The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 27

Ib.

[Greek: Oudes] is not [Greek: oudes anthropon], but, 'no one': as in John i. 18. 'No one hath seen G.o.d at any time'; that is, he is by essence invisible.

This most difficult text I have not seen explained satisfactorily. I have thought that the [Greek: aggeloi] must here be taken in the primary sense of the word, namely, as messengers, or missionary Prophets: Of this day knoweth no one, not the messengers or revealers of G.o.d's purposes now in heaven, no, not the Son, the greatest of Prophets,--that is, he in that character promised to declare all that in that character it was given to him to know.

Ib. p. 186.

When St. Paul calls the Father the One G.o.d, he expressly opposes it to the many G.o.ds of the heathens. 'For though there be that are called G.o.ds, &c. but to us, there is but one G.o.d, the Father, of whom are all things; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him': where the 'one G.o.d' and 'one Lord and Mediator' is opposed to the many G.o.ds and many lords or mediators which were worshipped by the heathens.

But surely the 'one Lord' is as much distinguished from the 'one G.o.d', as both are contradistinguished from the 'G.o.ds many and lords many' of the heathens. Besides 'the Father' is not the term used in that age in distinction from the G.o.ds that are no G.o.ds; but [Greek: Ho ep panton theos].

Ib. p. 222.

'The Word was with G.o.d'; that is, it was not yet in the world, or not yet made flesh; but with G.o.d.--'John' i. 1. So that to be 'with G.o.d', signifies nothing but not to be in the world.

_'The Word was with G.o.d.'_

Grotius does say, that this was opposed to the Word's being made flesh, and appearing in the world: but he was far enough from thinking that these words have only a negative sense: * * * for he tells us what the positive sense is, that with G.o.d is [Greek: para to patri], with the Father, * * and explains it by what Wisdom says, 'Prov'. vii.

30. 'Then I was by him, &c.' which he does not think a 'prosopopoeia', but spoken of a subsisting person.

But even this is scarcely tenable even as Greek. Had this been St.

John's meaning, surely he would have said, [Greek: en theo], not [Greek: prs tn theon], in the nearest proximity that is not confusion. But it is strange, that Sherlock should not have seen that Grotius had a hankering toward Socinianism, but, like a 'shy c.o.c.k', and a man of the world, was always ready to unsay what he had said.

[Footnote 1: A Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy and ever Blessed Trinity and the Incarnation of the Son of G.o.d, occasioned by the Brief Notes on the Creed of St Athanasius, and the Brief History of the Unitarians, or Socinians. and containing an answer to both. By Wm.

Sherlock, London. 8vo. 1690.]

[Footnote 2: The third General Council, that at Ephesus in 431, decreed

"that it should not be lawful for any man to publish or compose another Faith or Creed than that which was defined by the Nicene Council."

Ed.]

NOTES ON WATERLAND'S VINDICATION OF CHRIST'S DIVINITY. [1]

'In initio'.

It would be no easy matter to find a tolerably competent individual who more venerates the writings of Waterland than I do, and long have done.

But still in how many pages do I not see reason to regret, that the total idea of the 4=3=1,--of the adorable Tetractys, eternally self-manifested in the Triad, Father, Son, and Spirit,--was never in its cloudless unity present to him. Hence both he and Bishop Bull too often treat it as a peculiarity of positive religion, which is to be cleared of all contradiction to reason, and then, thus negatively qualified, to be actually received by an act of the mere will; 'sit pro ratione voluntas'. Now, on the other hand, I affirm, that the article of the Trinity is religion, is reason, and its universal 'formula'; and that there neither is, nor can be, any religion, any reason, but what is, or is an expansion of the truth of the Trinity; in short, that all other pretended religions, pagan or 'pseudo'-Christian (for example, Sabellian, Arian, Socinian), are in themselves Atheism; though G.o.d forbid, that I should call or even think the men so denominated Atheists. I affirm a heresy often, but never dare denounce the holder a heretic.

On this ground only can it be made comprehensible, how any honest and commonly intelligent man can withstand the proofs and sound logic of Bull and Waterland, that they failed in the first place to present the idea itself of the great doctrine which they so ably advocated. Take my self, S.T.C. as a humble instance. I was never so befooled as to think that the author of the fourth Gospel, or that St. Paul, ever taught the Priestleyan Psilanthropism, or that Unitarianisn (presumptuously, nay, absurdly so called), was the doctrine of the New Testament generally.

But during the sixteen months of my aberration from the Catholic Faith, I presumed that the tenets of the divinity of Christ, the Redemption, and the like, were irrational, and that what was contradictory to reason could not have been revealed by the Supreme Reason. As soon as I discovered that these doctrines were not only consistent with reason, but themselves very reason, I returned at once to the literal interpretation of the Scriptures, and to the Faith.

As to Dr. Samuel Clarke, the fact is, every generation has its one or more over-rated men. Clarke was such in the reign of George I.; Dr.

Johnson eminently so in that of George III.; Lord Byron being the star now in the ascendant.

In every religious and moral use of the word, G.o.d, taken absolutely, that is, not as a G.o.d, or the G.o.d, but as G.o.d, a relativity, a distinction in kind 'ab omni quod non est Deus', is so essentially implied, that it is a matter of perfect indifference, whether we a.s.sert a world without G.o.d, or make G.o.d the world. The one is as truly Atheism as the other. In fact, for all moral and practical purposes they are the same position differently expressed; for whether I say, G.o.d is the world, or the world is G.o.d, the inevitable conclusion, the sense and import is, that there is no other G.o.d than the world, that is, there is no other meaning to the term G.o.d. Whatever you may mean by, or choose to believe of, the world, that and that alone you mean by, and believe of, G.o.d. Now I very much question whether in any other sense Atheism, that is, speculative Atheism, is possible. For even in the Lucretian, the coa.r.s.est and crudest scheme of the Epicurean doctrine, a hylozism, a potential life, is clearly implied, as also in the celebrated 'lene clinamen' becoming actual. Desperadoes articulating breath into a blasphemy of nonsense, to which they themselves attach no connected meaning, and the wickedness of which is alone intelligible, there may be; but a La Place, or a La Grand, would, and with justice, resent and repel the imputation of a belief in chance, or of a denial of law, order, and self-balancing life and power in the world. Their error is, that they make them the proper and underived attributes of the world. It follows then, that Pantheism is equivalent to Atheism, and that there is no other Atheism actually existing, or speculatively conceivable, but Pantheism. Now I hold it demonstrable that a consistent Socinianism, following its own consequences, must come to Pantheism, and in unG.o.dding the Saviour must deify cats and dogs, fleas and frogs. There is, there can be, no 'medium' between the Catholic Faith of Trinal Unity, and Atheism disguised in the self-contradicting term, Pantheism;--for every thing G.o.d, and no G.o.d, are identical positions.

Query I. p. 1.

'The Word was G.o.d'.--John i. 1. 'I am the Lord, and there is none else; there is no G.o.d besides me'.--Is. xiv. 5, &c.

In all these texts the 'was', or 'is', ought to be rendered positively, or objectively, and not as a mere connective: 'The Word Is G.o.d', and saith, 'I Am the Lord; there is no G.o.d besides me', the Supreme Being, 'Deitas objectiva'. The Father saith, 'I Am in that I am,--Deitas subjectiva'.

Ib. p. 2.

Whether all other beings, besides the one Supreme G.o.d, be not excluded by the texts of Isaiah (to which many more might be added), and consequently, whether Christ can be G.o.d at all, unless He be the same with the Supreme G.o.d?

The sum of your answer to this query is, that the texts cited from Isaiah, are spoken of one Person only, the Person of the Father, &c.

O most unhappy mistranslation of 'Hypostasis' by Person! The Word is properly the only Person.

Ib. p. 3.

Now, upon your hypothesis, we must add; that even the Son of G.o.d himself, however divine he may be thought, is really no G.o.d at all in any just and proper sense. He is no more than a nominal G.o.d, and stands excluded with the rest. All worship of him, and reliance upon him, will be idolatry, as much as the worship of angels, or men, or of the G.o.ds of the heathen would be. G.o.d the Father he is G.o.d, and he only, and 'him only shall thou serve'. This I take to be a clear consequence from your principles, and unavoidable.

Waterland's argument is absolutely unanswerable by a worshipper of Christ. The modern 'ultra'-Socinian cuts the knot.

Query II. p. 43.

And therefore he might as justly bear the style and t.i.tle of 'Lord G.o.d, G.o.d of Abraham', &c. while he acted in that capacity, as he did that of 'Mediator, Messiah, Son of the Father', &c. after that he condescended to act in another, and to discover his personal relation.

And why, then, did not Dr. Waterland,--why did not his great predecessor in this glorious controversy, Bishop Bull,--contend for a revisal of our established version of the Bible, but especially of the New Testament? Either the unanimous belief and testimony of the first five or six centuries, grounded on the reiterated declarations of John and Paul, and the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, were erroneous, or at best doubtful;--and then why not wipe them off; why these references to them?--or else they were, as I believe, and both Bull and Waterland believed, the very truth; and then why continue the translation of the Hebrew into English at second-hand through the 'medium' of the Septuagint? Have we not adopted the Hebrew word, Jehovah,? Is not the [Greek: Kyrios], or Lord, of the LXX. a Greek subst.i.tute, in countless instances, for the Hebrew Jehovah? Why not then restore the original word, and in the Old Testament religiously render Jehovah by Jehovah, and every text of the New Testament, referring to the Old, by the Hebrew word in the text referred to? Had this been done, Socinianism would have been scarcely possible in England.

Why was not this done?--I will tell you why. Because that great truth, in which are contained all treasures of all possible knowledge, was still opaque even to Bull and Waterland;--because the Idea itself--that 'Idea Idearum', the one substrative truth which is the form, manner, and involvent of all truths,--was never present to either of them in its entireness, unity, and transparency. They most ably vindicated the doctrine of the Trinity, negatively, against the charge of positive irrationality. With equal ability they shewed the contradictions, nay, the absurdities, involved in the rejection of the same by a professed Christian. They demonstrated the utterly un-Scriptural and contra-Scriptural nature of Arianism, and Sabellianism, and Socinianism.

But the self-evidence of the great Truth, as a universal of the reason,--as the reason itself--as a light which revealed itself by its own essence as light--this they had not had vouchsafed to them.