[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