The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 32

But the same order holds good even with regard to the Scriptures. We cannot rightly affirm they were inspired, and therefore they must be believed; but they are worthy of belief, because excellent in so universal a sense to ends commensurate with the whole moral, and therefore the whole actual, world, that as sure as there is a moral Governor of the world, they must have been in some sense or other, and that too an efficient sense, inspired.

Those who deny this, must be prepared to a.s.sert, that if they had what appeared to them good historic evidence of a miracle, in the world of the senses, they would receive the hideous immoral doctrines of Mahomet or Brahma, and thus disobey the express commands both of the Old and New Testament. Though an angel should come from heaven and work all miracles, yet preach another doctrine, we are to hold him accursed.

'Gal.' i. 8.

Ib. s. lxxv. p. 356.

When Christ was upon the Mount, he gave it for a pattern, &c.

I cannot thoroughly agree with Taylor in all he says on this point. The Lord's Prayer is an encyclopedia of prayer, and of all moral and religious philosophy under the form of prayer. Besides this, that nothing shall be wanting to its perfection, it is itself singly the best and most divine of prayers. But had this been the main and primary purpose, it must have been thenceforward the only prayer permitted to Christians; and surely some distinct references to it would have been found in the Apostolic writings.

Ib. s. lx.x.x. p. 358.

Now then I demand, whether the prayer of Mana.s.ses be so good a prayer as the Lord's prayer? Or is the prayer of Judith, or of Tobias, or of Judas Maccabeus, or of the son of Sirach, is any of these so good?

Certainly no man will say they are; and the reason is, because we are not sure they are inspired by the Holy Spirit of G.o.d.

How inconsistent Taylor often is, the result of the system of economizing truth! The true reason is the inverse. The prayers of Judith and the rest are not worthy to be compared with the Lord's Prayer; therefore neither is the spirit in which they were conceived worthy to be compared with the spirit from which the Lord's Prayer proceeded: and therefore with all fulness of satisfaction we receive the latter, as indeed and in fact our Lord's dictation.

In all men and in all works of great genius the characteristic fault will be found in the characteristic excellence. Thus in Taylor, fulness, overflow, superfluity.

His arguments are a procession of all the n.o.bles and magnates of the land in their grandest, richest, and most splendid 'paraphernalia': but the total impression is weakened by the mult.i.tudes of lacqueys and ragged intruders running in and out between the ranks.

As far as the Westminster divines were the antagonists to be answered--and with the exception of these, and those who like Baxter, Calamy, and Bishop Reynolds, contended for a reformation or correction only of the Church Liturgy, there were none worth answering,--the question was, not whether the use of one and the same set of prayers on all days in all churches was innocent, but whether the exclusive imposition of the same was comparatively expedient and conducive to edification?

Let us not too severely arraign the judgment or the intentions of the good men who determined for the negative. If indeed we confined ourselves to the comparison between our Liturgy, and any and all of the proposed subst.i.tutes for it, we could not hesitate: but those good men, in addition to their prejudices, had to compare the lives, the conversation, and the religious affections and principles of the prelatic and anti-prelatic parties in general.

And do not we ourselves now do the like? Are we not, and with abundant reason, thankful that Jacobinism is rendered comparatively feeble and its deadly venom neutralized, by the profligacy and open irreligion of the majority of its adherents?

Add the recent cruelties of the Star Chamber under Laud;--(I do not say the intolerance; for that which was common to both parties, must be construed as an error in both, rather than a crime in either);--and do not forget the one great inconvenience to which the prelatic divines were exposed from the very position which it was the peculiar honor of the Church of England to have taken and maintained, namely, the golden mean;--(for in consequence of this their arguments as Churchmen would often have the appearance of contrasting with their grounds of controversy as Protestants,)--and we shall find enough to sanction our charity as brethren, without detracting a t.i.ttle from our loyalty as members of the established Church.

As to this Apology, the victory doubtless remains with Taylor on the whole; but to have rendered it full and triumphant, it would have been necessary to do what perhaps could not at that time, and by Jeremy Taylor, have been done with prudence; namely, not only to disprove in part, but likewise in part to explain, the alleged difference of the spiritual fruits in the ministerial labors of the high and low party in the Church,--(for remember that at this period both parties were in the Church, even as the Evangelical, Reformed and Pontifical parties before the establishment of a schism by the actually schismatical Council of Trent,)--and thus to demonstrate that the differences to the disadvantage of the established Church, as far as they were real, were as little attributable to the Liturgy, as the wound in the heel of Achilles to the s.h.i.+eld and breast-plate which his immortal mother had provided for him from the forge divine.

Ib. s. lx.x.xvi. p. 361.

That the Apostles did use the prayer their Lord taught them, I think needs not much be questioned.

'Ad contra', see above. But that they did not till the siege of Jerusalem deviate unnecessarily from the established usage of the Synagogue is beyond rational doubt. We may therefore safely maintain that a set form was sanctioned by Apostolic practice; though the form was probably settled after the converts from Paganism began to be the majority of Christians.

Ib. s. lx.x.xvii. p. 361.

Now that they tied themselves to recitation of the very words of Christ's prayer 'pro loco et tempore', I am therefore easy to believe, because I find they were strict to a scruple in retaining the sacramental words which Christ spake when he inst.i.tuted the blessed Sacrament.

Not a case in point. Besides it a.s.sumes the controverted sense of [Greek: ohut_os] as "in these words" 'versus' "to this purport." Grotius and Lightfoot, however, have settled this dispute by proving that the Lord's prayer is a selection of prayers from the Jewish ritual: and a most happy and valuable inference against novelties obtruded for novelty's sake does Grotius draw from this fact.

When I consider the manner in which the Jews usually quoted or referred to particular pa.s.sages of Scripture, it does not seem altogether improbable that the several articles of the 'Oratio Dominica' might have been the initial sentences of several prayers; but I have not the least doubt that by the loud utterance of the 'My G.o.d! my G.o.d! why hast thou forsaken me?' our blessed Redeemer referred to and recalled to John and Mary that most wonderful and prophetic twenty-second Psalm.

And what a glorious light does not this throw on the whole scene of the crucifixion, and in what additional loveliness does it not present the G.o.d-like character of the crucified Son of Man!

With the very facts before them, of which the former and larger portion of the Psalm referred to resembles a detailed history rather than a prophecy,--with what force, and with what lively consolation and infusion of stedfast hope and faith, when all human grounds of hope had sunk from under them, must not the obvious and inevitable inference have flashed on the convictions of the holy mother and the beloved disciple!

"If all we now behold was pre-ordained and so distinctly predicted; if the one mournful half of the prophecy has been so entirely and minutely fulfilled, after so great a lapse of ages, dare we, can we, doubt for a moment that the glorious remainder will with equal fidelity be accomplished?"

Thus to his very last moments did our Lord (setting as it beseemed the sun of righteousness to set) manifest with a wider and wider face of glory his self-oblivious love. In the act he was offering, he himself was a sacrifice of love for the whole creation; and yet the cup overflowed into particular streams; first, for his enemies, his persecutors, and murderers; then for his friends and humanly nearest relative; 'Woman, behold thy son!' O what a transfer!

Nor does the proposed interpretation preclude any inward and mysterious sense of the words 'My G.o.d! my G.o.d!'--though I confess I have never yet met with a single plausible resolution of the words into any one of the mysteries of the Trinity, or the Incarnation, or the Pa.s.sion. Nay, were there any necessity for supposing such an allusion, which there is not, the obvious interpretation would, I fear, too dangerously favor the heresy of those who divided and severed the divinity from the humanity; so that not the incarnate G.o.d, very G.o.d of very G.o.d, would have atoned for us on the cross, but the incarnating man; a heresy which either denies or reduces to an absurdity the whole doctrine of redemption, that is, Christianity itself, which rests on the two articles of faith; first, the necessity, and secondly, the reality of a Redeemer--both articles alike incompatible with redemption by a mere man.

Ib. s. lx.x.xviii. p. 362.

And I the rather make the inference from the preceding argument because of the cognation one hath with the other; for the Apostles did also in the consecration of the Eucharist use the Lord's Prayer; and that together with the words of inst.i.tution was the only form of consecration, saith St. Gregory; and St. Jerome affirms, that the Apostles, by the command of their Lord, used this prayer in the benediction of the elements.

This section is an instance of impolitic management of a cause, into which Jeremy Taylor was so often seduced by the fertility of his intellect and the opulence of his erudition. An antagonist by exposing the improbability of the tradition, (and most improbable it surely is), and the little credit due to Saint Gregory and Saint Jerome (not forgetting a Miltonic sneer at their saints.h.i.+p), might draw off the attention from the unanswerable parts of Taylor's reasoning and leave an impression of his having been confuted.

Ib. s. lx.x.xix. p. 362.

But besides this, when the Apostles had received great measures of the spirit, and by their gift of prayer composed more forms for the help and comfort of the Church, &c.

Who would not suppose, that the first two lines were an admitted point of history, instead of a bare conjecture in the form of a bold a.s.sertion? O, dearest man! so excellent a cause did not need such Bellarminisms.

Ib. p. 363.

And the Fathers of the Council of Antioch complain against Paulus Samosatenus, 'quod Psalmos et cantus, qui ad Domini nostri Jesu Christi honorem decantari solent, tanquam recentiores, et a viris recentioris memori? editos, exploserit.'

This Sam-in-satin-hose, or Paul, the same-as-Satan-is, might, I think, have found his confutation in Pliny's Letter to Trajan. 'Carmen Christo, quasi Deo, dicere sec.u.m invicem.'

Ib. s. xc. p. 364.

Which together with the [Greek: ta apomnaemoneumata t_on prophaeton], the 'lectionarium' of the Church, the books of the Apostles and Prophets spoken of by Justin Martyr, and said to be used in the Christian congregations, are the const.i.tuent parts of liturgy.

An ingenious but not tenable solution of Justin Martyr's [Greek: apomnaemoneumata t_on apostol_on] which were presumably a Gospel not the same, and yet so nearly the same, as our Matthew, that its history and character involve one of the hardest problems of Christian antiquity. By the by, one cause of the small impression--(small in proportion to their vast superiority in knowledge and genius)--which Jeremy Taylor and his compeers made on the religious part of the community by their controversial writings during the life of Charles I is to be found in their undue predilection for Patristic learning and authority. This originated in the wish to baffle the Papists at their own weapons; but it could not escape notice, that the latter, though regularly beaten, were yet not so beaten, but that they always kept the field: and when the same mode of warfare was employed against the Puritans, it was suspected as Papistical.

Ib. s. xci. pp. 364-5.

For the offices of prose we find but small mention of them in the very first time, save only in general terms, and that such there were, and that St. James, St. Mark, St. Peter, and others of the Apostles and Apostolical men, made Liturgies; and if these which we have at this day were not theirs, yet they make probation that these Apostles left others, or else they were impudent people that prefixed their names so early, and the Churches were very incurious to swallow such a bole, if no pretension could have been reasonably made for their justification.

A rash and dangerous argument. 1810.

A many-edged weapon, which might too readily be turned against the common faith by the common enemy. For if these Liturgies were rightly attributed to St. James, St. Mark, St. Peter, and others of the Apostles and Apostolical men, how could they have been superseded? How could the Church have excluded them from the Canon?