The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 5

But now that we may lift up our eyes (as it were) from the footstool to the throne of G.o.d, and leaving these natural, consider a little the state of heavenly and divine, creatures: touching angels which are spirits immaterial and intellectual, &c.

All this disquisition on the angels confirms my remark that our admirable Hooker was a giant of the race Aristotle 'versus' Plato.

Hooker was truly judicious,--the consummate 'synthesis' of understanding and sense. An ample and most ordonnant conceptionist, to the tranquil empyrean of ideas he had not ascended. Of the pa.s.sages cited from Scripture how few would bear a strict scrutiny; being either,

1. divine appearances, Jehovah in human form; or 2. the imagery of visions and all symbolic; or 3. names of honor given to prophets, apostles, or bishops; or lastly, mere accommodations to popular notions!

Ib. 3. p. 267.

Since their fall, their practices have been the clean contrary unto those before mentioned. For being dispersed, some in the air, some on the earth, some in the water, some among the minerals, dens, and caves, that are under the earth; they have, by all means laboured to effect a universal rebellion against the laws, and as far as in them lieth, utter destruction of the works of G.o.d.

Childish; but the childishness of the age, without which neither Hooker nor Luther could have acted on their contemporaries with the intense and beneficent energy with which, they (G.o.d be praised!) did act.

Ib. p. 268.

Thus much therefore may suffice for angels, the next unto whom in degree are men.

St. Augustine well remarks that only three distinct 'genera' of living beings are conceivable:

1. the infinite rational: 2. the finite rational: 3. the finite irrational:

that is, G.o.d, man, brute animal. 'Ergo', angels can only be with wings on their shoulders. Were our bodies transparent to our souls, we should be angels.

Ib. c. x. 4. p. 303.

It is no improbable opinion therefore which the arch-philosopher was of.

There are, and can be, only two schools of philosophy, differing in kind and in source. Differences in degree and in accident, there may be many; but these const.i.tute schools kept by different teachers with different degrees of genius, talent, and learning;--auditories of philosophizers, not different philosophies. Schools of psilology (the love of empty noise) and misosophy are here out of the question. Schools of real philosophy there are but two,--best named by the arch-philosopher of each, namely, Plato and Aristotle. Every man capable of philosophy at all (and there are not many such) is a born Platonist or a born Aristotelian. [9] Hooker, as may be discerned from the epithet of arch-philosopher applied to the Stagyrite, 'sensu monarchico', was of the latter family,--a comprehensive, vigorous, discreet, and discretive conceptualist,--but not an ideist.

Ib. 8. p. 308.

Of this point therefore we are to note, that sith men naturally have no free and perfect power to command whole politic mult.i.tudes of men, therefore utterly without our consent, we could in such sort be at no man's commandment living. And to be commanded we do consent, when that society whereof we are part hath at any time before consented, without revoking the same after by the like universal agreement. Wherefore as any man's deed past is good as long as himself continueth; so the act of a public society of men done five hundred years sithence standeth as theirs who presently are of the same societies, because corporations are immortal; we were then alive in our predecessors, and they in their successors do live still. Laws therefore human, of what kind soever, are available by consent.

No n.o.bler or clearer example than this could be given of what an idea is as contra-distinguished from a conception of the understanding, correspondent to some fact or facts, 'quorum notae communes concapiuntur',--the common characters of which are taken together under one distinct exponent, hence named a conception; and conceptions are internal subjective words. Reflect on an original social contract, as an event or historical fact; and its gross improbability, not to say impossibility, will stare you in the face. But an ever originating social contract as an idea, which exists and works continually and efficaciously in the moral being of every free citizen, though in the greater number unconsciously, or with a dim and confused consciousness,--what a power it is! [10] As the vital power compared with the mechanic; as a father compared with a moulder in wax or clay, such is the power of ideas compared with the influence of conceptions and notions.

Ib.15. p.316.

... I nothing doubt but that Christian men should much better frame themselves to those heavenly precepts, which our Lord and Saviour with so great instancy gave us concerning peace and unity, if we did all concur in desire to have the use of ancient Councils again renewed, rather than these proceedings continued, which either make all contentions endless, or bring them to one only determination, and that of all other the worst, which is by sword.

This is indeed a subject that deserves a serious consideration: and it may be said in favour of Hooker's proposal, namely, that the use of ancient Councils be renewed, that a deep and universal sense of the abuse of Councils progressively from the Nicene to that of Trent, and our knowledge of the causes, occasions, and mode of such abuse, are so far presumptive for its non-recurrency as to render it less probable that honest men will pervert them from ignorance, and more difficult for unprincipled men to do so designedly. Something too must be allowed for an honourable ambition on the part of the persons so a.s.sembled, to disappoint the general expectation, and win for themselves the unique t.i.tle of the honest Council. But still comes the argument, the blow of which I might more easily blunt than parry, that if Roman Catholic and Protestant, or even Protestant Episcopalian and Protestant Presbyterian divines were generally wise and charitable enough to form a Christian General Council, there would be no need of one.

N.B. The reasoning in this note, as far as it is in discouragement of a recurrence to general Councils, does not, 'me saltem judice', conclude against the suffering our Convocation to meet. The virtual abrogation of this branch of our const.i.tution I have long regarded as one of three or four Whig patriotisms, that have succeeded in de-anglicizing the mind of England.

Ib. c. xi. 4. p. 323.

So that nature even in this life doth plainly claim and call for a more divine perfection than either of these two that have been mentioned.

Whenever I meet with an ambiguous or multivocal word, without its meaning being shown and fixed, I stand on my guard against a sophism. I dislike this term, 'nature,' in this place. If it mean the 'light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world', it is an inapt term; for reason is supernatural. Now that reason in man must have been first actuated by a direct revelation from G.o.d, I have myself proved, and do not therefore deny that faith as the means of salvation was first made known by revelation; but that reason is incapable of seeing into the fitness and superiority of these means, or that it is a mystery in any other sense than as all spiritual truths are mysterious, I do deny and deem it both a false and a dangerous doctrine.

15 Sept. 1826.

Ib. 6. p.327.

Concerning that faith, hope and charity, without which there can be no salvation; was there ever any mention made saving only in that law which G.o.d himself hath from heaven revealed? There is not in the world a syllable muttered with certain truth concerning any of these three, more than hath, been supernaturally received from the mouth of the eternal G.o.d.

That reason could have discovered these divine truths is one thing; that when discovered by revelation, it is capable of apprehending the beauty and excellence of the things revealed is another. I may believe the latter, while I utterly reject the former. That all these cognitions, together with the fealty or faithfulness in the will whereby the mind of the flesh is brought under captivity to the mind of the spirit (the sensous understanding to the reason) are supernatural, I not only freely grant, but fervently contend. But why the very perfection of reason, namely, those ideas or truth-powers, in which both the spiritual light and the spiritual life are co-inherent and one, should be called super-rational, I do not see. For reason is practical as well as theoretical; or even though I should exclude the practical reason, and confine the term reason to the highest intellective power,--still I should think it more correct to describe the mysteries of faith as 'plusquam rationalia' than super-rational. But the a.s.sertions that provoke the remark arose for the greater part, and still arise, out of the confounding of the reason with the understanding. In Hooker, and the great divines of his age, it was merely an occasional carelessness in the use of the terms that reason is ever put where they meant the understanding; for, from other parts of their writings, it is evident that they knew and a.s.serted the distinction, nay, the diversity of the things themselves; to wit, that there was in man another and higher light than that of the faculty judging according to sense, that is our understandings. But, alas! since the Revolution, it has ceased to be a mere error of language, and in too many it now amounts to a denial of reason!

B. ii. c. v.3. p.379.

To urge any thing as part of that supernatural and celestially revealed truth which G.o.d hath taught, and not to shew it in Scripture; this did the ancient Fathers evermore think unlawful, impious, execrable.

Even this must be received 'c.u.m grano salis.' To be sure, with the licences of interpretation, which the Fathers of the first three or four centuries allowed themselves, and with the 'arcana' of evolution by word, letter, allegory, yea, punning, which they applied to detached sentences or single phrases of Holy Writ, it would not be easy to imagine a position which they could not 'shew in Scripture.' Let this be elucidated by the texts even now cited by the Romish priests for the truth of purgatory, indulgence, image-worship, invocation of dead men, and the like. The a.s.sertion therefore must be thus qualified. The ancient Fathers anathematized any doctrine not consentaneous with Scripture and deducible from it, either 'pari ratione' or by consequence; as when Scripture clearly commands an end, but leaves the means to be determined according to the circ.u.mstances, as for example, the frequent a.s.sembly of Christians. The appointment of a Sunday or Lord's day is evidently the fittest and most effectual mean to this end; but yet it was not practicable, that is the mean did not exist till the Roman government became Christian. But as soon as this event took place, the duty of keeping the Sunday holy is truly, though implicitly, contained in the Apostolic text.

Ib. vi. 3. p. 392.

Again, with a negative argument, David is pressed concerning the purpose he had to build a temple unto the Lord: 'Thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not build me a house to dwelt in. Wheresoever I have walked with all Israel, spake I one word to any of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded to feed my people, saying, Why have ye not built me a house?'

The wisdom of the divine goodness both in the negative, the not having authorized any of the preceding Judges from Moses downwards to build a temple--and in the positive, in having commanded David to prepare for it, and Solomon to build it--I have not seen put in the full light in which it so well deserves to be. The former or negative, or the evils of a splendid temple-worship and its effects on the character of the priesthood,--evils, when not changed to good by becoming the antidote and preventive of far greater evils,--would require much thought both to set forth and to comprehend. But to give any reflecting reader a sense of the providential foresight evinced in the latter, and this foresight beyond the reach of any but the Omniscient, it will be only necessary to remind him of the separation of the ten tribes and the breaking up of the realm into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel in the very next reign. Without the continuity of succession provided for by this vast and splendid temple, built and arranged under the divine sanction attested by miracles--what criterion would there have existed for the purity of this law and worship? what security for the preservation and incorruption of the inspired writings?

Ib. vii. 3. p. 403.

That there is a city of Rome, that Pius Quintus and Gregory the Thirteenth, and others, have been Popes of Rome, I suppose we are certainly enough persuaded. The ground of our persuasion, who never saw the place nor persons before named, can be nothing but man's testimony. Will any man here notwithstanding allege those mentioned human infirmities as reasons why these things should be mistrusted or doubted of? Yea, that which is more, utterly to infringe the force and strength of man's testimony, were to shake the very fortress of G.o.d's truth.

In a note on a pa.s.sage in Skelton's 'Deism Revealed', [11] I have detected the subtle sophism that lurks in this argument, as applied by later divines in vindication of proof by testimony, in relation to the miracles of the Old and New Testament. As thus applied, it is a [Greek: metabasis eis allo genos], though so un.o.bvious, that a very acute and candid reasoner might use the argument without suspecting the paralogism. It is not testimony, as testimony, that necessitates us to conclude that there is such a city as Rome--but a reasoning, that forms a branch of mathematical science. So far is our conviction from being grounded on our confidence in human testimony that it proceeds on our knowledge of its fallible character, and therefore can find no sufficient reason for its coincidence on so vast a scale, but in the real existence of the object. That a thousand lies told by as many several and unconnected individuals should all be one and the same, is a possibility expressible only by a fraction that is already, to all intents and purposes, equal to nought.

B. iii. c. iii. 1. p. 447.

The mixture of those things by speech, which by nature are divided, is the mother of all error.

'The division in thought of those things which in nature are distinct, yet one, that is, distinguished without breach of unity, is the mother,'--so I should have framed the position. Will, reason, life,--ideas in relation to the mind, are instances; 'entiae indivise interdistinctae'; and the main arguments of the atheists, materialists, deniers of our Lord's divinity and the like, all rest on the a.s.serting of division as a necessary consequence of distinction.