For if
A. be right and requisite, B., which is incompatible with A., cannot be
rightly required. And this it was, that first led me to the distinction
between the 'Ecclesia' and an 'Enclesia', concerning which see my Essay
on Establishment and Dissent, in which I have met the objection to my
position, that Christian discipline is incompatible with a Church
established by law, from the fact of the discipline of the Church of
Scotland. [4] Who denies that it is in the power of a legislature to
punish certain offences by ignominy, and to make the clergy magistrates
in reference to these? The question is, whether it is wise or expedient,
which it may be, or rather may have been, in Scotland, and the contrary
in England? Wise or unwise, this is not discipline, not Christian
discipline, enforced only by spiritual motives, enacted by spiritual
authority, and submitted to for conscience' sake.
Ib. p. 446.
Be this as it may, the foreknowledge and the decree were both eternal.
Here now it is a clear point that the moral actions of all accountable
agents were, with certainty, fore-known, and their doom unalterably
fixed, long before any one of them existed.
Strange that so great a man as Skelton should first affirm eternity of
both, yet in the next sentence talk of "long before." These Reflections
[5] are excellent, but here Skelton offends against his own canons. I
should feel no reluctance, moral or speculative, in accepting the
apparent necessity of both propositions, as a sufficient reason for
believing both; and the transcendancy of the subject as a sufficient
solution of their apparent incompatibility.
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