The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Ii Part 50

Yet there want not learned writers (whom I need not name) of the opinion that even the instrumental penmen of the Scripture might commit [Greek: hamartaemata mnaemonika]: though open that window to profaneness, and it will be in vain to shut any dores; 'Let G.o.d be true, and every man a lyer'.

It has been matter of complaint with hundreds, yea, it is an old cuckoo song of grim saints, that the Reformation came to its close long before it came to its completion. But the cause of this imperfection has been fully laid open by no party,--'scilicet', that in divines of both parties of the Reformers, the Protestants and the Detestants, there was the same relic of the Roman 'lues',--the habit of deciding for or against the orthodoxy of a position, not according to its truth or falsehood, not on grounds of reason or of history, but by the imagined consequences of the position. The very same principles on which the pontifical polemics vindicate the Papal infallibility, Fuller 'et centum alii' apply to the (if possible) still more extravagant notion of the absolute truth and divinity of every syllable of the text of the books of the Old and New Testament as we have it.

Ib.

Sure I am, that one of as much meekness, as some are of moroseness, even upright Moses himself, in his service of the essential and increated truth (of higher consequence than the historical truth controverted betwixt us) had notwithstanding 'a respect to the reward'. Heb. xi. 26.

In religion the faith pre-supposed in the respect, and as its condition, gives to the motive a purity and an elevation which of itself, and where the recompense is looked for in temporal and carnal pleasures or profits, it would not have.

FULLER'S CHURCH HISTORY.

B. I. cent. 5.

PELAGIUS:--Let no foreiner insult on the infelicity of our land in bearing this monster.

It raises, or ought to raise, our estimation of Fuller's good sense and the general temperance of his mind, when we see the heavy weight of prejudices, the universal code of his age, inc.u.mbent on his judgment, and which nevertheless left sanity of opinion, the general character of his writings: this remark was suggested by the term 'monster' attached to the worthy Cambrian Pelagius--the teacher _Arminianismi ante Arminium_.

B. II. cent. 6. s. 8.

Whereas in Holy Writ, when the Apostles (and the Papists commonly call Augustine the English apostle, how properly we shall see hereafter,) went to a foreign nation, 'G.o.d gave them the language thereof, &c.'

What a loss that Fuller has not made a reference to his authorities for this a.s.sertion! I am sure he could have found none in the New Testament, but facts that imply, and, in the absence of all such proof, prove the contrary.

Ib. s. 6.

Thus we see the whole week bescattered with Saxon idols, whose pagan G.o.ds were the G.o.dfathers of the days, and gave them their names. 'This some zealot may behold as the object of a necessary reformation, desiring to have the days of the week new dipt, and called after other names'. Though indeed this supposed scandal will not offend the wise, as beneath their notice, and cannot offend the ignorant, as above their knowledge.

A curious prediction fulfilled a few years after in the Quakers, and well worthy of being extracted and addressed to the present Friends.

Memorandum.--It is the error of the Friends, but natural and common to almost all sects,--the perversion of the wisdom of the first establishers of their sect into their own folly, by not distinguishing between the conditionally right and the permanently and essentially so.

For example: It was right conditionally in the Apostles to forbid black puddings even to the Gentile Christians, and it was wisdom in them; but to continue the prohibition would be folly and Judaism in us. The elder church very sensibly distinguished episcopal from apostolic inspiration; the episcopal spirit, that which dictated what was fit and profitable for a particular community or church at a particular period,--from the apostolic and catholic spirit which dictated truth and duties of permanent and universal obligation.

Ib. cent. 7.

This Latin dedication is remarkably pleasing and elegant. Milton in his cla.s.sical youth, the aera of Lycidas, might have written it--only he would have given it in Latin verse.

B. x. cent. 17.

Bp. of London. May your Majesty be pleased, that the ancient canon may be remembered, 'Schismatici contra episcopos non sunt audiendi'. And there is another decree of a very ancient council, that no man should be admitted to speak against that whereunto he hath formerly subscribed.

And as for you, Doctor Reynolds, and your sociates, how much are you bound to his Majestie's clemencye, permitting you contrary to the statute 'primo Elizabethae', so freely to speak against the liturgie and discipline established. Faine would I know the end you aime at, and whether you be not of Mr. Cartwright's minde, who affirmed, that we ought in ceremonies rather to conforme to the Turks than to the Papists. I doubt you approve his position, because here appearing before his Majesty in Turkey-gownes, not in your scholastic habits, according to the order of the Universities.

If any man, who like myself hath attentively read the Church history of the reign of Elizabeth, and the conference before, and with, her pedant successor, can shew me any essential difference between Whitgift and Bancroft during their rule, and Bonner and Gardiner in the reign of Mary, I will be thankful to him in my heart and for him in my prayers.

One difference I see, namely, that the former professing the New Testament to be their rule and guide, and making the fallibility of all churches and individuals an article of faith, were more inconsistent, and therefore less excusable, than the Popish persecutors. 30 Aug. 1824.

N.B. The crimes, murderous as they were, were the vice and delusion of the age, and it is ignorance to lack charity towards the persons, Papist or Protestant; but the tone, the spirit, characterizes, and belongs to, the individual: for example, the bursting spleen of this Bancroft, not so satisfied with this precious arbitrator for having pre-condemned his opponents, as fierce and surly with him for not hanging them up unheard.

At the end. Next to Shakspeare, I am not certain whether Thomas Fuller, beyond all other writers, does not excite in me the sense and emotion of the marvellous;--the degree in which any given faculty or combination of faculties is possessed and manifested, so far surpa.s.sing what one would have thought possible in a single mind, as to give one's admiration the flavour and quality of wonder! Wit was the stuff and substance of Fuller's intellect. It was the element, the earthen base, the material which he worked in, and this very circ.u.mstance has defrauded him of his due praise for the practical wisdom of the thoughts, for the beauty and variety of the truths, into which he shaped the stuff. Fuller was incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced, great man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men. He is a very voluminous writer, and yet in all his numerous volumes on so many different subjects, it is scarcely too much to say, that you will hardly find a page in which some one sentence out of every three does not deserve to be quoted for itself--as motto or as maxim. G.o.d bless thee, dear old man! may I meet with thee!--which is tantamount to--may I go to heaven!

July, 1829.

ASGILL'S ARGUMENT.

'That according to the covenant of eternal life revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from hence into that eternal life, without pa.s.sing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself could not be thus translated till he had pa.s.sed through death.' Edit. 1715.

If I needed an ill.u.s.trative example of the distinction between the reason and the understanding, between spiritual sense and logic, this treatise of Asgill's would supply it. Excuse the defect of all idea, or spiritual intuition of G.o.d, and allow yourself to bring Him as plaintiff or defendant into a common-law court,--and then I cannot conceive a clearer or cleverer piece of special pleading than Asgill has here given. The language is excellent--idiomatic, simple, perspicuous, at once significant and lively, that is, expressive of the thought, and also of a manly proportion of feeling appropriate to it. In short, it is the ablest attempt to exhibit a scheme of religion without ideas, that the inherent contradiction in the thought renders possible.

It is of minor importance how a man represents to himself his redemption by the Word Incarnate,--within what scheme of his understanding he concludes it, or by what supposed a.n.a.logies (though actually no better than metaphors) he tries to conceive it, provided he has a lively faith in Christ, the Son of the living G.o.d, and his Redeemer. The faith may and must be the same in all who are thereby saved; but every man, more or less, construes it into an intelligible belief through the shaping and coloring optical gla.s.s of his own individual understanding. Mr.

Asgill has given a very ingenious common-law scheme. 'Valeat quantum valere potest'! It would make a figure before the Benchers of the Middle Temple. For myself, I prefer the belief that man was made to know that a finite free agent could not stand but by the coincidence, and independent harmony, of a separate will with the will of G.o.d. For only by the will of G.o.d can he obey G.o.d's will. Man fell as a soul to rise a spirit. The first Adam was a living soul; the last a life-making spirit.

In the Word was life, and that life is the light of men. And as long as the light abides within its own sphere, that is, appears as reason,--so long it is commensurate with the life, and is its adequate representative. But not so, when this light shines downward into the understanding; for there it is always, more or less, refracted, and differently in every different individual; and it must be re-converted into life to rectify itself, and regain its universality, or 'all-commonness, Allgemeinheit', as the German more expressively says.

Hence in faith and charity the church is catholic: so likewise in the fundamental articles of belief, which const.i.tute the right reason of faith. But in the minor 'dogmata', in modes of exposition, and the vehicles of faith and reason to the understandings, imaginations, and affections of men, the churches may differ, and in this difference supply one object for charity to exercise itself on by mutual forbearance.

O! there is a deep philosophy in the proverbial phrase,--'his heart sets his head right!' In our commerce with heaven, we must cast our local coins and tokens into the melting pot of love, to pa.s.s by weight and bullion. And where the balance of trade is so immensely in our favour, we have little right to complain, though they should not pa.s.s for half the nominal value they go for in our own market.

P. 46.

And I am so far from thinking this covenant of eternal life to be an allusion to the forms of t.i.tle amongst men, that I rather adore it as the precedent for them all, from which our imperfect forms are taken: believing with that great Apostle, that 'the things on earth are but the patterns of things in the heavens, where the originals are kept'.

Aye! this, this is the pinch of the argument, which Asgill should have proved, not merely a.s.serted. Are these human laws, and these forms of law, absolutely good and wise, or only conditionally so--the limited powers and intellect, and the corrupt will of men being considered?

P. 64.

And hence, though the dead shall not arise with the same ident.i.ty of matter with which they died, yet being in the same form, they will not know themselves from themselves, being the same to all uses, intents, and purposes.... But then as G.o.d, in the resurrection, is not bound to use the same matter, neither is he obliged to use a different matter.

The great objection to this part of Asgill's scheme, which has had, and still, I am told, has, many advocates among the chief dignitaries of our church, is--that it either takes death as the utter extinction of being,--or it supposes a continuance, or at least a renewal, of consciousness after death. The former involves all the irrational, and all the immoral, consequences of materialism. But if the latter be granted, the proportionality, adhesion, and symmetry, of the whole scheme are gone, and the infinite quant.i.ty,--that is, immortality under the curse of estrangement from G.o.d,--is rendered a mere supplement tacked on to the finite, and comparatively insignificant, if not doubtful, evil, namely, the dissolution of the organic body. See what a poor hand Asgill makes of it, p. 26:--

And therefore to signify the height of this resentment, G.o.d raises man from the dead to demand further satisfaction of him.

Death is a commitment to the prison of the grave till the judgment of the great day; and then the grand 'Habeas corpus' will issue 'to the earth and to the sea', to give up their dead; to remove the bodies, with the cause of their commitment: and as these causes shall appear, they shall either be released, or else sentenced to the common goal of h.e.l.l, there to remain until satisfaction.

P. 66.

Thou wilt not leave my 'soul' in the grave....

And that it is translated 'soul', is an Anglicism, not understood in other languages, which have no other word for 'soul' but the same which is for life.

How so? 'Seele', the soul, 'Leben', life, in German; [Greek: psychae]

and [Greek: zo_ae], in Greek, and so on.

P. 67.