The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 22

[Footnote 4: John i 14. Gal. iv 4. Ed.]

[Footnote 5: See the whole argument on the difference of the reason and the understanding, in the 'Aids to Reflection', 3d edit. pp. 206-227.

Ed.]

[Footnote 6: See the author's entire argument upon this subject in the 'Church and State'.--Ed.]

[Footnote 7: Galat. ii 20.--Ed.]

[Footnote 8: Compare 'Hamlet', Act V. sc. 1. This sermon was preached, March 8, 1628-9.--Ed.]

[Footnote 9: C. iii. 13, &c.--Ed.]

[Footnote 10: See, however, the author's expressions at, I believe, a rather later period.

"I now think, after many doubts, that the pa.s.sage; 'I know that my Redeemer liveth', &c. may fairly be taken as a burst of determination, a 'quasi' prophecy. I know not how this can be; but in spite of all my difficulties, this I do know, that I shall be recompensed!"

'Table Talk', 2d edit. p. 80.--Ed.]

[Footnote 11: How so? Is it not admitted that Robert Stephens first divided the New Testament into verses in 1551? See the testimony to that effect of Henry Stephens, his son, in the Preface to his Concordance.--Ed. ]

[Footnote 12: 'Rom'. viii. 3. Mr. C. afterwards expressed himself to the same effect:

"Christ's body, as mere body, or rather carcase (for body is an a.s.sociated word), was no more capable of sin or righteousness than mine or yours; that his humanity had a capacity of sin, follows from its own essence. He was of like pa.s.sions as we, and was tempted. How could he be tempted, if he had no formal capacity of being seduced?"

'Table Talk', 2d edit. p. 261.--Ed.]

[Footnote 13: See Hooker's admirable declaration of the doctrine:--

"These natures from the moment of their first combination have been and are for ever inseparable. For even when his soul forsook the tabernacle of his body, his Deity forsook neither body nor soul. If it had, then could we not truly hold either that the person of Christ was buried, or that the person of Christ did raise up itself from the dead. For the body separated from the Word can in no true sense be termed the person of Christ; nor is it true to say that the Son of G.o.d in raising up that body did raise up himself, if the body were not both with him and of him even during the time it lay in the sepulchre.

The like is also to be said of the soul, otherwise we are plainly and inevitably Nestorians. The very person of Christ therefore for ever one and the self-same, was only touching bodily substance concluded within the grave, his soul only from thence severed, but by personal union his Deity still unseparably joined with both."

E. P. V. 52. 4.--'Keble's edit'. Ed. ]

[Footnote 14: xix. 41.--Ed. ]

[Footnote 15: (C.) which should be (B.)

"The object of the preceding discourse was to recommend the Bible as the end and centre of our reading and meditation. I can truly affirm of myself, that my studies have been profitable and availing to me only so far, as I have endeavored to use all my other knowledge as a gla.s.s enabling me to receive more light in a wider field of vision from the Word of G.o.d."

Ed.]

[Footnote 16: Ep. 99. See Pearson, Art. v.--Ed. ]

HENRY MORE'S THEOLOGICAL WORKS. [1]

There are three princ.i.p.al causes to which the imperfections and errors in the theological schemes and works of our elder divines, the glories of our Church,--men of almost unparalleled learning and genius, the rich and robust intellects from the reign of Elizabeth to the death of Charles II,--may, I think, be reasonably attributed. And striking, unusually striking, instances of all three abound in this volume; and in the works of no other divine are they more worthy of being regretted: for hence has arisen a depreciation of Henry More's theological writings, which yet contain more original, enlarged, and elevating views of the Christian dispensation than I have met with in any other single volume. For More had both the philosophic and the poetic genius, supported by immense erudition. But unfortunately the two did not amalgamate. It was not his good fortune to discover, as in the preceding generation William Shakspeare discovered, a mordaunt' or common base of both, and in which both the poetic and the philosophical power blended in one.

These causes are,--

First, and foremost,--the want of that logical [Greek: propaideia dokimastikae], that critique of the human intellect, which, previously to the weighing and measuring of this or that, begins by a.s.saying the weights, measures, and scales themselves; that fulfilment of the heaven-descended 'nosce teipsum', in respect to the intellective part of man, which was commenced in a sort of tentative broadcast way by Lord Bacon in his 'Novum Organum', and brought to a systematic completion by Immanuel Kant in his 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft, der Urtheilskrajt, und der metaphysiche Anfangsgrunde der Naturwissenschaft'.

From the want of this searching logic, there is a perpetual confusion of the subjective with the objective in the arguments of our divines, together with a childish or anile overrating of human testimony, and an ignorance in the art of sifting it, which necessarily engendered credulity.

Second,--the ignorance of natural science, their physiography scant in fact, and stuffed out with fables; their physiology imbrangled with an inapplicable logic and a misgrowth of 'entia rationalia', that is, substantiated abstractions; and their physiogony a blank or dreams of tradition, and such "intentional colours" as occupy s.p.a.ce but cannot fill it. Yet if Christianity is to be the religion of the world, if Christ be that Logos or Word that 'was in the beginning', by whom all things 'became'; if it was the same Christ who said, 'Let there be light'; who in and by the creation commenced that great redemptive process, the history of life which begins in its detachment from nature, and is to end in its union with G.o.d;--if this be true, so true must it be that the book of nature and the book of revelation, with the whole history of man as the intermediate link, must be the integral and coherent parts of one great work: and the conclusion is, that a scheme of the Christian faith which does not arise out of, and shoot its beams downward into, the scheme of nature, but stands aloof as an insulated afterthought, must be false or distorted in all its particulars. In confirmation of this position, I may challenge any opponent to adduce a single instance in which the now exploded falsities of physical science, through all its revolutions from the second to the seventeenth century of the Christian aera, did not produce some corresponding warps in the theological systems and dogmas of the several periods.

The third and last cause, and especially operative in the writings of this author, is the presence and regnancy of a false and fantastic philosophy, yet shot through with refracted light from the not risen but rising truth,--a scheme of physics and physiology compounded of Cartesian mechanics and empiricism (for it was the credulous childhood of experimentalism), and a corrupt, mystical, theurgical, pseudo-Platonism, which infected the rarest minds under the Stuart dynasty. The only not universal belief in witchcraft and apparitions, and the vindication of such monster follies by such men as Sir M. Hale, Glanville, Baxter, Henry More, and a host of others, are melancholy proofs of my position. Hence, in the first chapters of this volume, the most idle inventions of the ancients are sought to be made credible by the most fantastic hypotheses and a.n.a.logies.

To the man who has habitually contemplated Christianity as interesting all rational finite beings, as the very 'spirit of truth', the application of the prophecies as so many fortune-tellings and soothsayings to particular events and persons, must needs be felt as childish--like faces seen in the moon, or the sediments of a teacup. But reverse this, and a Pope and a Buonaparte can never be wanting,--the molehill becomes an Andes. On the other hand, there are few writers whose works could be so easily defecated as More's. Mere omission would suffice; and perhaps one half (an unusually large proportion) would come forth from the furnace pure gold; if but a fourth, how great a gain!

EXPLANATION OF THE GRAND MYSTERY OF G.o.dLINESS.

Dedication. 'Servorum illius omnium indignissimus.'

'Servus indignissimus,' or 'omnino indignus', or any other positive self-abas.e.m.e.nt before G.o.d, I can understand; but how an express avowal of unworthiness, comparatively superlative, can consist with the Job-like integrity and sincerity of profession especially required in a solemn address to Him, to whom all hearts are open, this I do not understand in the case of such men as Henry More, Jeremy Taylor, Richard Baxter were, and by comparison at least with the mult.i.tude of evil doers, must have believed themselves to be.

Ib. V. c.14. s.3.

This makes me not so much wonder at that pa.s.sage of Providence, which allowed so much virtue to the bones of the martyr Babylas, once bishop of Antioch, as to stop the mouth of Apollo Daphneus when Julian would have enticed him to open it by many a fat sacrifice. To say nothing of several other memorable miracles that were done by the reliques of saints and martyrs in those times.

Strange lingering of childish credulity in the most learned and in many respects enlightened divines of the Protestant episcopal church even to the time of James II! The Popish controversy at that time made a great clearance.

Ib. s. 9.

At one time Professor Eichorn had persuaded me that the Apocalypse was authentic; that is, a Danielitic dramatic poem written by the Apostle and Evangelist John, and not merely under his name. But the repeated perusal of the vision has sadly unsettled my conclusion. The entire absence of all spirituality perplexes me, as forming so strong a contrast with the Gospel and Epistles of John; and then the too great appearance of an allusion to the fable of Nero's return to life and empire, to Simon Magus and Apollonius of Tyana on the one hand (that is the Eichornian hypothesis), and the insurmountable difficulties of Joseph Mede and others on to Bicheno and Faber on the other. In short, I feel just as both Luther and Calvin felt,--that is, I know not what to make of it, and so leave it alone.

It is much to be regretted that we have no contemporary history of Apollonius, or of the reports concerning him, and the popular notions in his own time. For from the romance of Philostratus we cannot be sure as to the fact of the lies themselves. It may be a lie, that there ever was such or such a lie in circulation.