The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 10

Ib. p.77.

So in the beginning, Nestorius did not err, touching the unity of Christ's person in the diversity of the natures of G.o.d and man; but only disliked that Mary should be called the mother of G.o.d: which form of speaking when some demonstrated to be very fitting and unavoidable, if Christ were G.o.d and man in the unity of the same person, he chose rather to deny the unity of Christ's person than to acknowledge his temerity and rashness in reproving that form of speech, which the use of the church had anciently received and allowed.

A false charge grounded on a misconception of the Syriac terms.

Nestorius was perfectly justifiable in his rejection of the epithet [Greek: theotokos], as applied to the mother of Jesus. The Church was even then only too ripe for the idolatrous 'hyper-dulia' of the Virgin. Not less weak is Field's defence of the propriety of the term.

Set aside all reference to this holy mystery, and let me ask, I trust without offence, whether by the same logic a mule's dam might not be called [Greek: hippotokos], because the horse and a.s.s were united in one and the same subject. The difference in the perfect G.o.d and perfect man does not remove the objection: for an epithet, which conceals half of a truth, the power and special concerningness of which, relatively to our redemption by Christ, depends on our knowledge of the whole, is a deceptive and a dangerously deceptive epithet.

Ib. c.20. p.110.

Thus, then, the Fathers did sometimes, when they had particular occasions to remember the Saints, and to speak of them, by way of 'apostrophe', turn themselves unto them, and use words of doubtful compellation, praying them, if they have any sense of these inferior things, to be remembrancers to G.o.d for them.

The distinct gradations of the process, by which commemoration and rhetorical apostrophes pa.s.sed finally into idolatry, supply an a.n.a.logy of mighty force against the heretical 'hypothesis 'of the modern Unitarians. Were it true, they would have been able to have traced the progress of the Christolatry from the lowest sort of 'Christodulia'

with the same historical distinctness against the universal Church, that the Protestants have that of hierolatry against the Romanists. The gentle and soft censures which our divines during the reign of the Stuarts pa.s.s on the Roman Saint worship, or hieroduly, as an inconvenient superst.i.tion, must needs have alarmed the faithful adherents to the Protestantism of Edward VI. and the surviving exiles of b.l.o.o.d.y Queen Mary's times, and their disciples.

Ib. p.111.

The miracles that G.o.d wrought in times past by them made many to attribute more to them than was fit, as if they had a generality of presence, knowledge, and working; but the wisest and best advised never durst attribute any such thing unto them.

To a truly pious mind awfully impressed with the surpa.s.sing excellency of G.o.d's ineffable love to fallen man, in the revelation of himself to the inner man through the reason and conscience by the spiritual light and substantiality--(for the conscience is to the spirit or reason what the understanding is to the sense, a substantiative power); this consequence of miracles is so fearful, that it cannot but redouble his zeal against that fashion of modern theologists which would convert miracles from a motive to attention and solicitous examination, and at best from a negative condition of revelation, into the positive foundation of Christian faith.

Ib. c.22. p.116.

But if this be as vile a slander as ever Satanist devised, the Lord reward them that have been the authors and advisers of it according to their works.

O no! no! this the good man did not utter from his heart, but from his pa.s.sion. A vile and wicked slander it was and is. O may G.o.d have turned the hearts of those who uttered it, or may it be among their unknown sins done in ignorance, for which the infinite merits of Christ may satisfy! I am most a.s.sured that if Dr. Field were now alive, or if any one had but said this to him, he would have replied--"I thank thee, brother, for thy Christian admonition. Add thy prayer, and pray G.o.d to forgive me my inconsiderate zeal!"

Ib. c. 23. p. 119.

For what rect.i.tude is due to the specifical act of hating G.o.d? or what rect.i.tude is it capable of?

Is this a possible act to any man understanding by the word G.o.d what we mean by G.o.d?

Ib. p. 129.

It is this complicated dispute, as to the origin and permission of evil, which supplies to atheism its most plausible, because its only moral, arguments; but more especially to that species of atheism which existed in Greece in the form of polytheism, admitting moral and intelligent shapers and governors of the world, but denying an intelligent ground, or self-conscious Creator of the universe; their G.o.ds being themselves the offspring of chaos and necessity, that is, of matter and its essential laws or properties.

The Leibnitzian distinction of the Eternal Reason, or nature of G.o.d, [Greek: t theion](the [Greek: nous ka anagkae] of Timaeus Locrus) from the will or personal attributes of G.o.d--([Greek: thelaema ka boulaesis--agathou patrs agathn boulaema])--planted the germ of the only possible solution, or rather perhaps, in words less exceptionable and more likely to be endured in the schools of modern theology, brought forward the truth involved in Behmen's too bold distinction of G.o.d and the ground of G.o.d;--who yet in this is to be excused, not only for his good aim and his ignorance of scholastic terms, but likewise because some of the Fathers expressed themselves no less crudely in the other extreme; though it is not improbable that the meaning was the same in both.

At least Behmen constantly makes self-existence a positive act, so as that by an eternal [Greek: perich_oraesis] or mysterious intercirculation G.o.d wills himself out of the 'ground' ([Greek: t theion--t hen ka pan],--'indifferentia absoluta realitatis infinitae et infinitae potentialitatis')--and again by his will, as G.o.d existing, gives being to the ground, [Greek: autogenaes--autophylaes--uhios heautou]. 'Solus Deus est;--itaque principium, qui ex seipso dedit sibi ipse principium. Deus ipse sui origo est, suaeque causa substantiae, id quod est, ex se et in se continens. Ex seipso procreatus ipse se fecit', &c., of Synesius, Jerome, Hilary, and Lactantius and others involve the same conception.

Ib. c. 27. p. 140.

The seventh is the heresy of Sabellius, which he saith was revived by Servetus. So it was indeed, that Servetus revived in our time the d.a.m.nable heresy of Sabellius, long since condemned in the first ages of the Church. But what is that to us? How little approbation he found amongst us, the just and honourable proceeding against him at Geneva will witness to all posterity.

Shocking as this act must and ought to be to all Christians at present; yet this pa.s.sage and a hundred still stronger from divines and Church letters contemporary with Calvin, prove Servetus' death not to be Calvin's guilt especially, but the common 'opprobrium' of all European Christendom,--of the Romanists whose laws the Senate of Geneva followed, and from fear of whose reproaches (as if Protestants favoured heresy) they executed them,--and of the Protestant churches who applauded the act and returned thanks to Calvin and the Senate for it. [7]

Ib. c. 30. p. 143.

The twelfth heresy imputed to us is the heresy of Jovinian, concerning whom we must observe, that Augustine ascribeth unto him two opinions which Hierome mentioneth not; who yet was not likely to spare him, if he might truly have been charged with them. The first, that Mary ceased to be a virgin when she had borne Christ; the second, that all sins are equal.

Neither this nor that is worthy the name of opinion; it is mere unscriptural, nay, anti-scriptural gossiping. Are we to blame, or not rather to praise, the anxiety manifested by the great divines of the church of England under the Stuarts not to remove further than necessary from the Romish doctrines? Yet one wishes a bolder method; for example, as to Mary's private history after the conception and birth of Christ, we neither know nor care about it.

Ib. c. 31. p. 146.

For the opinions wherewith Hierome chargeth him, this we briefly answer. First, if he absolutely denied that the Saints departed do pray for us, as it seemeth he did by Hierome's reprehension, we think he erred.

Yet not heretically; and if he meant only that we being wholly ignorant, whether they do or no, ought to act as if we knew they did not, he is perfectly right; for whatever ye do, do it in faith. As to the ubiquity of saints, it is Jerome who is the heretic, nay, idolater, if he reduced his opinion to practice. It perplexes me, that Field speaks so doubtingly on a matter so plain as the incommunicability of omnipresence.

Ib. c. 32. p. 147.

Touching the second objection, that Bucer and Calvin deny original sin, though not generally, as did Zuinglius, yet at least in the children of the faithful. If he had said that these men affirm the earth doth move, and the heavens stand still, he might have as soon justified it against them, as this he now saith.

Very noticeable. A similar pa.s.sage occurs even so late as in Sir Thomas Brown, just at the dawn of the Newtonian system, and after Kepler. What a lesson of diffidence! [8]

Ib. p. 148.

For we do not deny the distinction of venial and mortal sins; but do think, that some sins are rightly said to be mortal and some venial; not for that some are worthy of eternal punishment and therefore named mortal, others of temporal only, and therefore judged venial as the Papists imagine: but for that some exclude grace out of that man in which they are found and so leave him in a state wherein he hath nothing in himself that can or will procure him pardon: and other, which though in themselves considered, and never remitted, they be worthy of eternal punishment, yet do not so far prevail as to banish grace, the fountain of remission of all misdoings.

Would not the necessary consequence of this be, that there are no actions that can be p.r.o.nounced mortal sins by mortals; and that what we might fancy venial might in individual cases be mortal and 'vice versa'.

Ib.

First, because every offence against G.o.d may justly be punished by him in the strictness of his righteous judgments with eternal death, yea, with annihilation; which appeareth to be most true, for that there is no punishment so evil, and so much to be avoided, as the least sin that may be imagined. So that a man should rather choose eternal death, yea, utter annihilation, than commit the least offence in the world.

I admit this to be Scriptural; but what is wanted is, clearly to state the difference between eternal death and annihilation. For who would not prefer the latter, if the former mean everlasting misery?

Ib. c. 41. p. 62.

But he will say, Cyprian calleth the Roman Church the princ.i.p.al Church whence sacerdotal unity hath her spring; hereunto we answer, that the Roman Church, not in power of overruling all, but in order is the first and princ.i.p.al; and that therefore while she continueth to hold the truth, and encroacheth not upon the right of other Churches, she is to have the priority; but that in either of these cases she may be forsaken without breach of that unity, which is essentially required in the parts of the Church.

This is too large a concession. The real ground of the priority of the Roman see was that Rome, for the first three or perhaps four centuries, was the metropolis of the Christian world. Afterwards for the very same reason the Patriarch of New Rome or Constantinople claimed it; and never ceased to a.s.sert at least a co-equality. Had the Apostolic foundation been the cause, Jerusalem and Antioch must have had priority; not to add that the Roman Church was not founded by either Paul or Peter as is evident from the epistle to the Romans.

Append. B. III. p. 205.