CONTROVERSIAL AND PRACTICAL: BY THE LATE REV. PHILIP SKELTON, RECTOR OF FINTONA, &c. &c. TO WHICH IS PREFIXED, BURDY'S LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. EDITED BY THE REV. ROB LYNAM, A. M. ASSISTANT CHAPLAIN TO THE MAGDALEN HOSPITAL. HATCHARD AND SON, PICCADILLY; PARKER, OXFORD; DEIGHTON AND SONS, CAMBRIDGE; 1824. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE PRESENT EDITION. To those who admire sound argument and genuine piety, illustrated and enlivened by genius, we trust that we shall perform an acceptable service in presenting a new Edition of Skelton's Discourses, which, as their merit is rare, have lately become proportionably scarce. To make this more complete than former editions, a Life of the Author has been prefixed; and, doubtless, if any man is entitled to the tribute of Biography, Skelton possesses an undeniable claim. If our Author had not been distinguished for any intellectual superiority, if he had not appeared as the zealous and acute defender of religious truth, but had been satisfied with the glory of good actions, without aspiring to the reputation of an able writer; his life was a specimen of such extraordinary virtue, as should never be forgotten in a Christian community. To devote, as he did, his whole energy of body and mind to the laborious and unostentatious duties to be discharged in obscure parishes of a desolate country to divest himself of self-interest so entirely, as to consider his poor and ignorant parishioners as his |