The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 51

Surely the fault lay in the want, or in the feeble and inconsistent manner, of determining and supporting the proper powers of the Church.

In fact, the Prelates and leading divines of the Church were not only at variance with each other, but each with himself.

One party, the more faithful and less modified disciples of the first Reformers, were afraid of bringing anything into even a semblance of a co-ordination with the Scriptures; and, with the _terriculum_ of Popery ever before their eyes, timidly and sparingly allowed to the Church any even subordinate power beyond that of interpreting the Scriptures; that is, of finding the ordinances of the Church implicitly contained in the ordinances of the inspired writers.

But as they did not a.s.sume infallibility in their interpretations, it amounted to nothing for the consciences of such men as Bunyan and a thousand others.

The opposite party, Laud, Taylor, and the rest, with a sufficient dislike of the Pope (that is, at Rome) and of the grosser theological corruptions of the Romish Church, yet in their hearts as much averse to the sentiments and proceedings of Luther, Calvin, John Knox, Zuinglius, and their fellows, and proudly conscious of their superior learning, sought to maintain their ordinances by appeals to the Fathers, to the recorded traditions and doctrine of the Catholic priesthood during the first five or six centuries, and contended for so much that virtually the Scriptures were subordinated to the Church, which yet they did not dare distinctly to say out.

The result was that the Anti-Prelatists answered them in the gross by setting at nought their foundation, that is, the worth, authority and value of the Fathers.

So much for their variance with each other. But each vindicator of our established Liturgy and Discipline was divided in himself: he minced this out of fear of being charged with Popery, and that he dared not affirm for fear of being charged with disloyalty to the King as the head of the Church.

The distinction between the Church of which the king is the rightful head, and the Church which hath no head but Christ, never occurred either to them or to their antagonists; and as little did they succeed in appropriating to Scripture what belonged to Scripture, and to the Church what belonged to the Church.

All things in which the temporal is concerned may be reduced to a pentad, namely, prothesis, thesis, ant.i.thesis, mesothesis and synthesis.

So here--

'Prothesis'

Christ, the Word

'Thesis' 'Mesothesis' 'Ant.i.thesis'

The Scriptures The Holy Spirit The Church

'Synthesis'

The Preacher

[2]

Ib. p. lxiii.

"But there are two ways of obeying," he observed; "the one to do that which I in my conscience do believe that I am bound to do, actively; and where I cannot obey actively, there I am willing to lie down, and to suffer what they shall do unto me."

Genuine Christianity worthy of John and Paul!

Ib. p. lxv.

I am not conscious of any warping power that could have acted for so very long a period; but from sixteen to now, sixty years of age, I have retained the very same convictions respecting the Stuarts and their adherents. Even to Lord Clarendon I never could quite reconcile myself.

How often the pen becomes the tongue of a systematic dream,--a somniloquist! The sunshine, that is, the comparative power, the distinct contra-distinguishing judgment of realities as other than mere thoughts, is suspended. During this state of continuous, not single-mindedness, but one-side-mindedness, writing is manual somnambulism; the somnial magic superinduced on, without suspending, the active powers of the mind.

Ib. p. lxxix.

"They that will have heaven, they must run for it, because the devil, the law, sin, death and h.e.l.l, follow them. There is never a poor soul that is going to heaven, but the devil, the law, sin, death and h.e.l.l make after that soul. 'The devil, your adversary, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour.' And I will a.s.sure you the devil is nimble; he can run apace; he is light of foot; he hath overtaken many; he hath turned up their heels, and hath given them an everlasting fall. Also the law! that can shoot a great way: have a care thou keep out of the reach of those great guns the Ten Commandments! h.e.l.l also hath a wide mouth," &c.

It is the fashion of the day to call every man, who in his writings or discourses gives a prominence to the doctrines on which, beyond all others, the first Reformers separated from the Romish communion, a Calvinist. Bunyan may have been one, but I have met with nothing in his writings (except his Anti-paedobaptism, to which too he a.s.signs no saving importance) that is not much more characteristically Lutheran; for instance, this pa.s.sage is the very echo of the chapter on the Law and Gospel, in Luther's 'Table Talk'.

It would be interesting, and I doubt not, instructive, to know the distinction in Bunyan's mind between the devil and h.e.l.l.

Ib. p. xcvii.

Bunyan concludes with something like a promise of a third part. There appeared one after his death, and it has had the fortune to be included in many editions of the original work.

It is remarkable that Southey should not have seen, or having seen, have forgotten to notice, that this third part is evidently written by some Romish priest or missionary in disguise.

LIFE OF BUNYAN. [3]

The early part of his life was an open course of wickedness.

Southey, in the Life prefixed to his edition of the Pilgrim's Progress, has, in a manner worthy of his head and heart, reduced this oft repeated charge to its proper value. Bunyan was never, in our received sense of the word, wicked. He was chaste, sober, honest; but he was a bitter blackguard; that is, d.a.m.ned his own and his neighbour's eyes on slight or no occasion, and was fond of a row. In this our excellent Laureate has performed an important service to morality. For the trans.m.u.tation of actual reprobates into saints is doubtless possible; but like the many recorded facts of corporeal alchemy, it is not supported by modern experiments.

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

Part i. p. II.

As I walked through the wilderness of this world.

That in the Apocalypse the wilderness is the symbol of the world, or rather of the worldly life, Bunyan discovered by the instinct of a similar genius. The whole Jewish history, indeed, in all its details is so admirably adapted to, and suggestive of, symbolical use, as to justify the belief that the spiritual application, the interior and permanent sense, was in the original intention of the inspiring Spirit, though it might not have been present, as an object of distinct consciousness, to the inspired writers.

Ib.

... where was a den.

The jail. Mr. Bunyan wrote this precious book in Bedford jail, where he was confined on account of his religion. The following anecdote is related of him. A Quaker came to the jail, and thus addressed him:

"Friend Bunyan, the Lord sent me to seek for thee, and I have been through several counties in search of thee, and now I am glad I have found thee."

To which Mr. Bunyan replied,

"Friend, thou dost not speak the truth in saying the Lord sent thee to seek me; for the Lord well knows that I have been in this jail for some years; and if he had sent thee, he would have sent thee here directly."

'Note in Edwards'.