c.

I cannot but think that Waterland's defence of the Fathers in these
pages against Barbeyrac, is below his great powers and characteristic
vigour of judgment. It is enough that they, the Fathers of the first
three centuries, were the lights of their age, and worthy of all
reverence for their good gifts. But it appears to me impossible to deny
their credulity; their ignorance, with one or two exceptions, in the
interpretation of the Old Testament; or their hardihood in asserting the
truth of whatever they thought it for the interest of the Church, and
for the good of souls, to have believed as true. A whale swallowed
Jonah; but a believer in all the assertions and narrations of Tertullian
and Irenaeus would be more wonder-working than Jonah; for such a one must
have swallowed whales.

[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
Athana