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 pa.s.sages 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 a.s.serted 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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.ses 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 subst.i.tute 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 superst.i.tious 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, was ent.i.tled 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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]