to you by some indelible mark, with which you had been previously acquainted,—­could you withstand this evidence?” What could a judicious man reply but—­“When such an event takes place, I will tell you; but what has this to do with the reasons for our belief in the truth of the written records of the Old and New Testament?  Why do you fly off from the facts to a gigantic fiction,—­when the possibility of the ‘If’ with respect to a much less startling narration is the point in dispute between us?”

Such and so peculiar, and to an honest mind so unmistakeable, is the character of veracity and simplicity on the very countenance, as it were, of the Gospel, that every remove of the inquirer’s attention from the facts themselves is a remove of his conversion.  It is your business to keep him from wandering, not to set him the example.

Never, surely, was there a more unequal writer than Skelton;—­in the discourses on the Trinity, the compeer of Bull and Waterland; and yet the writer of these pages, 500-501!  Natural magic! a stroke of art! for example, converting the Nile into blood!  And then his definition of a miracle.  Suspension of the laws of nature! suspension—­laws—­nature!  Bless me! a chapter would be required for the explanation of each several word of this definition, and little less than omniscience for its application in any one instance.  An effect presented to the senses without any adequate antecedent, ‘ejusdem generis’, is a miracle in the philosophic sense.  Thus:  the corporeal ponderable hand and arm raised with no other known causative antecedent, but a thought, a pure act of an immaterial essentially invisible imponderable will, is a miracle for a reflecting mind.  Add the words, ‘praeter experientiam’:  and we have the definition of a miracle in the popular, practical, and appropriated sense.

Vol.  III.

That all our thoughts and views respecting our Faith should be consistent with each other, and with the attributes of God, is most highly desirable:  but when the great diversities of men’s understandings, and the unavoidable influence of circumstances on the mind, are considered, we may hope from the Divine mercy, that the agreement in the result will suffice; and that he who sincerely and efficiently believes that Christ left the glory which he had with the Father before all worlds, to become man and die for our salvation,—­that by him we may, and by him alone we can, be saved,—­will be held a true believer,—­whether he interprets the words ‘sacrifice,’ ‘purchase,’ ‘bargain,’ ‘satisfaction,’ of the creditor by full payment of the ‘debt,’ and the like as proper and literal expressions of the redeeming act and the cause of our salvation, as Skelton seems to have done;—­or (as I do) as figurative language truly designating the effects and consequences of this adorable act and process.

Ib. p. 393.