The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 34

Creed was no more than the first instruction of the catechumens prior to baptism; and (as I conclude from Eusebius) that at baptism they professed a more mysterious faith;--the one being the milk, the other the strong meat. Where is the proof that Tertullian was speaking of this Creed? Eusebius speaks in as high terms of the 'Symbolum Fidei', and, defending himself against charges of heresy, says, "Did I not at my baptism, in the 'Symbolum Fidei', declare my belief in Christ as G.o.d and the co-eternal Word?" The true Creed it was impiety to write down; but such was never the case with the present or initiating Creed. Strange, too, that Jeremy Taylor, who has in this very work written so divinely of tradition, should a.s.sume as a certainty that this Creed was in a proper sense Apostolic. Is then the Creed of greater authority than the inspired Scriptures? And can words in the Creed be more express than those of St. Paul to the Colossians, speaking of Christ as the creative mind of his Father, before all worlds, 'begotten before all things created?'

Ib. s. x. p. 449.

This paragraph is indeed a complexion, as Taylor might call it, of sophisms. Thus;--unbelief from want of information or capacity, though with the disposition of faith, is confounded with disbelief. The question is not, whether it may not be safe for a man to believe simply that Christ is his Saviour, but whether it be safe for a man to disbelieve the article in any sense which supposes an essential supra-humanity in Christ,--any sense that would not have been equally applicable to John, had G.o.d chosen to raise him instead of his cousin?

Ib. s. xi. p. 450.

Neither are we obliged to make these Articles more particular and minute than the Creed. For since the Apostles, and indeed our blessed Lord himself, promised heaven to them who believed him to be the Christ that was to come into the world, and that he who believes in him should be partaker of the resurrection and life eternal, he will be as good as his word. Yet because this article was very general, and a complexion rather than a single proposition, the Apostles and others our Fathers in Christ did make it more explicit: and though they have said no more than what lay entire and ready formed in the bosom of the great Article, yet they made their extracts to great purpose and absolute sufficiency; and therefore there needs no more deductions or remoter consequences from the first great Article than the Creed of the Apostles.

Most true; but still the question returns, what was meant by the phrase 'the' Christ? Contraries cannot both be true. 'The Christ' could not be both mere man and incarnate G.o.d. One or the other must believe falsely on this great key-stone of all the intellectual faith in Christianity.

For so it is; alter it, and everything alters; as is proved in Trinitarianism and Socinianism. No two religions can be more different;--I know of no two equally so.

Ib. s. xii. p. 451.

The Church hath power to intend our faith, but not to extend it; to make our belief more evident, but not more large and comprehensive.

This and the preceding pages are scarcely honest. For Jeremy Taylor begins with admitting that the Creed might have been composed by others.

He has no proof of that most absurd fable of the twelve Apostles clubbing to make it; yet here all he says a.s.sumes its inspiration as a certain fact.

Ib. p. 454.

But for the present there is no insecurity in ending there where the Apostles ended, in building where they built, in resting where they left us, unless the same infallibility which they had had still continued, which I think I shall hereafter make evident it did not.

What a tangle of contradictions Taylor thrusts himself into by the attempt to support a true system, a full third of which he was afraid to mention, and another third was by the same fear induced to deny--at least to take for granted the contrary: for example, the absolute plenary inspiration and infallibility of the Apostles and Evangelists; and yet that their whole function, as far as the consciences of their followers were concerned, was to repeat the two or three sentences, that 'Jesus was Christ' (so says one of the Evangelists), 'the Christ of G.o.d'

(so says another), 'the Christ the Son of the living G.o.d' (so says a third), that he rose from the dead, and for the remission of sins, to as many as believed and professed that he was the Christ or the Lord, and died and rose for the remission of sins. Surely no miraculous communication of G.o.d's infallibility was necessary for this.

But if this infallibility was stamped on all they said and wrote, is it credible that any part should not be equally binding? I declare I can make nothing out of this section, but that it is necessary for men to believe the Apostles' Creed; but what they believe by it is of no consequence. For instance; what if I chose to understand by the word 'dead' a state of trance or suspended animation;--language furnishing plenty of a.n.a.logies--dead in a swoon--dead drunk--and so on;--should I still be a Christian?

'Born of the Virgin Mary.' What if, as Priestley and others, I interpreted it as if we should say, 'the former Miss Vincent was his mother.' I need not say that I disagree with Taylor's premisses only because they are not broad enough, and with his aim and princ.i.p.al conclusion only because it does not go far enough. I would have the law grounded wholly in the present life, religion only on the life to come.

Religion is debased by temporal motives, and law rendered the drudge of prejudice and pa.s.sion by pretending to spiritual aims. But putting this aside, and judging of this work solely as a chain of reasoning, I seem to find one leading error in it; namely, that Taylor takes the condition of a first admission into the Church of Christ for the fullness of faith which was to be gradually there acquired. The simple acknowledgment, that they accepted Christ as their Lord and King was the first lisping of the infant believer at which the doors were opened, and he began the process of growth in the faith.

Ib. s. ii. p. 457.

The great heresy that troubled them was the doctrine of the necessity of keeping the law of Moses, the necessity of circ.u.mcision, against which doctrine they were therefore zealous, because it was a direct overthrow to the very end and excellency of Christ's coming.

The Jewish converts were still bound to the rite of circ.u.mcision, not indeed as under the Law, or by the covenant of works, but as the descendants of Abraham, and by that especial covenant which St. Paul rightly contends was a covenant of grace and faith. But the heresy consisted wholly in the attempt to impose this obligation on the Gentile converts, in the infatuation of some of the Galatians, who, having no pretension to be descendants of Abraham, could, as the Apostle urges, only adopt the rite as binding themselves under the law of works, and thereby apostatizing from the covenant of faith by free grace. And this was the decision of the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem. Acts' xv.

Rhenferd, in his Treatise on the Ebionites and other pretended heretics in Palestine, so grossly and so ignorantly calumniated by Epiphanius, has written excellently well on this subject. Jeremy Taylor is mistaken throughout.

Ib. s. iv. p. 459.

And so it was in this great question of circ.u.mcision.

It is really wonderful that a man like Bishop Taylor could have read the New Testament, and have entertained a doubt as to the decided opinion of all the Apostles, that every born Jew was bound to be circ.u.mcised.

Opinion? The very doubt never suggested itself. When something like this opinion was slanderously attributed to Paul, observe the almost ostentatious practical contradiction of the calumny which was adopted by him at the request and by the advice of the other Apostles. ('Acts', xxi. 21-26.) The rite of circ.u.mcision, I say, was binding on all the descendants of Abraham through Isaac for all time even to the end of the world; but the whole law of Moses was binding on the Jewish Christians till the heaven and the earth--that is, the Jewish priesthood and the state--had pa.s.sed away in the destruction of the temple and city; and the Apostles observed every t.i.ttle of the Law.

Ib. s. vi. p. 460.

The heresy of the Nicolaitans.

Heresy is not a proper term for a plainly anti-Christian sect.

Nicolaitans is the literal Greek translation of Balaamites; destroyers of the people. 'Rev'. ii. 14, 15.

Ib. s. viii. p. 461.

For heresy is not an error of the understanding, but an error of the will.

Most excellent. To this Taylor should have adhered, and to its converse.

Faith is not an accuracy of logic, but a rect.i.tude of heart.

Ib. p. 462.

It was the heresy of the Gnostics, that it was no matter how men lived, so they did but believe aright.

I regard the extinction of all the writings of the Gnostics among the heaviest losses of Ecclesiastical literature. We have only the account of their inveterate enemies. Individual madmen there have been in all ages, but I do not believe that any sect of Gnostics ever held this opinion in the sense here supposed.

Ib.

And, indeed, if we remember that St. Paul reckons heresy amongst the works of the flesh, and ranks it with all manner of practical impieties, we shall easily perceive that if a man mingles not a vice with his opinion,--if he be innocent in his life, though deceived in his doctrine,--his error is his misery not his crime; it makes him an argument of weakness and an object of pity, but not a person sealed up to ruin and reprobation.

O admirable! How could Taylor, after this, preach and publish his Sermon in defence of persecution, at least against toleration!

Ib. s. xxii. p. 479.

Ebion, Manes.

No such man as Ebion ever, as I can see, existed; [3] and Manes is rather a doubtful 'ens'.

Ib. s. x.x.xi. p. 487.

But I shall observe this, that although the Nicene Fathers in that case, at that time, and in that conjuncture of circ.u.mstances, did well, &c.