He thinks it possible; too, that Christ, though nothing more than an ordinary man, may really have ‘thought himself Divine,’ without being liable to the charge of a visionary self-idolatry or of blasphemy,—­as supposed by every body, Trinitarian or Unitarian, except Mr. Foxton.  He accounts for it by the ’wild sublimity of human emotion, when the rapt spirit first feels the throbbings of the divine afflatus,’ &c. &c.  A singular afflatus which teaches a man to usurp the name and prerogatives of Deity, and a strange ‘inspiration’ which inspires him with so profound an ignorance of his own nature!  This interpretation, we believe, is peculiarly Mr. Foxton’s owe.

The way in which he disposes of the miracles, is essentially that of a vulgar, undiscriminating, unphilosophic mind.  There have been, he tells us in effect, so many false miracles, superstitious stories of witches, conjurors, ghosts, hobgoblins, of cures by royal touch, and the like,—­and therefore the Scripture miracles are false!  Why, who denies that there have been plenty of false miracles?  And there have been as many false religions.  Is there, therefore, none true?  The proper business in every such case is to examine fairly the evidence, and not to generalise after this absurd fashion.  Otherwise we shall never believe any thing; for there is hardly one truth that has not its half score of audacious counterfeits.

Still he is amusingly perplexed, like all the rest of the infidel world, how to get rid of the miracles—­whether on the principle of fraud, or fiction, or illusion.  He thinks there would be ’a great accession to the ranks of reason and common sense by disproving the reality of the miracles, without damaging the veracity or honestly of the simple, earnest, and enthusiastic writers by whom they are recorded;’ and complains of the coarse and undiscriminating criticism of most of the French and English Deists, who explain the miracles ’on the supposition of the grossest fraud acting on the grossest credulity.’  But he soon finds that the materials for such a compromise are utterly intractable.  He thinks that the German Rationalists have depended too much on some ’single hypothesis, which often proves to be insufficient to meet the great variety of conditions and circumstances with which the miracles have been handed down to us.’  Very true; but what remedy?  ’We find one German writer endeavouring to explain away the miracles on the mystical (mythical) theory; and another riding into the arena of controversy on the miserable hobby-horse of “clairvoyance” or “mesmerism”; each of these, and a host of others of the same class, rejecting whatever light is thrown on the question by all the theories together.’  He therefore proposes, with great and gratuitous liberality, to heap all these theories together, and to take them as they are wanted; not withholding any of the wonders of modern science—­even, as would seem, the possible knowledge of ‘chloroform’ (pp. 104.. 86, 87.)—­from the propagators of Christianity!