The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 28

Query XV. p. 225-6.

The pretence is, that we equivocate in talking of eternal generation.

All generation is necessarily [Greek: anarchon ti], without dividuous beginning, and herein contradistinguished from creation.

Ib. p. 226.

True, it is not the same with human generation.

Not the same 'eodem modo', certainly; but it is so essentially the same that the generation of the Son of G.o.d is the transcendent, which gives to human generation its right to be so called. It is in the most proper, that is, the fontal, sense of the term, generation.

Ib.

You have not proved that all generation implies beginning; and what is more, cannot.

It would be difficult to disprove the contrary. Generation with a beginning is not generation, but creation. Hence we may see how necessary it is that in all important controversies we should predefine the terms negatively, that is, exclude and preclude all that is not meant by them; and then the positive meaning, that is, what is meant by them, will be the easy result,--the post-definition, which is at once the real definition and impletion, the circ.u.mference and the area.

Ib. p. 227-8.

It is a usual thing with many, (moralists may account for it), when they meet with a difficulty which they cannot readily answer, immediately to conclude that the doctrine is false, and to run directly into the opposite persuasion;--not considering that they may meet with much more weighty objections there than before; or that they may have reason sufficient to maintain and believe many things in philosophy and divinity, though they cannot answer every question which may be started, or every difficulty which may be raised against them.

O, if Bull and Waterland had been first philosophers, and then divines, instead of being first, manacled, or say articled clerks of a guild;--if the clear free intuition of the truth had led them to the Article, and not the Article to the defence of it as not having been proved to be false,--how different would have been the result! Now we feel only the inconsistency of Arianism, not the truth of the doctrine attacked.

Arianism is confuted, and in such a manner, that I will not reject the Catholic Faith upon the Arian's grounds. It may, I allow, be still true.

But that it is true, because the Arians have hitherto failed to prove its falsehood, is no logical conclusion. The Unitarian may have better luck; or if he fail, the Deist.

Query XVI. p. 234.

But G.o.d's 'thoughts are not our thoughts'.

That is, as I would interpret the text;--the ideas in and by which G.o.d reveals himself to man are not the same with, and are not to be judged by, the conceptions which the human understanding generalizes from the notices of the senses, common to man and to irrational animals, dogs, elephants, beavers, and the like, endowed with the same senses.

Therefore I regard this paragraph, p. 223-4, as a specimen of admirable special pleading 'ad hominem' in the Court of eristic Logic; but I condemn it as a wilful resignation or temporary self-deposition of the reason. I will not suppose what my reason declares to be no position at all, and therefore an impossible sub-position.

Ib. p. 235.

Let us keep to the terms we began with; lest by the changing of words we make a change of ideas, and alter the very state of the question.

This misuse, or rather this 'omnium-gatherum' expansion and consequent extenuation of the word, Idea and Ideas, may be regarded as a calamity inflicted by Mr. Locke on the reigns of William III. Queen Anne, and the first two Georges.

Ib. p. 237.

Sacrifice was one instance of worship required under the Law; and it is said;--'He that sacrificeth unto any G.o.d, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed' (Exod. xxii. 20.) Now suppose any person, considering with himself that only absolute and sovereign sacrifice was appropriated to G.o.d by this law, should have gone and sacrificed to other G.o.ds, and have been convicted of it before the judges. The apology he must have made for it, I suppose, must have run thus: "Gentlemen, though I have sacrificed to other G.o.ds, yet I hope you'll observe, that I did it not absolutely: I meant not any absolute or supreme sacrifice (which is all that the Law forbids), but relative and inferior only. I regulated my intentions with all imaginable care, and my esteem with the most critical exactness. I considered the other G.o.ds, whom I sacrificed to, as inferior only and infinitely so; reserving all sovereign sacrifice to the supreme G.o.d of Israel." This, or the like apology must, I presume, have brought off the criminal with some applause for his acuteness, if your principles be true.

Either you must allow this, or you must be content to say, that not only absolute supreme sacrifice (if there be any sense in that phrase), but all sacrifice was by the Law appropriate to G.o.d only, &c.

&c.

How was it possible for an Arian to answer this? But it was impossible; and Arianism was extinguished by Waterland, but in order to the increase of Socinianism; and this, I doubt not, Waterland foresaw. He was too wise a man to suppose that the exposure of the folly and falsehood of one form of Infidelism would cure or prevent Infidelity. Enough, that he made it more bare-faced--I might say, bare-breeched; for modern Unitarianism is verily the 'sans-culotterie' of religion.

Ib. p. 239.

You imagine that acts of religious worship are to derive their signification and quality from the intention and meaning of the worshippers: whereas the very reverse of it is the truth.

Truly excellent. Let the Church of England praise G.o.d for her Saints--a more glorious Kalendar than Rome can show!

Ib. p. 251.

The sum then of the case is this: If the Son could be included as being uncreated, and very G.o.d; as Creator, Sustainer, Preserver of all things, and one with the Father; then he might be worshipped upon their (the Ante-Nicene Fathers') principles, but otherwise could not.

Every where in this invaluable writer I have to regret the absence of all distinct idea of the I Am as the proper attribute of the Father; and hence, the ignorance of the proper Jehovaism of the Son; and hence, that while we worship the Son together with the Father, we nevertheless pray to the Father only through the Son.

Query XVII.

And we may never be able perfectly to comprehend the relations of the three persons, 'ad intra', amongst themselves; the ineffable order and economy of the ever-blessed co-eternal Trinity.

"Comprehend!" No. For how can any spiritual truth be comprehended? Who can comprehend his own will; or his own personeity, that is, his I-ship (Ichheit'); or his own mind, that is, his person; or his own life? But we can distinctly apprehend them. In strictness, the Idea, G.o.d, like all other ideas rightly so called, and as contradistinguished from conception, is not so properly above, as alien from, comprehension. It is like smelling a sound.

Query XVIII. p. 269.

From what hath been observed, it may appear sufficiently that the divine [Greek: Logos] was our King and our G.o.d long before; that he had the same claim and t.i.tle to religious worship that the Father himself had--'only not so distinctly revealed'.

Here I differ 'toto orbe' from Waterland, and say with Luther and Zinzendorf, that before the Baptism of John the 'Logos' alone had been distinctly revealed, and that first in Christ he declared himself a Son, namely, the co-eternal only-begotten Son, and thus revealed the Father.

Indeed the want of the Idea of the 1=3 could alone have prevented Waterland from inferring this from his own query II. and the texts cited by him pp. 28-38. The Father cannot be revealed except in and through the Son, his eternal 'exegesis'. The contrary position is an absurdity.

The Supreme Will, indeed, the Absolute Good, knoweth himself as the Father: but the act of self-affirmation, the I Am in that I Am, is not a manifestation 'ad extra', not an 'exegesis'.

Ib. p. 274.

This point being settled, I might allow you that, in some sense, distinct worship commenced with the distinct t.i.tle of Son or Redeemer: that is, our blessed Lord was then first worshipped, or commanded to be worshipped by us, under that distinct t.i.tle or character; having before had no other t.i.tle or character peculiar and proper to himself, but only what was common to the Father and him too.

Rather shall I say that the Son and the Spirit, the Word and the Wisdom, were alone worshipped, because alone revealed under the Law. See Proverbs, i. ii.

The pa.s.sage quoted from Bishop Bull is very plausible and very eloquent; but only 'c.u.m multis granis salis sumend'.

Query XIX. p. 279.

That the Father, whose honour had been sufficiently secured under the Jewish dispensation, and could not but be so under the Christian also, &c.

Here again! This contradiction of Waterland to his own principles is continually recurring;--yea, and in one place he involves the very Tritheism, of which he was so victorious an antagonist, namely, that the Father is Jehovah, the Son Jehovah, and the Spirit Jehovah;--thus making Jehovah either a mere synonyme of G.o.d--whereas he himself rightly renders it [Greek: Ho on], which St. John every where, and St. Paul no less, makes the peculiar name of the Son, [Greek: monogenaes uhis, ho on eis tn kolpon tou patros]--; or he affirms the same absurdity, as if had said: The Father is the Son, and the Son is the Son, and the Holy Ghost is the Son, and yet there are not three Sons but one Son. N. B.

[Greek: Ho n] is the verbal noun of [Greek: hos esti], not of [Greek: ego eimi]. It is strange how little use has been made of that profound and most pregnant text, 'John' i. 18!