The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 16

That 'germen Jehovae', as the prophet Esay calls Christ, that offspring of Jehova, that bud, that blossom, that fruit of G.o.d himself, the Son of G.o.d, the Messiah, the Redeemer, Christ Jesus, grows upon every tree in this paradise, the Scripture; for Christ was the occasion before, and is the consummation after, of all Scripture.

If this were meant to the exclusion or neglect of the primary sense,--if we are required to believe that the sacred writers themselves had such thoughts present to their minds,--it would, doubtless, throw the doors wide open to every variety of folly and fanaticism. But it may admit of a safe, sound, and profitable use, if we consider the Bible as one work, intended by the Holy Spirit for the edification of the Church in all ages, and having, as such, all its parts synoptically interpreted, the eldest by the latest, the last by the first, and the middle by both.

Moses, or David, or Jeremiah (we might in this view affirm) meant so and so, according to the context, and the light under which, and the immediate or proximate purposes for which, he wrote: but we, who command the whole scheme of the great dispensation, may see a higher and deeper sense, of which the literal meaning was a symbol or type; and this we may justifiably call the sense of the spirit.

Ib. p. 41. B.

So in our liturgy 'we stand up at the profession of the creed'

thereby to declare to G.o.d and his Church our readiness to stand to, and our readiness to proceed in, that profession.

Another Church might sit down, thereby denoting a resolve to abide in this profession. These things are indifferent; but charity, love of peace, and on indifferent points to prefer another's liking to our own, and to observe an order once established for order's sake,--these are not indifferent.

Ib. p. 42. C.

This paragraph is excellent. Alas! how painfully applicable it is to some of our day!

Ib. p. 46. C.

Howsoever all intend that this is a name that denotes essence, being: Being is the name of G.o.d, and of G.o.d only.

Rather, I should say, 'the eternal antecedent of being;' 'I that shall be in that I will to be'; the absolute will; the ground of being; the self-affirming 'actus purissimus'.

Serm. VI. Isaiah liii. 1. p. 52.

A n.o.ble sermon in thought and diction.

Ib. p. 59. E.

Therefore we have a clearer light than this; 'firmiorem prophetic.u.m sermonem', says St. Peter; 'we have a more sure word of the prophets'; that is, as St. Augustine reads that place, 'clariorem', a more manifest, a more evident, declaration in the prophets, than in nature, of the will of G.o.d towards man, &c.

The sense of this text, as explained by the context, seems to me this;--that, in consequence of the fulfilment of so large a proportion of the oracles, the Christian Church has not only the additional light given by the teaching and miracles of Christ, but even the light vouchsafed to the old Church (the prophetic) stronger and clearer.

Ib. p. 60. A.

He spake personally, and he spake aloud, in the declaration of miracles; but 'quis credidit auditui Filii?' Who believed even his report? Did they not call his preaching sedition, and call his miracles conjuring? Therefore, we have a clearer, that is, a nearer light than the written Gospel, that is, the Church.

True; yet he who should now venture to a.s.sert this truth, or even contend for a co-ordinateness of the Church and the Written Word, must bear to be thought a semi-Papist, an 'ultra' high-Churchman. Still the truth is the truth.

Serm. VII. John x. 10. p. 62.

Since the Revolution in 1688 our Church has been chilled and starved too generally by preachers and reasoners Stoic or Epicurean;--first, a sort of pagan morality was subst.i.tuted for the righteousness by faith, and latterly, prudence or Paleyanism has been subst.i.tuted even for morality.

A Christian preacher ought to preach Christ alone, and all things in him and by him. If he find a dearth in this, if it seem to him a circ.u.mscription, he does not know Christ, as the 'pleroma', the fullness. It is not possible that there should be aught true, or seemly, or beautiful, in thought, will, or deed, speculative or practical, which may not, and which ought not to, be evolved out of Christ and the faith in Christ;--no folly, no error, no evil to be exposed, or warred against, which may not, and should not, be convicted and denounced from its contrariancy and enmity to Christ. To the Christian preacher Christ should be in all things, and all things in Christ: he should abjure every argument that is not a link in the chain, of which Christ is the staple and staple ring.

Ib. p. 64.

In this page Donne pa.s.ses into rhetorical extravagance, after the manner of too many of the Fathers from Tertullian to Bernard.

Ib. p. 66. A.

Some of the later authors in the Roman Church ... have noted ('in several of the Fathers') some inclinations towards that opinion, that the devil retaining still his faculty of free-will, is therefore capable of repentance, and so of benefit by this coming of Christ.

If this be a.s.sumed,--namely, the free-will of the devil,--as a consequence would indeed follow his capability of repenting, and the possibility that he may repent. But then he is no longer what we mean by the devil; he is no longer the evil spirit, but simply a wicked soul.

Ib. p. 68. C.

As though G.o.d had said 'Qui sum', my name is 'I am'; yet in truth it is 'Qui ero', my name is 'I shall be'.

Nay, 'I will or shall be in that I will to be'. I am that only one who is self-originant, 'causa sui', whose will must be contemplated as antecedent in idea to or deeper than his own co-eternal being. But 'antecedent,' 'deeper,' &c. are mere 'vocabula impropria', words of accommodation, that may suggest the idea to a mind purified from the intrusive phantoms of s.p.a.ce and time, but falsify and extinguish the truth, if taken as adequate exponents.

Ib. p. 69. C.

We affirm that it is not only as impious and irreligious a thing, but as senseless and as absurd a thing, to deny that the Son of G.o.d hath redeemed the world, as to deny that G.o.d hath created the world.

A bold but a true saying. The man who, cannot see the redemptive agency in the creation has but a dim apprehension of the creative power.

Ib. D. E. p. 70. A.

These paragraphs exhibit a n.o.ble instance of giving importance to the single words of a text, each word by itself a pregnant text. Here, too, lies the excellence, the imitable, but alas! unimitated, excellence of our divines from Elizabeth to William III.

Ib. D.

O, that our clergy did but know and see that their t.i.thes and glebes belong to them as officers and functionaries of the nationalty,--as clerks, and not exclusively as theologians, and not at all as ministers of the Gospel;--but that they are likewise ministers of the Church of Christ, and that their claims and the powers of that Church are no more alienated or affected by their being at the same time the established clergy, than they are by the common coincidence of being justices of the peace, or heirs to an estate, or stockholders! [6] The Romish divines placed the Church above the Scriptures; our present divines give it no place at all.

But Donne and his great contemporaries had not yet learnt to be afraid of announcing and enforcing the claims of the Church, distinct from, and coordinate with, the Scriptures. This is one evil consequence, though most un-necessarily so, of the union of the Church of Christ with the national Church, and of the claims of the Christian pastor and preacher with the legal and const.i.tutional rights and revenues of the officers of the national clerisy. Our clergymen in thinking of their legal rights, forget those rights of theirs which depend on no human law at all.

Ib. p. 71. A.

This is the difference between G.o.d's mercy and his judgments, that sometimes his judgments may he plural, complicated, enwrapped in one another; but his mercies are always so, and cannot be otherwise.

A just sentiment beautifully expressed.

Ib. C.