[Footnote 1:  The complete Works of the late Rev. Philip Skelton, Rector of Fintona. 6. vols. 8vo.  London, 1824.  ‘Ed.’]

[Footnote 2:  See South’s Works, vol. iii. p. 500.  Clarendon edit. 1823 —­Ed.]

[Footnote 3:  But it will be proper to observe, that it strikes directly at the very root of Revelation, which cannot possibly give any other evidence of itself, as the dictate of God, but what must be drawn from miracles, wrought to prove the divine mission of those who publish it to the world.]

[Footnote 4:  The Editor is not aware of the existence of the Essay here mentioned.  But see for the distinction of the ‘Ecclesia’ and ‘Enclesia’, the Church and State, 3rd edit.—­Ed.]

[Footnote 5:  On Predestination, as far as p. 445.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON ANDREW FULLER’S CALVINISTIC AND SOCINIAN SYSTEMS EXAMINED AND COMPARED. [1] 1807.

Letter III. p. 38.

They (the Jews) did not deny that to be God’s own Son was to be equal with the Father, nor did they allege that such an equality would destroy the divine unity:  a thought of this kind never seems to have occurred to their minds.

In so truly excellent a book as this is, I regret that this position should rest on an assertion.  The equality of Christ would not, indeed, destroy the unity of God the Father, considered as one Person:  but, unless we presume the Jews in question acquainted with the great truth of the Tri-unity, we must admit that it would be considered as implying Ditheism.  Now that some among the Jews had made very near approaches, though blended with errors, to the doctrine taught in John, c. i., we can prove from the writings of Philo;—­and the Socinians can never prove that these Jews did not know at least of the doctrine of their schools concerning the only-begotten Word—­[Greek:  Logos monogenaes],—­not as an attribute, much less as an abstraction or personification—­but as a distinct ‘Hypostasis’ [Greek:  symphysikae]:-and hence it might be shown that their offence was that the carpenter’s son, the Galilean, should call himself the [Greek:  Theos phaneros].  This might have been rendered more than probable by the concluding sentence of Christ’s answer to the disciples of John;—­’and blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me’ (Luke vii. 23.); which appears to have no adequate or even tolerable meaning, unless in reference to the passage in Isaiah, (lxi. 1, 2.) prophesying that Jehovah himself would come among them, and do the things which our Saviour states himself to have done.  Thus, too, I regret that the answer of our Lord, (John x. 34-36.) being one of the imagined strong-holds of the Socinians, should not have been more fully cleared up.  I doubt not that Fuller’s is a true interpretation; and that no other is consistent with our Lord’s various other declarations.  But the words in and by themselves admit a more plausible misinterpretation than is elsewhere the case of Socinian displanations.  In short, I think both passages would have been better deferred to a further part of the work.