The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 18

The primitive Church appropriated the name to the third 'hypostasis' of the Trinity; hence 'Sancta Sophia' became the distinctive name of the Holy Ghost; and the temple at Constantinople, dedicated by Justinian to the Holy Ghost, is called the Church--alas! now the mosque--of Santa Sophia. Now this suggests, or rather implies, a far better and more precise definition of wisdom than Donne's. The distinctive t.i.tle of the Father, as the Supreme Will, is the Good; that of the only-begotten Word, as the Supreme Reason, ('Ens Realissimum', [Greek: Ho_O N], the Being) is the True; and the Spirit proceeding from the Good through the True is the Wisdom. Goodness in the form of truth is wisdom. Wisdom is the pure will, realizing itself intelligently, or the good manifesting itself as the truth, and realized in the act. Wisdom, life, love, beauty, the beauty of holiness, are all 'synonyma' of the Holy Spirit.

6, December, 1831.

Ib. p. 121. A.

The Arians' opinion, that G.o.d the Father only was invisible, but the Son 'and the Holy Ghost' might be seen.

Here we have an instance, one of many, of the inconveniences and contradictions that arise out of the a.s.sumed contrary essences of body and soul; both substances, and independent of each other, yet so absolutely diverse as that the one is to be defined by the negation of the other.

Serm. XIII. Job xvi. 17, 18, 19. p. 127.

Ib. p. 129. A. B. C.

Ib. pp. 134. 135.

Truly excellent.

Serm. XV. 1 Cor. xv. 26. p. 144.

Ib. D.

Who, then, is this enemy? an enemy that may thus far think himself equal to G.o.d, that as no man ever saw G.o.d, and lived; so no man ever saw this enemy, and lived; for it is death.

This borders rather too closely on the Irish Franciscan's conclusion to his sermon of thanksgiving: "Above all, brethren, let us thankfully laud and extol G.o.d's transcendant mercy in putting death at the end of life, and thereby giving us all time for repentance!"

Dr. Donne was an eminently witty man in a very witty age; but to the honour of his judgment let it be said, that though his great wit is evinced in numberless pa.s.sages, in a few only is it shown off. This paragraph is one of those rare exceptions.

N. B. Nothing in Scripture, nothing in reason, commands or authorizes us to a.s.sume or suppose any bodiless creature. It is the incommunicable attribute of G.o.d. But all bodies are not flesh, nor need we suppose that all bodies are corruptible. 'There are bodies celestial'. In the three following paragraphs of this sermon, we trace wild fantastic positions grounded on the arbitrary notion of man as a mixture of heterogeneous components, which Des Cartes shortly afterwards carried into its extremes. On this doctrine the man is a mere phenomenal result, a sort of brandy-sop or toddy-punch. It is a doctrine unsanctioned by, and indeed inconsistent with, the Scriptures. It is not true that body 'plus' soul makes man. Man is not the 'syntheton' or composition of body and soul, as the two component units. No; man is the unit, the 'prothesis', and body and soul are the two poles, the positive and negative, the 'thesis' and 'ant.i.thesis' of the man; even as attraction and repulsion are the two poles in and by which one and the same magnet manifests itself.

Ib. p. 146. B.

For it is not so great a depopulation to translate a city from merchants to husbandmen, from shops to ploughs, as it is from many husbandmen to one shepherd; and yet that hath been often done.

For example, in the Highlands of Scotland in our own day.

Ib. p. 148. A.

The ashes of an oak in the chimney are no epitaph of that oak, to tell me how high or how large that was. It tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons' graves is speechless too, it says nothing, it distinguishes nothing. As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldst not, as of a prince whom thou couldst not, look upon, will trouble thine eyes, if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of the churchyard unto the church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the church into the church-yard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to p.r.o.nounce;--this is the patrician, this is the n.o.ble, flour, and this the yeomanly, this the plebeian, bran.

[8]

Very beautiful indeed.

Ib. p. 149. C.

But when I lie under the hands of that enemy, that hath reserved himself to the last, to my last bed; then when I shall be able to stir no limb in any other measure than a fever or a palsy shall shake them; when everlasting darkness shall have an inchoation in the present dimness of mine eyes, and the everlasting gnashing in the present chattering of my teeth, and the everlasting worm in the present gnawing of the agonies of my body and anguishes of my mind; when the last enemy shall watch my remediless body, and my disconsolate soul there,--there, where not the physician in his way, perchance not the priest in his, shall be able to give any a.s.sistance; and when he hath sported himself with my misery, &c.

This is powerful; but is too much in the style of the monkish preachers: 'Papam redolet'. Contrast with this Job's description of death, [9] and St. Paul's 'sleep in the Lord'.

Ib. p. 150. A.

Neither doth Calvin carry those emphatical words which are so often cited for a proof of the last resurrection,--'that he knows his Redeemer lives, that he knows he shall stand the last man upon earth, that though his body be destroyed, yet in his flesh and with his eyes shall he see G.o.d'--to any higher sense than so, that how low soever he be brought, to what desperate state soever he be reduced in the eyes of the world, yet he a.s.sures himself of a resurrection, a reparation, a rest.i.tution to his former bodily health, and worldly fortune which he had before. And such a resurrection we all know Job had.

I incline to Calvin's opinion, but am not decided. 'After my skin', must be rendered 'according to, or as far as my skin is concerned.' 'Though the flies and maggots in my ulcers have destroyed my skin, yet still, and in my flesh, I shall see G.o.d as my Redeemer'. Now St. Paul says, that flesh and blood cannot ([Greek: sarx ka aima--ou dynantai]) inherit the kingdom of heaven, that is, the spiritual world. Besides how is the pa.s.sage, as commonly interpreted, consistent with the numerous expressions of doubt and even of despondency in Job's speeches? [10]

Ib. B. C. (Ezekiel's vision x.x.xvii.)

I cannot but think that Dr. Donne, by thus antedating the distinct belief of the Jews in the resurrection, "which you all know already,"

destroys in great measure the force and sublimity of this vision.

Besides, it does not seem, in the common people at least, to have been much more than a mongrel Egyptian-catacomb sort of faith, or rather superst.i.tion.

_In fine_. This is one of Donne's least estimable discourses; the worst sermon on the best text. Yet what a Donne-like pa.s.sage is this that follows!

P. 146. A.

Let the whole world be in thy consideration as one house; and then consider in that, in the peaceful harmony of creatures, in the peaceful succession, and connexion of causes and effects, the peace of nature. Let this kingdom, where G.o.d hath blessed thee with a being, be the gallery, the best room of that house, and consider in the two walls of that gallery, the Church and the state, the peace of a royal and religious wisdom. Let thine own family be a cabinet in this gallery, and find in all the boxes thereof, in the several duties of wife and children, and servants, the peace of virtue, and of the father and mother of all virtues, active discretion, pa.s.sive obedience; and then lastly, let thine own bosom be the secret box and reserve in this cabinet, and then the gallery of the best home that can be had, peace with the creature, peace in the Church, peace in the state, peace in thy house, peace in thy heart, is a fair model, and a lovely design even of the heavenly Jerusalem, which is _visio pacis_, where there is no object but peace.

Serm. XVI. John xi. 35. p. 153.

Ib. C.

The Masorites (the Masorites are the critics upon the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament) cannot tell us, who divided the chapters of the Old Testament into verses: neither can any other tell, who did it in the New Testament. [11]

How should the Masorites, when the Hebrew Scriptures were not as far as we know divided into verses at all in their time? The Jews seem to have adopted the invention from the Christians, who were led to it in the construction of Concordances.

Ib. p. 154. E.

If they killed Lazarus, had not Christ done enough to let them see that he could raise him again?

Malice, above all party-malice, is indeed a blind pa.s.sion, but one can scarcely conceive the chief priests such dolts as to think that Christ could raise Lazarus again. Their malice blinded them as to the nature of the incident, made them suppose a conspiracy between Jesus and the family of Lazarus, a mock burial, in short; and this may be one, though it is not, I think, the princ.i.p.al, reason for this greatest miracle being omitted in the other Gospels.

Ib. p. 155. B.

Christ might ungirt himself, and give more scope and liberty to his pa.s.sions than any other man; both because he had no original sin within to drive him, &c.

How then is he said to have 'condemned sin in the flesh'? Without guilt, without actual sin, a.s.suredly he was; but [Greek: egeneto sarx], and what can we mean by original sin relatively to the flesh, but that man is born with an animal life and a material organism that render him temptible to evil, and which tends to dispose the life of the will to contradict the light of the reason? Did St. Paul by [Greek: h.o.m.oi_omati sarks hamartias] mean a deceptive resemblance? [12]

Ib. D.