Note on c. x. 15-19.

On a reperusal of this Book, I rather believe that these latter chapters never formed part of any other work, but were composed as a sort of long explanatory Postscript, with particular bearing on certain existing circumstances, to which this part of the Jewish history was especially applicable. Nay, I begin to find the silence of Philo and Josephus less inexplicable, and to imagine that I discover the solution of this problem in the very title of the Book. No one expects to find any but works of authenticity enumerated in these writers; but to this a work, calling itself the Wisdom of Solomon, both being a fiction and never meant to pass for anything else, could make no pretensions. To have approximated it to the Holy Books of the nation would have injured the dignity of the Jewish Canon, and brought suspicion on the genuine works of Solomon, while it would have exposed to a charge of forgery a composition which was in itself only an innocent dramatic monologue. N. B. This hypothesis possesses all the advantages, and involves none of the absurdity of that which would attribute the 'Ecclesiasticus' to the infamous Jason, the High Priest. More than one commentator, I find, has suspected that the Wisdom of Solomon and the second book of Maccabees were by the same author. I think this nothing.

Ib. p. 36.

Philo throws out a number of declarations, that shew his own and the Jewish belief in a secondary sort of God, a God subordinate in origin to the Father of all, yet most intimately united with him, and sharing his most unquestionable honours.

The belief of the Alexandrian Jews who had acquired Greek philosophy, no doubt;—but of the Palestine Jews?

Ib. 2. p. 48.

St. John also is witnessed by a heathen (Amelius,) and by one who put him down for a barbarian, to have represented the Logos as "the Maker of all things," as "with 'God'," and as "God." And St. John is attested to have declared this, "not even as shaded over, but on the contrary as placed in full view."

Stranger still. Whitaker could scarcely have read the Greek. Amelius says, that these truths, if stripped of their allegorical dress, ([Greek: metapephrasmena ek taes tou Barbarou theologias]) would be plain;—that is, that John in an allegory, as of one particular man, had shadowed out the creation of all things by the Logos, and the after union of the Logos with human nature,—that is, with all men. That this is his meaning, consult Plotinus.

Ib. 9. p. 107.

"Seest thou not," adds Philo, in the same spirit of subtilizing being into power, and dividing the Logos into two.

Who that had even rested but in the porch of the Alexandrian philosophy, would not rather say, 'of substantiating powers and attributes into being?' What is the whole system from Philo to Plotinus, and thence to Proclus inclusively, but one fanciful process of hypostasizing logical conceptions and generic terms? In Proclus it is Logolatry run mad.

Chap. III. 1. p. 131-2.

Such would be the evidence for that divinity, to accompany the Book of Wisdom, if we considered it to be as old as Solomon, or only as the Son of Sirach. But I consider it to be much later than either, and actually a work of Philo's. * * The language is very similar to Philo's; flowing, lively and happy.

How is it possible to have read the short Hebraistic sentences of the Book of Wisdom, and the long involved periods that characterize the style of all Philo's known writings, and yet attribute both to one writer? But indeed I know no instance of assertions made so audaciously, or of passages misrepresented and even mistranslated so grossly, as in this work of Whitaker. His system is absolute naked Tritheism.

Ib.

The righteous man is shadowed out by the author with a plain reference to our Saviour himself. "'Let us lie in wait for the righteous'," &c.

How then could Philo have remained a Jew?

Ib. 2. p. 195.

In all effects that are voluntary, the cause must be prior to the effect, as the father is to the son in human generation. But in all that are necessary, the effect must be coeval with the cause; as the stream is with the fountain, and light with the sun. Had the sun been eternal in its duration, light would have been co-eternal with it.