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 Greek: 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:
  1. 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
see previous image
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.

return to footnote mark


Contents / Index



Notes on Skelton's Works1


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.