The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 15

He takes the name of the son of a woman, and 'wanes' the miraculous name of the son of a virgin.--Christ 'waned' the glorious name of Son of G.o.d, and the miraculous name of Son of a virgin too; which is not omitted to draw into doubt the perpetual virginity of the blessed virgin, the mother of Christ, &c.

Very ingenious; but likewise very presumptuous, this arbitrary attribution of St. Paul's silence, and presumable ignorance of the virginity of Mary, to Christ's own determination to have the fact pa.s.sed over.

N.B. Is 'wane' a misprint for 'wave' or 'waive?' It occurs so often, as to render its being an 'erratum' improbable; yet I do not remember to have met elsewhere 'wane' used for 'decline' as a verb active.

Ib. p. 23. A.

If there were reason for it, it were no miracle.

The announcement of the first comet, that had ever been observed, might excite doubt in the mind of an astronomer, to whom, from the place where he lived, it had not been visible. But his reason could have been no objection to it. Had G.o.d pleased, all women might have conceived, [Greek: aneu tou andrs], as many of the 'polypi' and 'planariae' do. Not on any such ground do I suspend myself on this as an article of faith; but because I doubt the evidence.

Ib. p. 25. A--E.

Though we may think thus in the law of reason, yet, &c.

It is, and has been, a misfortune, a grievous and manifold loss and hindrance for the interests of moral and spiritual truth, that even our best and most vigorous theologians and philosophers of the age from Edward VI. to James II. so generally confound the terms, and so too often confound the subjects themselves, reason and understanding; yet the diversity, the difference in kind, was known to, and clearly admitted by, many of them,--by Hooker for instance, and it is implied in the whole of Bacon's 'Novum Organum'. Instead of the 'law of reason,'

Donne meant, and ought to have said, 'judging according to the ordinary presumptions of the understanding,' that is, the faculty which, generalizing particular experiences, judges of the future by a.n.a.logy to the past.

Taking the words, however, in their vulgar sense, I most deliberately protest against all the paragraphs in this page, from A to E, and should cite them, with a host of others, as sad effects of the confusion of the reason and the understanding, and of the consequent abdication of the former, instead of the bounden submission of the latter to a higher light. Faith itself is but an act of the will, a.s.senting to the reason on its own evidence without, and even against, the understanding. This indeed is, I fully agree, to be brought into captivity to the faith. [5]

Ib. p. 26. A. B.

And therefore to be 'under the Law,' signifies here thus much; to be a debtor to the law of nature, to have a testimony in our hearts and consciences, that there lies a law upon us, which we have no power in ourselves to perform, &c.

This exposition of the term 'law' in the epistles of St. Paul is most just and important. The whole should be adopted among the notes to the epistle to the Romans, in every Bible printed with notes.

Ib. p. 27. A.

And this was his first work, 'to redeem,' to vindicate them from the usurper, to deliver them from the intruder, to emanc.i.p.ate them from the tyrant, to cancel the covenant between h.e.l.l and them, and restore them so far to their liberty, as that they might come to their first master, if they would; this was 'redeeming.'

There is an absurdity in the notion of a finite divided from, and superaddible to, the infinite,--of a particular 'quantum' of power separated from, not included in, omnipotence, or all-power. But, alas!

we too generally use the terms that are meant to express the absolute, as mere comparatives taken superlatively. In one thing only are we permitted and bound to a.s.sert a diversity, namely, in G.o.d and 'Hades', the good and the evil will. This awful mystery, this truth, at once certain and incomprehensible, is at the bottom of all religion; and to exhibit this truth free from the dark phantom of the Manicheans, or the two co-eternal and co-ordinate principles of good and evil, is the glory of the Christian religion.

But this mysterious dividuity of the good and the evil will, the will of the spirit and the will of the flesh, must not be carried beyond the terms 'good' and 'evil.' There can be but one good will--the spirit in all;--and even so, all evil wills are one evil will, the devil or evil spirit. But then the One exists for us as finite intelligences, necessarily in a two-fold relation, universal and particular. The same Spirit within us pleads to the Spirit as without us; and in like manner is every evil mind in communion with the evil spirit. But, O comfort!

the good alone is the actual, the evil essentially potential. Hence the devil is most appropriately named the 'tempter,' and the evil hath its essence in the will: it cannot pa.s.s out of it. Deeds are called evil in reference to the individual will expressed in them; but in the great scheme of Providence they are, only as far as they are good, coerced under the conditions of all true being; and the devil is the drudge of the All-good.

Serm. IV. Luke ii. 29, 30. p. 29.

Ib. p. 30. B.

We shall consider that that preparation, and disposition, and acquiescence, which Simeon had in his epiphany, in his visible seeing of Christ then, is offered to us in this epiphany, in this manifestation and application of Christ in the sacrament; and that therefore every penitent, and devout, and reverent, and worthy receiver hath had in that holy action his 'now'; there are all things accomplished to him; and his 'for, for his eyes have seen his salvation'; and so may be content, nay glad, 'to depart in peace'.

O! would that Donne, or rather that Luther before him, had carried out this just conception to its legitimate consequences;--that as the sacrament of the Eucharist is the epiphany for as many as receive it in faith, so the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ himself in the flesh, were the epiphanies, the sacramental acts and 'phaenomena'

of the 'Deus patiens', the visible words of the invisible Word that was in the beginning, symbols in time and historic fact of the redemptive functions, pa.s.sions, and procedures of the Lamb crucified from the foundation of the world;--the incarnation, cross, and pa.s.sion,--in short, the whole life of Christ in the flesh, dwelling a man among men, being essential and substantive parts of the process, the total of which they represented; and on this account proper symbols of the acts and pa.s.sions of the Christ dwelling in man, as the Spirit of truth, and for as many as in faith have received him, in Seth and Abraham no less effectually than in John and Paul! For this is the true definition of a symbol, as distinguished from the thing, on the one hand, and from a mere metaphor, or conventional exponent of a thing, on the other. Had Luther mastered this great idea, this master-truth, he would never have entangled himself in that most mischievous Sacramentary controversy, or had to seek a murky hiding-hole in the figment of Consubstantiation.

Ib. B. C.

In the first part, then ... More he asks not, less he takes not for any man, upon any pretence of any unconditional decree.

A beautiful paragraph, well worth extracting, aye, and re-preaching.

Ib. p. 34. E.

When thou comest to this seal of thy peace, the sacrament, pray that G.o.d will give thee that light that may direct and establish thee in necessary and fundamental things; that is, the light of faith to see that the Body and Blood of Christ is applied to thee in that action; but for the manner, how the Body and Blood of Christ is there, wait his leisure, if he have not yet manifested that to thee: grieve not at that, wonder not at that, press not for that; for he hath not manifested that, not the way, not the manner of his presence in the Sacrament to the Church.

O! I have ever felt, and for many years thought that this 'rem credimus, modum nescimus,' is but a poor evasion. It seems to me an attempt so to admit an irrational proposition as to have the credit of denying it, or to separate an irrational proposition from its irrationality. I admit 2 + 2 = 5; how I do not pretend to know, but in some way not in contradiction to the multiplication table. To spiritual operations the very term 'mode' is perhaps inapplicable, for these are immediate. To the linking of this with that, of A. with Z. by 'intermedia,' the term 'mode,'--the question 'how?' is properly applied. The a.s.similation of the spirit of a man to the Son of G.o.d, to G.o.d as the Divine Humanity,--this spiritual transubstantiation, like every other process of operative grace, is necessarily modeless. The whole question is concerning the trans.m.u.tation of the sensible elements. Deny this, and to what does the 'modum nescimus' refer? We cannot ask how that is done, which we declare not done at all. Admit this trans.m.u.tation, and you necessarily admit by implication the Romish dogma, of the separation of a sensible thing from the sensible accidents which const.i.tute all we ever meant by the thing. To rationalize this figment of his church, Bossuet has recourse to Spinosism, and dares make G.o.d the substance and sole 'ens reale' of all body, and by this very 'hypothesis' baffles his own end, and does away all miracle in the particular instance.

Ib. p. 35. B.

When I pray in my chamber, I build a temple there that hour; and that minute, when I cast out a prayer in the street, I build a temple there; and when my soul prays without any voice, my very body is then a temple.

Good; but it would be better to regard solitary, family, and templar devotion as distinctions in sort, rather than differences in degree. All three are necessary.

Ib. E.

And that more fearful occasion of coming, when they came only to elude the law, and proceeding in their treacherous and traitorous religion in their heart, and yet communicating with us, draw G.o.d himself into their conspiracies; and to mock us, make a mock of G.o.d, and his religion too.

What, then, was their guilt, who by terror and legal penalties tempted their fellow Christians to this treacherous mockery? Donne should have asked himself that question.

Serm. V. Exod. iv. 13. p. 39.

Ib. p. 39. C. D.

It hath been doubted, and disputed, and denied too, that this text, 'O my Lord, send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send', hath any relation to the sending of the Messiah, to the coming of Christ, to Christmas day; yet we forbear not to wait upon the ancient Fathers, and as they said, to say, that Moses 'at last' determines all in this, 'O my Lord', &c. It is a work, next to the great work of the redemption of the whole world, to redeem Israel out of Egypt; and therefore do both works at once, put both into one hand, and 'mitte quem missurus es, Send him whom I know thou wilt send'; him, whom, pursuing thine own decree, 'thou shouldest send'; send Christ, send him now, to redeem Israel from Egypt.

This is one of the happier accommodations of the 'gnosis', that is, the science of detecting the mysteries of faith in the simplest texts of the Old Testament history, to the contempt or neglect of the literal and contextual sense. It was, I conceive, in part at least, this 'gnosis', and not knowledge, as our translation has it, that St.

Paul warns against, and most wisely, as puffing up, inflating the heart with self-conceit, and the head with idle fancies.

Ib. E.

But as a thoughtful man, a pensive, a considerative man, that stands still for a while with his eyes fixed upon the ground before his feet, when he casts up his head, hath presently, instantly the sun or the heavens for his object; he sees not a tree, nor a house, nor a steeple by the way, but as soon as his eye is departed from the earth where it was long fixed, the next thing he sees is the sun or the heavens;--so when Moses had fixed himself long upon the consideration of his own insufficiency for this service, when he took his eye from that low piece of ground, himself, considered as he was then, he fell upon no tree, no house, no steeple, no such consideration as this--G.o.d may endow me, improve me, exalt me, enable me, qualify me with faculties fit for this service, but his first object was that which presented an infallibility with it, Christ Jesus himself, the Messias himself, &c.

Beautifully imagined, and happily applied.

Ib. p. 40. B.