The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 44

I cannot satisfy my mind with this reason, though the one commonly a.s.signed both before and since Stapleton: and yet ignorant, when, why, and for whom John wrote his Gospel, I cannot subst.i.tute a better or more probable one. That John believed the command of the Eucharist to have ceased with the destruction of the Jewish state, and the obligation of the cup of blessing among the Jews,--or that he wrote it for the Greeks, unacquainted with the Jewish custom,--would be not improbable, did we not know that the Eastern Church, that of Ephesus included, not only continued this Sacrament, but rivalled the Western Church in the superst.i.tion thereof.

Ib. s. i. p. 503.

Now I argue thus: if we eat Christ's natural body, we eat it either naturally or spiritually: if it be eaten only spiritually, then it is spiritually digested, &c.

What an absurdity in the word 'it' in this pa.s.sage and throughout!

Vol. X. s. iii. p. 3.

The accidents, proper to a substance, are for the manifestation, a notice of the substance, not of themselves; for as the man feels, but the means by which he feels is the sensitive faculty, so that which is felt, is the substance, and the means by which it is felt is the accident.

This is the language of common sense, rightly so called, that is, truth without regard or reference to error; thus only differing from the language of genuine philosophy, which is truth intentionally guarded against error. But then in order to have supported it against an acute antagonist, Taylor must, I suspect, have renounced his Ga.s.sendis and other Christian 'Epicuri.' His antagonist would tell him; when a man strikes me with a stick, I feel the stick, and infer the man; but 'pari ratione,' I feel the blow, and infer the stick; and this is tantamount to,--I feel, and by a mechanism of my thinking organ attribute causation to precedent or co-existent images; and this no less in states in which you call the images unreal, that is, in dreams, than when they are a.s.serted by you to have an outward reality.

Ib. p. 4.

But when a man, by the ministry of the senses, is led into the apprehension of a wrong object, or the belief of a false proposition, then he is made to believe a lie, &c.

There are no means by which a man without chemical knowledge could distinguish two similarly shaped lumps, one of sugar and another of sugar of lead. Well! a lump of sugar of lead lies among other artefacts on the shelf of a collector; and with it a label, "Take care! this is not sugar, though it looks so, but crystallized oxide of lead, and it is a deadly poison." A man reads this label, and yet takes and swallows the lump. Would Taylor a.s.sert that the man was made to swallow a poison? Now this (would the Romanist say) is precisely the case of the consecrated elements, only putting food and antidote for poison; that is, as far as this argument of Jeremy Taylor is concerned.

Ib. p. 5.

Just upon this account it is, that St. John's argument had been just nothing in behalf of the whole religion: for that G.o.d was incarnate, that Jesus Christ did such miracles, that he was crucified, that he arose again, and ascended into heaven, that he preached these sermons, that he gave such commandments, he was made to believe by sounds, by shapes, by figures, by motions, by likenesses, and appearances, of all the proper accidents.

A Socinian might turn this argument with equal force at least, but I think with far greater, against the Incarnation. But it is a sophism, that actually did lead, to Socinianism: for surely bread and wine are less disparate from flesh and blood, than a human body from the Omnipresent Spirit. The disciples would, according to Taylor, Tillotson, and the other Lat.i.tudinarian common sense divines, have been justified in answering: "All our senses tell us you are only a man: how should, we believe you when you say the contrary? If we are not to believe all our senses, much less can we believe that we actually hear you."

And Taylor in my humble judgment gives a force and extension to the words of St. John, quoted before,--'That which was from the beginning, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have beheld, and our hands have handled of the word of life' (1 Ep.1.),--far greater than they either can, or were meant to, bear. It is beyond all doubt, that the words refer to, and were intended to confute, the heresy which was soon after a prominent doctrine of the Gnostics; namely, that the body of Christ was a phantom. To this St. John replies: I have myself had every proof to the contrary: first, the proof of the senses; secondly, Christ's own a.s.surance. Now this was unanswerable by the Gnostics, without one or the other of two pretences; either that St. John and the other known and appointed Apostles and delegates of the Word were liars; or that the Epistle was spurious. The first was too intolerable: therefore they adopted the second. Observe, the heretics, whom St. John confutes, did not deny the actual presence of the Word with the appearance of a human body, much less the truth of the wonders performed by the Word in this super-human and unearthly 'vice-corpus,' or 'quasi corpus:' least of all, would they a.s.sert either that the a.s.surances of the Word were false in themselves, or that the sense of hearing might have been permitted to deceive the beloved Apostle, (which would have been virtual falsehood and a subornation of falsehood), however liable to deception the senses might be generally, and as sole and primary proofs unsupported by antecedent grounds, 'praecognitis vel preconcessis.' And that St. John never thought of advancing the senses to any such dignity and self-sufficiency as proofs, it would be easy to shew from twenty pa.s.sages of his Gospel. I say, again and again, that I myself greatly prefer the general doctrine of our own Church respecting the Eucharist,--'rem credimus, modum nescimus,'--to either Tran- (or Con-) substantiation, on the one hand, or to the mere 'signum memoriae causa' of the Sacramentaries. But nevertheless, I think that the Protestant divines laid too much stress on the abjuration of the metaphysical part of the Roman article; as if, even with the admission of Transubstantiation, the adoration was not forbidden and made idolatrous by the second commandment.

Ib. s. vi. p. 9.

And yet no sense can be deceived in that which it always perceives alike: 'The touch can never he deceived.'

Every common juggler falsifies this a.s.sertion when he makes the pressure from a s.h.i.+lling seem the s.h.i.+lling itself. "Are you sure you feel it?"

"Yes." "Then open your hand. Presto! 'Tis gone." From this I gather that neither Taylor nor Aristotle ever had the nightmare.

Ib. p.10.

The purpose of which discourse is this: that no notices are more evident and more certain than the notices of sense; but if we conclude contrary to the true dictate of senses, the fault is in the understanding, collecting false conclusions from right premises. It follows, therefore, that in the matter of the Eucharist we ought to judge that which our senses tell us.

Very unusually lax reasoning for Jeremy Taylor, whose logic is commonly legitimate even where his metaphysic is unsatisfactory. What Romanist ever a.s.serted that a communicant's palate deceived him, when it reported the taste of bread or of wine in the elements?

Ib. s. i. p. 16.

When we discourse of mysteries of faith and articles of religion, it is certain that the greatest reason in the world, to which all other reasons must yield, is this--'G.o.d hath said it, therefore it is true.'

Doubtless: it is a syllogism demonstrative. All that G.o.d says is truth, is necessarily true. But G.o.d hath said this; 'ergo,' &c. But how is the 'minor' to be proved, that G.o.d hath said this? By reason? But it is against reason. By the senses? But it is against the senses.

Ib. s. xii. p. 27.

First; for Christ's body, his natural body, is changed into a spiritual body, and it is not now a natural body, but a spiritual, and therefore cannot be now in the Sacrament after a natural manner, because it is so no where, and therefore not there: 'It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.'

But mercy on me! was this said of the resurgent body of Jesus? a spiritual body, of which Jesus said it was not a spirit. If tangible by Thomas's fingers, why not by his teeth, that is, manducable?

Ib. s. xxviii. p. 44.

So that if there were a plain revelation of Transubstantiation, then this argument were good ... when there are so many seeming impossibilities brought against the Holy Trinity ... And therefore we have found difficulties, and shall for ever, till, in this article, the Church returns to her ancient simplicity of expression.

Taylor should have said, it would have very greatly increased the difficulty of proving that it was really revealed, but supposing that certain, then doubtless it must be believed as far as nonsense can be believed, that is, negatively. From the Apostles' Creed it may be possible to deduce the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity; but a.s.suredly it is not fully expressed therein: and what can Taylor mean by the Church returning to her first simplicity in this article? What less could she say if she taught the doctrine at all, than that the Word and the Spirit are spoken of every where in Scripture as individuals, each distinct from the other, and both from the Father: that of both all the divine attributes are predicated, except self-origination; that the Spirit is G.o.d, and the Word is G.o.d, and that they with the Father are the one G.o.d? And what more does she say now? But Taylor, like Swift, had a strong tendency to Sabellianism.

It is most dangerous, and, in its distant consequences, subversive of all Christianity to admit, as Taylor does, that the doctrine of the Trinity is at all against, or even above, human reason in any other sense, than as eternity and Deity itself are above it. In the former, as well as the latter, we can prove that so it must be, and form clear notions by negatives and oppositions.

Ib. s. xxix. p. 45.

Now concerning this, it is certain it implies a contradiction, that two bodies should be in one place, or possess the place of another, till that be cast forth.

So far from it that I believe the contrary; and it would puzzle Taylor to explain a thousand 'phaenomena' in chemistry on his certainty.

But Taylor a.s.sumed matter to be wholly quant.i.tative, which granted, his opinion would become certain.

Ib. s. x.x.xii. p. 49.

The door might be made to yield to his Creator as easily as water, which is fluid, be made firm under his feet; for consistence or lability are not essential to wood and water.

Here the common basis of water, ice, vapour, steam, 'aqua crystallina', and (possibly) water-gas is called water, and confounded with the species water, that is, the common base 'plus' a given proportion of caloric. To the species water continuity and lability are essential.

Ib. p. 50.

The words in the text are [Greek: kekleismen_on t_on thyr_on] in the past tense, the gates or doors having been shut; but that they were shut in the instant of Christ's entry, it says not: they might of course, if Christ had so pleased, have been insensibly opened, and shut in like manner again; and, if the words be observed, it will appear that St. John mentioned the shutting the doors in relation to the Apostles' fear, not to Christ's entering: he intended not (so far as appears) to declare a miracle.

Thank G.o.d! Here comes common sense.

Ib. ss. xvi-xvii. pp. 71-73.

All most excellent; but O! that Taylor's stupendous wit, subtlety, acuteness, learning and inexhaustible copiousness of argumentation would but tell us what he himself, Dr. Jeremy Taylor, means by eating Christ's body by faith: his body, not his soul or G.o.dhead. Eat a body by faith!