The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 30

The pa.s.sage admits of a somewhat different interpretation from this of Waterland's, and of equal, if not greater, force against the Arian notion: namely, taking [Greek: tn ontos onta] distinctively from [Greek: ho on]--the 'Ens omnis ent.i.tatis, etiam suae', that is, the I Am the Father, in distinction from the 'Ens Supremum', the Son. It cannot, however, be denied that in changing the 'formula' of the 'Tetractys'

into the 'Trias', by merging the 'Prothesis' in the 'Thesis', the Ident.i.ty in the Ipseity, the Christian Fathers subjected their exposition to many inconveniences.

Ib. p. 432.

[Greek: Ouch ho poiaetaes ton holon estai Thes ho to Mosei eipon autn einai Then Abraam, ka Then Isaak, ka Then Iakob].--Justin Mart. Dial. p. 180.

The meaning is, that that divine Person, who called himself G.o.d, and was G.o.d, was not the Person of the Father, whose ordinary character is that of maker of all things, but another divine Person, namely, G.o.d the Son. * * It was Justin's business to shew that there was a divine Person, one who was G.o.d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and was not the Father; and therefore there were two divine Persons.

At all events, it was a very incautious expression on the part of Justin, though his meaning was, doubtless, that which Waterland gives.

The same most improper, or at best, most inconvenient because equivocal phrase, has been, as I think, interpolated into our Apostles' Creed.

Ib. p. 436.

[Greek: Taeroito d' an, hos ho ems logos, ehis men Thes, eis hen aition ka Ghiou ka Pneumatos anapheromenon. k.t.l.]--Greg. Naz.

Orat. 29.

We may, as I conceive, preserve (the doctrine of) one G.o.d, by referring both the Son and Holy Ghost to one cause, &c.

Another instance of the inconvenience of the Trias compared with the Tetractys.

[Footnote 1: A Vindication of Christ's Divinity: being a defence of some queries relating to Dr. Clarke's scheme of the Holy Trinity, &c. By Daniel Waterland. 2nd edit. Cambridge, 1719. Ed.]

[Footnote 2:

'Y sino ahi esta el Doctor Jorge Bull Profesor de Teologia, y Presbitero de la Iglesia Anglicana, que murio Obispo de San David el ano de 1716, cuyas obras teologico--escolasticas, en folio, nada deben a las mas alambicadas que se han estampado en Salamanca y en Coimbra; y como los puntos que por la mayor parte trato en ellas son sobre los misterios capitales de nuestra Santa Fe, conviene a saber, sobre el misterio de la Trinidad, y sobre el de la Divinidad de Cristo, en los cuales su Pseudaiglesia Anglicana no se desvia de la Catolica, en verdad, que los manejo con tanto nervio y con tanta delicadeza, que los teologos ortodojos mas escolastizados, como si dijeramos electrizados, hacen grande estimacion de dichas obras. Y aun en los dos Tratados que escribio acerca de la Justification, que es punto mas resvaladizo, en los principios que abrazo, no se separo de los teologos Catolicos; pero en algunas consecuencias que infirio, ya dio bastantemente a entender la mala leche que habia mamado.'

Fray. Gerundio. ii. 7. Ed.]

NOTES ON WATERLAND'S IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY TRINITY.[1]

Chap. I. p. 18.

It is the property of the Divine Being to be unsearchable; and if he were not so, he would not be divine. Must we therefore reject the most certain truths concerning the Deity, only because they are incomprehensible, &c.?

It is strange that so sound, so admirable a logician as Waterland, should have thought 'unsearchable' and 'incomprehensible' synonymous, or at least equivalent terms:--and this, though St. Paul hath made it the privilege of the full-grown Christian, 'to search out the deep things of G.o.d himself'.

Chap. IV. p. 111.

'The delivering over unto Satan' seems to have been a form of excommunication, declaring the person reduced to the state of a heathen; and in the Apostolical age it was accompanied with supernatural or miraculous effects upon the bodies of the persons so delivered.

Unless the pa.s.sage, ('Acts' v. 1-11.) be an authority, I must doubt the truth of this a.s.sertion, as tending to destroy the essential spirituality of Christian motives, and, in my judgment, as irreconcilable with our Lord's declaration, that his kingdom was 'not of this world'. Let me be once convinced that St. Paul, with the elders of an Apostolic Church, knowingly and intentionally appended a palsy or a consumption to the sentence of excommunication, and I shall be obliged to reconsider my old opinion as to the anti-Christian principle of the Romish Inquisition.

Ib. p. 114.

'A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject; knowing that he that is such, is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself'.--t.i.t. iii. 10, 11.

This text would be among my minor arguments for doubting the Paulinity of the Epistle to t.i.tus. It seems to me to breathe the spirit of a later age, and a more established Church power.

Ib.

Not every one that mistakes in judgment, though in matters of great importance, in points fundamental, but he that openly espouses such fundamental error. * * Dr. Whitby adds to the definition, the espousing it out of disgust, pride, envy, or some worldly principle, and against his conscience.

Whitby went too far; Waterland not far enough. Every schismatic is not necessarily a heretic; but every heretic is virtually a schismatic. As to the meaning of [Greek: autokatakritos], Waterland surely makes too much of a very plain matter. What was the sentence pa.s.sed on a heretic?

A public declaration that he was no longer a member of--that is, of one faith with--the Church. This the man himself, after two public notices, admits and involves in the very act of persisting. However confident as to the truth of the doctrine he has set up, he cannot, after two public admonitions, be ignorant that it is a doctrine contrary to the articles of his communion with the Church that has admitted him; and in regard of his alienation from that communion, he is necessarily [Greek: autokatakritos],--though in his pride of heart he might say with the man of old, "And I banish you."

Ib. p. 123.

--as soon as the miraculous gifts, or gift of discerning spirits, ceased.

No one point in the New Testament perplexes me so much as these (so called) miraculous gifts. I feel a moral repugnance to the reduction of them to natural and acquired talents, enn.o.bled and made energic by the life and convergency of faith;--and yet on no other scheme can I reconcile them with the idea of Christianity, or the particular supposed, with the general known, facts. But, thank G.o.d! it is a question which does not in the least degree affect our faith or practice. I mean, if G.o.d permit, to go through the Middletonian controversy, as soon as I can procure the loan of the books, or have health enough to become a reader in the British Museum.

Ib. p. 126.

And what if, after all, spiritual censures (for of such only I am speaking,) should happen to fall upon such a person, he may be in some measure hurt in his reputation by it, and that is all. And possibly hereupon his errors, before invincible through ignorance, may be removed by wholesome instruction and admonition, and so he is befriended in it, &c.

Waterland is quite in the right so far;--but the penal laws, the temporal inflictions--would he have called for the repeal of these?

Milton saw this subject with a mastering eye,--saw that the awful power of excommunication was degraded and weakened even to impotence by any the least connection with the law of the State.

Ib. p. 127.

--who are hereby forbidden to receive such heretics into their houses, or to pay them so much as common civilities. This precept of the Apostle may he further ill.u.s.trated by his own practice, recorded by Irenaeus, who had the information at second-hand from Polycarp, a disciple of St. John's, that St. John, once meeting with Cerinthus at the bath, retired instantly without bathing, for fear lest the bath should fall by reason of Cerinthus being there, the enemy to truth.

Psha! The 'bidding him G.o.d speed',--[Greek: legon auto chairein],--(2 'John', 11,) is a spirituality, not a mere civility. If St. John knew or suspected that Cerinthus had a cutaneous disease, there would have been some sense in the refusal, or rather, as I correct myself, some probability of truth in this gossip of Irenaeus.

Ib. p. 128.