The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 17

Ib. p. 373.

A little after the King was beheaded, Mr. Atkins met this priest in London, and going into a tavern with him, said to him in his familiar way, "What business have you here? I warrant you come about some roguery or other." Whereupon the priest told it him as a great secret, that there were thirty of them here in London, who by instructions from Cardinal Mazarine, did take care of such affairs, and had sat in council, and debated the question, whether the King should be put to death or not;--and that it was carried in the affirmative, and there were but two voices for the negative, which was his own and another's; and that for his part, he could not concur with them, as foreseeing what misery this would bring upon his country. Mr. Atkins stood to the truth of this, but thought it a violation of the laws of friends.h.i.+p to name the man.

Richard Baxter was too thoroughly good for any experience to make him worldly wise; else, how could he have been simple enough to suppose, that Mazarine would leave such a question to be voted 'pro' and 'con', and decided by thirty emissaries in London! And, how could he have reconciled Mazarine's having any share in Charles's death with his own masterly account, pp. 98, 99, 100? Even Cromwell, though he might have prevented, could not have effected, the sentence. The regicidal judges were not his creatures. Consult the Life of Colonel Hutchinson upon this.

Ib. p. 374.

Since this, Dr. Peter Moulin hath, in his Answer to 'Philanax Anglicus', declared that he is ready to prove, when authority will Call him to it, that the King's death, and the change of the government, was first proposed both to the Sorbonne, and to the Pope with his Conclave, and consented to and concluded for by both.

The Pope in his Conclave had about the same influence in Charles's fate as the Pope's eye in a leg of mutton. The letter intercepted by Cromwell was Charles's death-warrant. Charles knew his power; and Cromwell and Ireton knew it likewise, and knew that it was the power of a man who was within a yard's length of a talisman, only not within an arm's length, but which in that state of the public mind, could he but have once grasped it, would have enabled him to blow up Presbyterian and Independent both. If ever a lawless act was defensible on the principle of self-preservation, the murder of Charles might be defended. I suspect that the fatal delay in the publication of the 'Icon Basilike' is susceptible of no other satisfactory explanation. In short it is absurd to burthen this act on Cromwell and his party, in any special sense. The guilt, if guilt it was, was consummated at the gates of Hull; that is, the first moment that Charles was treated as an individual, man against man. Whatever right Hampden had to defend his life against the King in battle, Cromwell and Ireton had in yet more imminent danger against the King's plotting. Milton's reasoning on this point is unanswerable: and what a wretched hand does Baxter make of it!

Ib. p. 375.

But if the laws of the land appoint the n.o.bles, as next the King, to a.s.sist him in doing right, and withhold him from doing wrong, then be they licensed by man's law, and so not prohibited by G.o.d's, to interpose themselves for the safety of equity and innocency, and by all lawful and needful means to procure the Prince to be reformed, but in no case deprived, where the sceptre is inherited! So far Bishop Bilson.

Excellent! O, by all means preserve for him the benefit of his rightful heir-loom, the regal sceptre; only lay it about his shoulders, till he promises to handle it, as he ought! But what if he breaks his promise and your head? or what if he will not promise? How much honester would it be to say, that extreme cases are 'ipso nomine' not generalizable, --therefore not the subjects of a law, which is the conclusion 'per genus singuli in genere inclusi'. Every extreme case must be judged by and for itself under all the peculiar circ.u.mstances. Now as these are not foreknowable, the case itself cannot be predeterminable. Harmodius and Aristogiton did not justify Brutus and Ca.s.sius: but neither do Brutus and Ca.s.sius criminate Harmodius and Aristogiton. The rule applies till an extreme case occurs; and how can this be proved? I answer, the only proof is success and good event; for these afford the best presumption, first, of the extremity, and secondly, of its remediable nature--the two elements of its justification. To every individual it is forbidden. He who attempts it, therefore, must do so on the presumption that the will of the nation is in his will: whether he is mad or in his senses, the event can alone determine.

Ib. p. 398.

The governing power and obligation over the flock is essential to the office of a Pastor or Presbyter as inst.i.tuted by Christ.

There is, [Greek: hos emoige dokei], one flaw in Baxter's plea for his Presbyterian form of Church government, that he uses a metaphor, which, inasmuch as it is but a metaphor, agrees with the thing meant in some points only, as if it were commensurate 'in toto', and virtually identical. Thus, the Presbyter is a shepherd as far as the watchfulness, tenderness, and care, are to be the same in both; but it does not follow that the Presbyter has the same sole power and exclusive right of guidance; and for this reason,--that his flock are not sheep, but men; not of a natural, generic, or even constant inferiority of judgment; but Christians, co-heirs of the promises, and therein of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and of the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. How then can they be excluded from a share in Church Government? The words of Christ, if they may be transferred from their immediate application to the Jewish Synagogue, suppose the contrary;--and that highest act of government, the election of the officers and ministers of the Church, was confessedly exercised by the congregations including the Presbyters and Arch-presbyter or Bishop, in the primitive Church. The question, therefore, is:--Is a national Church, established by law, compatible with Christianity? If so, as Baxter held, the representatives (King, Lords, and Commons,) are or may be representatives of the whole people as Christians as well as civil subjects;--and their voice will then be the voice of the Church, which every individual, as an individual, themselves as individuals, and, 'a fortiori', the officers and administrators appointed by them, are bound to obey at the risk of excommunication, against which there would be no appeal, but to the heavenly Caesar, the Lord and Head of the universal Church. But whether as the accredited representatives and plenipotentiaries of the national Church, they can avail themselves of their conjoint but distinct character, as temporal legislators, to superadd corporal or civil penalties to the spiritual sentence in points peculiar to Christianity, as heretical opinions, Church ceremonies, and the like, thus destroying 'discipline', even as wood is destroyed by combination with fire;--this is a new and difficult question, which yet Baxter and the Presbyterian divines, and the Puritans of that age in general, not only answered affirmatively, but most zealously, not to say furiously, affirmed with anathemas to the a.s.sertors of the negative, and spiritual threats to the magistrates neglecting to interpose the temporal sword. In this respect the present Dissenters have the advantage over their earlier predecessors; but on the other hand they utterly evacuate the Scriptural commands against schism; take away all sense and significance from the article respecting the Catholic Church; and in consequence degrade the discipline itself into mere club-regulations or the by-laws of different lodges;--that very discipline, the capability of exercising which in its own specific nature without superinduction of a destructive and trans.m.u.tual opposite, is the fairest and firmest support of their cause.

20th October, 1829.

Ib. p. 401.

That sententially it must be done by the Pastor or Governor of that particular Church, which the person is to be admitted into, or cast out of.

This most arbitrary appropriation of the words of Christ, and of the apostles, John and Paul, by the Clergy to themselves exclusively, is the [Greek: proton pseudos], the fatal error which has practically excluded Church discipline from among Protestants in all free countries. That it is retained, and an efficient power, among the Quakers, and only in that Sect, who act collectively as a Church,--who not only have no proper Clergy, but will not allow a division of majority and minority, nor a temporary president,--seems to supply an unanswerable confirmation of this my a.s.sertion, and a strong presumption for the validity of my argument. The Wesleyan Methodists have, I know, a discipline, and the power is in their consistory,--a general conclave of priests cardinal since the death of Pope Wesley. But what divisions and secessions this has given rise to; what discontents and heart-burnings it still occasions in their labouring inferior ministers, and in the cla.s.ses, is no less notorious, and may authorize a belief that as the Sect increases, it will be less and less effective; nay, that it has decreased; and after all, what is it compared with the discipline of the Quakers?--Baxter's inconsistency on this subject would be inexplicable, did we not know his zealotry against Harrington, the Deists and the Mystics;--so that, like an electrified pith-ball, he is for ever attracted towards their tenets concerning the pretended perfecting of spiritual sentences by the civil magistrate, but he touches only to fly off again. "Toleration! dainty word for soul-murder! G.o.d grant that my eye may never see a toleration!" he exclaims in his book against Harrington's Oceana.

Ib. p. 405.

As for the democratical conceit of them that say that the Parliament hath their governing power, as they are the people's representatives, and so have the members of the convocation, though those represented have no governing power themselves, it is so palpably self-contradicting, that I need not confute it.

Self-contradicting according to Baxter's sense of the words "represent"

and "govern." But every rational adult has a governing power: namely, that of governing himself.

Ib. p. 412.

That though a subject ought to take an oath in the sense of his rulers who impose it, as far as he can understand it; yet a man that taketh an oath from a robber to save his life is not always bound to take it in the imposer's sense, if he take it not against the proper sense of the words.

This is a point, on which I have never been able to satisfy myself.--The only safe conclusion I have been able to draw, being the folly, mischief, and immorality of all oaths but judicial ones,--and those no farther excepted than as they are means of securing a deliberate consciousness of the presence of the Omniscient Judge. The inclination of my mind is at this moment, to the principle that an oath may deepen the guilt of an act sinful in itself, but cannot be detached from the act; it being understood that a perfectly voluntary and self-imposed oath is itself a sin. The man who compels me to take an oath by putting a pistol to my ear has in my mind clearly forfeited all his right to be treated as a moral agent. Nay, it seems to be a sin to act so as to induce him to suppose himself such. Contingent consequences must be excluded; but would, I am persuaded, weigh in favour of annulling on principle an oath sinfully extorted. But I hate casuistry so utterly, that I could not without great violence to my feelings put the case in all its bearings. For example:--it is sinful to enlarge the power of wicked agents; but to allow them to have the power of binding the conscience of those, whom they have injured, is to enlarge the power, &c. Again: no oath can bind to the perpetration of a sin; but to transfer a sum of money from its rightful owner to a villain is a sin, &c. and twenty other such. But the robber may kill the next man!

Possibly: but still more probably, many, who would be robbers if they could obtain their ends without murder, would resist the temptation if no extenuations of guilt were contemplated;--and one murder is more effective in rousing the public mind to preventive measures, and by the horror it strikes, is made more directly preventive of the tendency, than fifty civil robberies by contract.

Ib. p. 435.

That the minister be not bound to read the Liturgy himself, if another, by whomsoever, be procured to do it; so be it he preach not against it.

Wonderful, that so good and wise a man as Baxter should not have seen that in this the Church would have given up the best, perhaps the only efficient, preservative of her Faith. But for our blessed and truly Apostolic and Scriptural Liturgy, our churches' pews would long ago have been filled by Arians and Socinians, as too many of their desks and pulpits already are.

Part III. p. 59.

As also to make us take such a poor suffering as this for a sign of true grace, instead of faith, hope, love, mortification, and a heavenly mind; and that the loss of one grain of love was worse than a long imprisonment.

Here Baxter confounds his own particular case, which very many would have coveted, with the sufferings of other prisoners on the same score;--sufferings nominally the same, but with few, if any, of Baxter's almost flattering supports.

Ib. p. 60.

It would trouble the reader for me to reckon up the many diseases and dangers for these ten years past, in or from which G.o.d hath delivered me; though it be my duty not to forget to be thankful. Seven months together I was lame with a strange pain in one foot, twice delivered from a b.l.o.o.d.y flux; a spurious cataract in my eye, with incessant webs and networks before it, hath continued these eight years, * * * so that I have rarely one hour's or quarter of an hour's ease. Yet through G.o.d's mercy I was never one hour melancholy, &c.

The power of the soul, by its own act of will, is, I admit, great for any one occasion or for a definite time, yea, it is marvellous. But of such exertions and such an even frame of spirit, as Baxter's were, under such unremitting and almost unheard-of bodily derangements and pains as his, and during so long a life, 1 do not believe a human soul capable, unless substantiated and successively potentiated by an especial divine grace.

Ib. p. 65.

The reasons why I make no larger a profession necessary than the Creed and Scriptures, are, because if we depart from this old sufficient Catholic rule, we narrow the Church, and depart from the old Catholicism.

Why then any Creed? This is the difficulty. If you put the Creed as in fact, and not by courtesy, Apostolic, and on a parity with Scripture, having, namely, its authority in itself, and a direct inspiration of the framers, inspired 'ad id tempus et ad eam rem', on what ground is this to be done, without admitting the binding power of tradition in the very sense of the term in which the Church of Rome uses it, and the Protestant Churches reject it? That it is the sum total made by Apostolic contributions, each Apostle casting, as into a helmet, a several article as his [Greek: symbolon], is the tradition; and this is holden as a mere legendary tale by the great majority of learned divines. That it is simply the Creed of the Western Church is affirmed by many Protestant divines, and some of these divines of our Church. Its comparative simplicity these divines explain by the freedom from heresies enjoyed by the Western Church, when the Eastern Church had been long troubled therewith. Others, again, and not unplausibly, contend that it was the Creed of the Catechumens preparatory to the Baptismal profession of faith, which other was a fuller comment on the union of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, into whose name (or power) they were baptised. That the Apostles' Creed received additions after the Apostolic age, seems almost certain; not to mention the perplexing circ.u.mstance that so many of the Latin Fathers, who give almost the words of the Apostolic Creed, declare it forbidden absolutely to write or by any material form to transmit the 'Canon Fidei', or 'Symbolum' or 'Regula Fidei', the Creed [Greek: kat' hexochaen], by a.n.a.logy of which the question whether such a book was Scripture or not, was to be tried.

With such doubts how can the Apostles' Creed be preferred to the Nicene by a consistent member of the Reformed Catholic Church?

Ib. p. 67.

They think while you (the Independents) seem to be for a stricter discipline than others, that your way or usual practice tendeth to extirpate G.o.dliness out of the land, by taking a very few that can talk more than the rest, and making them the Church, &c.

Had Baxter had as judicious advisers among his theological, as he had among his legal, friends; and had he allowed them equal influence with him; he would not, I suspect, have written this irritating and too egometical paragraph. But Baxter would have disbelieved a prophet who had foretold that almost the whole orthodoxy of the Non-conformists would he retained and preserved by the Independent congregations in England, after the Presbyterian had almost without exception become, first, Arian, then Socinian, and finally Unitarian: that is, the 'demi-semi-quaver' of Christianity, Arminianism being taken for the 'semi-breve'.

Ib. p. 69.

After this I waited on him (Dr. John Owen) at London again, and he came once to me to my lodgings, when I was in town near him. And he told me that he received my chiding letter and perceived that I suspected his reality in the business; but he was so hearty in it that I should see that he really meant as he spoke, concluding in these words, "You shall see it, and my practice shall reproach your diffidence" * * *. About a month after I went to him again, and he had done nothing, but was still hearty for the work. And to be short, I thus waited on him time after time, till my papers had been near a year and a quarter in his hand, and then I advised him to return them to me, which he did, with these words, "I am still a well-wisher to those mathematics;"--without any other words about them, or ever giving me any more exception against them. And this was the issue of my third attempt for union with the Independents.

Dr. Owen was a man of no ordinary intellect. It would be interesting to have his conduct in this point, seemingly so strange, in some measure explained: The words "those mathematics" look like an innuendo, that Baxter's scheme of union, by which all the parties opposed to the Prelatic Church were to form a rival Church, was, like the mathematics, true indeed, but true only in the idea, that is, abstracted from the subject matter. Still there appears a very chilling want of open-heartedness on the part of Owen, produced perhaps by the somewhat overly and certainly most ungracious resentments of Baxter. It was odd at least to propose concord in the tone and on the alleged ground of an old grudge.

Ib.

I have been twenty-six years convinced that dichotomizing will not do it, but that the divine Trinity in Unity hath expressed itself in the whole frame of nature and morality * * *. But he, Mr. George Lawson, had not hit on the true method of the 'vestigia Trinitatis', &c.