The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 12

Ib. p. 47.

In Cornwall Sir Richard Grenvill, having taken many soldiers of the Earl of Ess.e.x's army, sentenced about a dozen to be hanged. When they had hanged two or three, the rope broke which should have hanged the next. And they sent for new ropes so oft to hang him, and all of them still broke, that they durst go no further, but saved all the rest.

The soldiers, doubtless, contrived this from the aversion natural to Englishmen of killing an enemy in cold blood; and because they foresaw that there would be t.i.t for Tat.

Ib. p. 59.

It is easy to see from Baxter's own account, that his party ruined their own cause and that of the kingdom by their tenets concerning the right and duty of the civil magistrate to use the sword against such as were not of the same religion with themselves.

Ib. p. 62.

They seem not to me to have answered satisfactorily to the main argument fetched from the Apostle's own government, with which Saravia had inclined me to some Episcopacy before: though miracles and infallibility were Apostolical temporary privileges, yet Church government is an ordinary thing to be continued. And therefore as the Apostles had successors as they were preachers, I see not but that they must have successors as Church governors.

Was not Peter's sentence against Ananias an act of Church government?

Therefore though Church government is an ordinary thing in some form or other, it does not follow that one particular form is an ordinary thing.

For the time being the Apostles, as heads of the Church, did what they thought best; but whatever was binding on the Church universal and in all times they delivered as commands from Christ. Now no other command was delivered but that all things should conduce to order and edification.

Ib. p. 66.

And therefore how they could refuse to receive the King, till he consented to take the Covenant, I know not, unless the taking of the Covenant had been a condition on which he was to receive his crown by the laws or fundamental const.i.tutions of the kingdom, which none pretendeth. Nor know I by what power they can add anything to the Coronation Oath or Covenant, which by his ancestors was to be taken, without his own consent.

And pray, how and by whom were the Coronation Oaths first imposed? The Scottish nation in 1650 had the same right to make a bargain with the claimant of their throne as their ancestors had. It is strange that Baxter should not have seen that his objections would apply to our 'Magna Charta'. So he talks of the "fundamental const.i.tutions," just as if these had been aboriginal or rather 'sans' origin, and not as indeed they were extorted and bargained for by the people. But throughout it is plain that Baxter repeated, but never appropriated, the distinction between the King as the executive power, and as the individual functionary. What obligation lay on the Scottish Parliament and Church to consult the man Charles Stuart's personal likes and dislikes? The Oath was to be taken by him as their King. Doubtless, he equally disliked the whole Protestant interest; and if the Tories and Church of England Jacobites of a later day had recalled James II., would Baxter have thought them culpable for imposing on him an Oath to preserve the Protestant Church of England and to inflict severe penalties on his own Church-fellows?

Ib. p. 71.

And some men thought it a very hard question, whether they should rather wish the continuance of a usurper that will do good, or the restoration of a rightful governor whose followers will do hurt.

And who shall dare unconditionally condemn those who judged the former to be the better alternative? Especially those who did not adopt Baxter's notion of a 'jus divinum' personal and hereditary in the individual, whose father had broken the compact on which the claim rested.

Ib. p. 75.

One Mrs. Dyer, a chief person of the Sect, did first bring forth a monster, which had the parts of almost all sorts of living creatures, some parts like man, but most ugly and misplaced, and some like beasts, birds and fishes, having horns, fins and claws; and at the birth of it the bed shook, and the women present fell a vomiting, and were fain to go forth of the room.

This babe of Mrs. Dyer's is no bad emblem of Richard Baxter's own credulity. It is almost an argument on his side, that nothing he believed is more strange and inexplicable than his own belief of them.

Ib. p. 76.

The third sect were the Ranters. These also made it their business, as the former, to set up the light of nature under the name of Christ in men, and to dishonour and cry down the Church, &c.

But why does Baxter every where a.s.sert the ident.i.ty of the new light with the light of nature? Or what does he mean exclusively by the latter? The source must be the same in all lights as far as it is light.

Ib. p. 77.

And that was the fourth sect, the Quakers; who were but the Ranters turned from horrid profaneness and blasphemy to a life of extreme austerity on the other side.

Observe the _but_.

Ib.

Their doctrine is to be seen in Jacob Behmen's books by him that hath nothing else to do, than to bestow a great deal of time to understand him that was not willing to be easily understood, and to know that his bombasted words do signify nothing more than before was easily known by common familiar terms.

This is not in all its parts true. It is true that the first principles of Behmen are to be found in the writings of the Neo-Platonists after Plotinus, and (but mixed with gross impieties) in Paracelsus;--but it is not true that they are easily known, and still less so that they are communicable in common familiar terms. But least of all is it true that there is nothing original in Behmen.

Ib.

The chiefest of these in England are Dr. Pordage and his family.

It is curious that Lessing in the Review, which he, Nicolai, and Mendelssohn conducted under the form of Letters to a wounded Officer, joins the name of Pordage with that of Behmen. Was Pordage's work translated into German?

Ib. p. 79.

Also the Socinians made some increase by the ministry of one Mr.

Biddle, sometimes schoolmaster in Gloucester; who wrote against the G.o.dhead of the Holy Ghost, and afterwards of Christ; whose followers inclined much to mere Deism.

For the Socinians till Biddle retained much of the Christian religion, for example, Redemption by the Cross, and the omnipresence of Christ as to this planet even as the Romanists with their Saints. Luther's obstinate adherence to the ubiquity of the Body of Christ and his or rather its real presence in and with the bread was a sad furtherance to the advocates of Popish idolatry and hierolatry.

Ib. p. 80.

Many a time have I been brought very low, and received the sentence of death in myself, when my poor, honest, praying neighbours have met, and upon their fasting and earnest prayers I have been recovered. Once when I had continued weak three weeks, and was unable to go abroad, the very day that they prayed for me, being Good Friday, I recovered, and was able to preach, and administer the Sacrament the next Lord's Day, and was better after it, &c.

Strange that the common manuals of school logic should not have secured Baxter from the repeated blunder of 'c.u.m hoc, ergo, propter hoc'; but still more strange that his piety should not have revolted against degrading prayer into medical quackery.

Before the Revolution of 1688, metaphysics ruled without experimental psychology, and in these curious paragraphs of Baxter we see the effect: since the Revolution experimental psychology without metaphysics has in like manner prevailed, and we now feel the result. In like manner from Plotinus to Proclus, that is, from A. D. 250 to A. D. 450, philosophy was set up as a subst.i.tute for religion: during the dark ages religion superseded philosophy, and the consequences are equally instructive. The great maxim of legislation, intellectual or political, is 'Subordinate, not exclude'. Nature in her ascent leaves nothing behind, but at each step subordinates and glorifies:--ma.s.s, crystal, organ, sensation, sentience, reflection.

Ib. p. 82.

Another time, as I sat in my study, the weight of my greatest folio books brake down three or four of the highest shelves, when I sat close under them, and they fell down every side me, and not one of them hit me, save one upon the arm; whereas the place, the weight, the greatness of the books was such, and my head just under them, that it was a wonder they had not beaten out my brains, &c.

[Greek: Mega biblion mega kakon.]

Ib. p. 84.

For all the pains that my infirmities ever brought upon me were never half so grievous an affliction to me, as the unavoidable loss of my time, which they occasioned. I could not bear, through the weakness of my stomach, to rise before seven o'clock in the morning, &c.

Alas! in how many respects does my lot resemble Baxter's; but how much less have my bodily evils been; and yet how very much greater an impediment have I suffered them to be! But verily Baxter's labours seem miracles of supporting grace. Ought I not therefore to retract the note p. 80? I waver.