The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 13

Ib. p. 87.

For my part, I bless G.o.d, who gave me even under a Usurper, whom I opposed, such liberty and advantage to preach his Gospel with success, which I cannot have under a King to whom I have sworn and performed true subjection and obedience; yea, which no age since the Gospel came into this land did before possess, as far as I can learn from history.

Sure I am that when it became a matter of reputation and honour to be G.o.dly, it abundantly furthered the successes of the ministry. Yea, and I shall add this much more for the sake of posterity, that as much as I have said and written against licentiousness in religion, and for the magistrate's power in it, and though I think that land most happy, whose rulers use their authority for Christ as well as for the civil peace; yet in comparison of the rest of the world, I shall think that land happy that hath but bare liberty to be as good as they are willing to be; and if countenance and maintenance be but added to liberty, and tolerated errors and sects be but forced to keep the peace, and not to oppose the substantials of Christianity, I shall not hereafter much fear such toleration, nor despair that truth will bear down adversaries.

What a valuable and citable paragraph! Likewise it is a happy instance of the force of a cherished prejudice in an honest mind--practically yielding to the truth, but yet with a speculative, "Though I still think, &c."

Ib. p. 128.

Among truths certain in themselves, all are not equally certain unto me; and even of the mysteries of the Gospel I must needs say, with Mr.

Richard Hooker, that whatever some may pretend, the subjective certainty cannot go beyond the objective evidence. * * * Therefore I do more of late than ever discern the necessity of a methodical procedure in maintaining the doctrine of Christianity. * * * My certainty that I am a man is before my certainty that there is a G.o.d.

* * * My certainty that there is a G.o.d is greater than my certainty that he requireth love and holiness of his creature, &c.

There is a confusion in this paragraph, which asks more than a marginal note to disentangle. Briefly, the process of acquirement is confounded with the order of the truths when acquired. A tinder spark gives light to an Argand's lamp: is it therefore more luminous?

Ib. p. 129.

And when I have studied hard to understand some abstruse admired book, as 'de Scientia Dei, de Providentia circa malum, de Decretis, de Praedeterminatione, de Libertate creaturae', &c. I have but attained the knowledge of human imperfection, and to see that the author is but a man as well as I.

On these points I have come to a resting place. Let such articles, as are either to be recognized as facts, for example, sin or evil having its origination in a will; and the reality of a responsible and (in whatever sense freedom is presupposed in responsibility,) of a free will in man;--or acknowledged as laws, for example, the unconditional bindingness of the practical reason;--or to be freely affirmed as necessary through their moral interest, their indispensableness to our spiritual humanity, for example, the personeity, holiness, and moral government and providence of G.o.d;--let these be vindicated from absurdity, from self-contradiction, and contradiction to the pure reason, and restored to simple incomprehensibility. He who seeks for more, knows not what he is talking of; he who will not seek even this is either indifferent to the truth of what he professes to believe, or he mistakes a general determination not to disbelieve for a positive and especial faith, which is only our faith as far as we can a.s.sign a reason for it. O! how impossible it is to move an inch to the right or the left in any point of spiritual and moral concernment, without seeing the damage caused by the confusion of reason with the understanding.

Ib. p. 181.

My soul is much more afflicted with the thoughts of the miserable world, and more drawn out in desire of their conversion than heretofore. I was wont to look but little further than England in my prayers, as not considering the state of the rest of the world;--or if I prayed for the conversion of the Jews, that was almost all. But now as I better understand the care of the world, and the method of the Lord's Prayer, so there is nothing in the world that lieth so heavy upon my heart, as the thought of the miserable nations of the earth.

I dare not not condemn myself for the languid or dormant state of my feelings respecting the Mohammedan and Heathen nations; yet know not in what degree to condemn. The less culpable grounds of this languor are, first, my utter ignorance of G.o.d's purposes with respect to the Heathens; and second, the strong conviction, I have that the conversion of a single province of Christendom to true practical Christianity would do more toward the conversion of Heathendom than an army of Missionaries. Romanism and despotic government in the larger part of Christendom, and the prevalence of Epicurean principles in the remainder;--these do indeed lie heavy on my heart.

Ib. p. 135.

Therefore I confess I give but halting credit to most histories that are written, not only against the Albigenses and Waldenses, but against most of the ancient heretics, who have left us none of their own writings, in which they speak for themselves; and I heartily lament that the historical writings of the ancient schismatics and heretics, as they were called, perished, and that partiality suffered them not to survive, that we might have had more light in the Church affairs of those times, and been better able to judge between the Fathers and them.

It is greatly to the credit of Baxter that he has here antic.i.p.ated those merits which so long after gave deserved celebrity to the name and writings of Beausobre and Lardner, and still more recently in this respect of Eichhorn, Paulus and other Neologists.

Ib. p. 136.

And therefore having myself now written this history of myself, notwithstanding my protestation that I have not in anything wilfully gone against the truth, I expect no more credit from the reader than the self-evidencing light of the matter, with concurrent rational advantages from persons, and things, and other witnesses, shall constrain him to.

I may not unfrequently doubt Baxter's memory, or even his competence, in consequence of his particular modes of thinking; but I could almost as soon doubt the Gospel verity as his veracity.

Book I. Part II. p.139.

The following Book of this Work is interesting and most instructive as an instance of Syncretism, and its Epicurean 'clinamen', even when it has been undertaken from the purest and most laudable motives, and from impulses the most Christian, and yet its utter failure in its object, that of tending to a common centre. The experience of eighteen centuries seems to prove that there is no practicable 'medium' between a Church comprehensive (which is the only meaning of a Catholic Church visible) in which A. in the North or East is allowed to advance officially no doctrine different from what is allowed to B. in the South or West;--and a co-existence of independent Churches, in none of which any further unity is required but that between the minister and his congregation, while this again is secured by the election and continuance of the former depending wholly on the will of the latter.

Perhaps the best state possible, though not the best possible state, is where both are found, the one established by maintenance, the other by permission; in short that which we now enjoy. In such a state no minister of the former can have a right to complain, for it was at his own option to have taken the latter; 'et volenti nulla fit injuria'. For an individual to demand the freedom of the independent single Church when he receives 500 a year for submitting to the necessary restrictions of the Church General, is impudence and Mammonolatry to boot.

Ib. p. 141.

They (the Erastians) misunderstood and injured their brethren, supposing and affirming them to claim as from G.o.d a coercive power over the bodies or purses of men, and so setting up 'imperium in imperio'; whereas all temperate Christians (at least except Papists) confess that the Church hath no power of force, but only to manage G.o.d's word unto men's consciences.

But are not the receivers as bad as the thief? Is it not a poor evasion to say:--"It is true I send you to a dungeon there to rot, because you do not think as I do concerning some point of faith;--but this only as a civil officer. As a divine I only tenderly entreat and persuade you!"

Can there be fouler hypocrisy in the Spanish Inquisition than this?

Ib. p. 142.

That hereby they (the Diocesan party) altered the ancient species of Presbyters, to whose office the spiritual government of their proper folks as truly belonged, as the power of preaching and wors.h.i.+ping G.o.d did.

I could never rightly understand this objection of Richard Baxter's.

What power not possessed by the Rector of a parish, would he have wished a parochial Bishop to have exerted? What could have been given by the Legislature to the latter which might not be given to the former? In short Baxter's plan seems to do away Archbishops--[Greek: koino episkopoi]--but for the rest to name our present Rectors and Vicars Bishops. I cannot see what is gained by his plan. The true difficulty is that Church discipline is attached to an Establishment by this world's law, not to the form itself established: and his objections from paragraph 5 to paragraph 10 relate to particular abuses, not to Episcopacy itself.

Ib. p. 143.

But above all I disliked that most of them (the Independents) made the people by majority of votes to be Church governors in excommunications, absolutions, &c., which Christ hath made an act of office; and so they governed their governors and themselves.

Is not this the case with the Houses of Legislature? The members taken individually are subjects; collectively governors.

Ib. p. 177.

The extraordinary gifts of the Apostles, and the privilege of being eye and ear witnesses to Christ, were abilities which they had for the infallible discharge of their function, but they were not the ground of their power and authority to govern the Church. * * * 'Potestas clavium' was committed to them only, not to the Seventy.

I wish for a proof, that all the Apostles had any extraordinary gifts which none of the LXX. had. Nay as an Episcopalian of the Church of England, I hold it an unsafe and imprudent concession, tending to weaken the governing right of the Bishops. But I fear that as the law and right of patronage in England now are, the question had better not be stirred; lest it should be found that the true power of the keys is not, as with the Papists, in hands to which it is doubtful whether Christ committed them exclusively; but in hands to which it is certain that Christ did not commit them at all.

Ib. p. 179.

It followeth not a mere Bishop may have a mult.i.tude of Churches, because an Archbishop may, who hath many Bishops under him.

What then does Baxter quarrel about? That our Bishops take a humbler t.i.tle than they have a right to claim;--that being in fact Archbishops, they are for the most part content to be styled as one of the brethren!

Ib. p. 185.

I say again, No Church, no Christ; for no body, no head; and if no Christ then, there is no Christ now.

Baxter here forgets his own mystical regenerated Church. If he mean this, it is nothing to the argument in question; if not, then he must a.s.sert the monstrous absurdity of, No unregenerate Church, no Christ.

Ib. p. 188.