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’.