ounds
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 an