The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 20

Neither doth G.o.d forbid that those good parts which are in men should be celebrated with condign praise. We see that G.o.d, as soon as he saw that any thing was good, he said so, he uttered it, he declared it, first of the light, and then of other creatures. G.o.d would be no author, no example of smothering the due praise of good actions. For surely that man hath no zeal to goodness in himself, that affords no praise to goodness in other men.

Very fine. But I think another--not, however, a different--view might be taken respecting our Lord's intention in these words. The young n.o.ble, who came to him, had many praiseworthy traits of character; but he failed in the ultimate end and aim. What ought only to have been valued by him as means, was loved, and had a worth given to it, as an end in itself. Our Lord, who knew the hearts of men, instantly in the first words applies himself to this, and takes the occasion of an ordinary phrase of courtesy addressed to himself, to make the young man aware of the difference between a mere relative good and that which is absolutely good; that which may be called good, when regarded as a mean to good, but which must not be mistaken for, or confounded with, that which is good, and itself the end.

Ib. B. C. D.

All excellent, and D. most so. Thus, thus our old divines showed the depth of their love and appreciation of the Scriptures, and thus led their congregations to feel and see the same. Here is Donne's authority (_Deus non est ens_, &c.) for what I have so earnestly endeavored to show, that _Deus est ens super ens_, the ground of all being, but therein likewise absolute Being, in that he is the eternal self-affirmant, the I Am in that I Am; and that the key of this mystery is given to us in the pure idea of the will, as the alone _Causa Sui_.

O! compare this manhood of our Church divinity with the feeble dotage of the Paleyan school, the 'natural' theology, or watchmaking scheme, that knows nothing of the maker but what can be proved out of the watch, the unknown nominative case of the verb impersonal _fit--et natura est_; the 'it,' in short, in 'it rains,' 'it snows,' 'it is cold,' and the like. When, after reading the biographies of Walton and his contemporaries, I reflect on the crowded congregations, on the thousands, who with intense interest came to their hour and two hour long sermons, I cannot but doubt the fact of any true progression, moral or intellectual, in the mind of the many. The tone, the matter, the antic.i.p.ated sympathies in the sermons of an age form the best moral criterion of the character of that age.

Ib. E.

His name of Jehova we admire with a reverence.

Say, rather, Jehova, his name. It is not so properly a name of G.o.d, as G.o.d the Name,--G.o.d's name and G.o.d.

Ib. p. 169. A.

Land, and money, and honour must be called goods, though but of fortune, &c.

We should distinguish between the conditions of our possessing goods and the goods themselves. Health, for instance, is ordinarily a condition of that working and rejoicing for and in G.o.d, which are goods in the end, and of themselves. Health, competent fortune, and the like are good as the negations of the preventives of good; as clear gla.s.s is good in relation to the light, which it does not exclude. Health and ease without the love of G.o.d are plate gla.s.s in the darkness.

Ib. p. 170.

Much of this page consists of play on words; as, that which is useful as rain, and that which is of use as rain on a garden after drouth. There is also much sophistry in it. Pain is not necessarily an ultimate evil.

As the mean of ultimate good, it may be a relative good; but surely that which makes pain, anguish, heaviness necessary in order to good, must be evil. And so the Scripture determines. They are the _wages of sin_; but G.o.d's infinite mercy raises them into sacraments, means of grace. Sin is the only absolute evil; G.o.d the only absolute good. But as myriads of things are good relatively through partic.i.p.ation of G.o.d, so are many things evil as the fruits of evil. What is the apostasy, or fall of spirits? That that which from the essential perfection of the Absolute Good could not but be possible, that is, have a potential being, but never ought to have been actual, did nevertheless strive to be actual?--But this involved an impossibility; and it actualized only its own potentiality.

What is the consequence of the apostasy? That no philosophy is possible of man and nature but by a.s.suming at once a zenith and a nadir, G.o.d and 'Hades'; and an ascension from the one through and with a condescension from the other; that is, redemption by prevenient and then auxiliary grace.

Ib. p. 171. B.

So says St. Augustine, 'Audeo dicere', though it be boldly said, yet I must say it, 'utile esse cadere in aliquod manifestum peccatum', &c.

No doubt, a sound sense may be forced into these words: but why use words, into which a sound sense must be forced? Besides, the subject is too deep and too subtle for a sermon. In the two following paragraphs, especially, Dr. Donne is too deep, and not deep enough. He treads waters, and dangerous waters. N. B. The Familists.

Serm. XVIII. Acts, ii. 36. p. 175.

Ib. B.

I would paraphrase, or rather lead the way to this text, something as follows:--

Truth is a common interest; it is every man's duty to convey it to his brother, if only it be a truth that concerns or may profit him, and he be competent to receive it. For we are not bound to say the truth, where we know that we cannot convey it, but very probably may impart a falsehood instead; no falsehoods being more dangerous than truths misunderstood, nay, the most mischievous errors on record having been half-truths taken as the whole.

But let it be supposed that the matter to be communicated is a fact of general concernment, a truth of deep and universal interest, a momentous truth involved in a most awe-striking fact, which all responsible creatures are competent to understand, and of which no man can safely remain in ignorance. Now this is the case with the matter, on which I am about to speak; 'therefore let all the house of Israel know a.s.suredly, that G.o.d hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ!'

Ib. p. 176. A. B. C.

True Christian love not only permits, but enjoins, courtesy. G.o.d himself, says Donne, gave us the example.

Ib. p. 177. A. C. E.

All excellent, and E. of deeper worth. All that is wanting here is to determine the true sense of 'knowing G.o.d,'--that sense in which it is revealed that to know G.o.d is life ever-lasting.

Ib p. 178. A.

Now the universality of this mercy hath G.o.d enlarged and extended very far, in that he proposes it even to our knowledge; 'sciant', let all know it. It is not only 'credant', let all believe it; for the infusing of faith is not in our power; but G.o.d hath put it in our power to satisfy their reason, &c.

A question is here affirmatively started of highest importance and of deepest interest, that is, faith so distinguished from reason, 'credat'

from 'sciat', that the former is an infused grace 'not in our power;'

the latter an inherent quality or faculty, on which we are able to calculate as man with man. I know not what to say to this. Faith seems to me the coadunation of the individual will with the reason, enforcing adherence alike of thought, act, and affection to the Universal Will, whether revealed in the conscience, or by the light of reason, however the same may contravene, or apparently contradict, the will and mind of the flesh, the presumed experience of the senses and of the understanding, as the faculty, or intelligential yet animal instinct, by which we generalize the notices of the senses, and substantiate their 'spectra' or 'phaenomena'. In this sense, therefore, and in this only, I agree with Donne.

'No man cometh to Christ unless the' 'Father lead him'. The corrupt will cannot, without prevenient as well as auxiliary grace, be unitively subordinated to the reason, and again, without this union of the moral will, the reason itself is latent. Nevertheless, I see no advantage in not saying the 'will,' or in subst.i.tuting the term 'faith' for it. But the sad non-distinction of the reason and the understanding throughout Donne, and the confusion of ideas and conceptions under the same term, painfully inturbidates his theology. Till this distinction of the [Greek: nous] and the [Greek: phronaema sarks] be seen, nothing can be seen aright. Till this great truth be mastered, and with the sight that is insight, other truths may casually take possession of the mind, but the mind cannot possess them. If you know not this, you know nothing; for if you know not the diversity of reason from the understanding, you know not reason; and reason alone is knowledge.

All that follows in B. is admirable, worthy of a divine of the Church of England, the National and the Christian, and indeed proves that Donne was at least possessed by the truth which I have always labored to enforce, namely, that faith is the 'apotheosis' of the reason in man, the complement of reason, the will in the form of the reason. As the basin-water to the fountain shaft, such is will to reason in faith.

The whole will shapes itself in the image of G.o.d wherein it had been created, and shoots on high toward, and in the glories of, Heaven!

Ib. D.

If we could have been in Paradise, and seen G.o.d take a clod of red earth, and make that wretched clod of contemptible earth such a body as should be fit to receive his breath, &c.

A sort of pun on the Hebrew word 'Adam' or red earth, common in Donne's age, but unworthy of Donne, who was worthy to have seen deeper into the Scriptural sense of the 'ground,' the Hades, the multeity, the many 'absque numero el infra numerum', that which is below, as G.o.d is that which transcends, intellect.

Ib. p. 179. B.

We place in the School, for the most part, the infinite merit of Christ Jesus ... rather 'in pacto' than 'in persona', rather that this contract was thus made between the Father and the Son, than that whatsoever that person, thus consisting of G.o.d and Man, should do, should, only in respect of the person, be of an infinite value and extension to that purpose, &c.

O, this is sad misty divinity! far too scholastical for the pulpit, far too vague and unphilosophic for the study.

Ib. p. 180. A.

'Quis nisi infidelis negaverit apud inferos fuisse Christum?' says St.

Augustine.

Where? [16] Pearson expressly a.s.serts and proves that the clause was in none of the ancient creeds or confessions. And even now the sense of these words, 'He descended into h.e.l.l', is in no Reformed Church determined as an article of faith.

Ib. p. 182. D.