The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 42

Now, suppose the wisdom of these endless attacks on an old abstruse metaphysical notion to be allowed, yet why in the name of common candour does not the Barrister ring the same 'tocsin' against his friend Dr.

Priestley's scheme of Necessity;--or against his idolized Paley, who explained the will as a sensation, produced by the action of the intellect on the muscles, and the intellect itself as a catenation of ideas, and ideas as configurations of the organized brain? Would not every syllable apply, yea, and more strongly, more indisputably? And would his fellow-sectaries thank him, or admit the consequences? Or has any late Socinian divine discovered, that Do as ye would be done unto, is an interpolated precept?

Ib. p. 39.

"Even repentance and faith," (says Dr. Hawker,) "those most essential qualifications of the mind, for the partic.i.p.ation and enjoyment of the blessings of the Gospel, (and which all real disciples of the Lord Jesus cannot but possess,) are 'never supposed as a condition which the sinner performs to ent.i.tle him to mercy', but merely as evidences that he is brought and has obtained mercy. 'They cannot be the conditions' of obtaining salvation."

Ought not this single quotation to have satisfied the Barrister, that no practical difference is deducible from these doctrines? "Essential qualifications," says the Methodist:--"terms and conditions," says the spiritual higgler. But if a man begins to reflect on his past life, is he to withstand the inclination? G.o.d forbid! exclaim both. If he feels a commencing shame and sorrow, is he to check the feeling? G.o.d forbid! cry both in one breath! But should not remembrancers be thrown in the way of sinners, and the voice of warning sound through every street and every wilderness? Doubtless, quoth the Rationalist. We do it, we do it, shout the Methodists. In every corner of every lane, in the high road, and in the waste, we send forth the voice--Come to Christ, and repent, and be cleansed! Aye, quoth the Rationalist, but I say Repent, and become clean, and go to Christ--Now is not Mr. Rationalist as great a bigot as the Methodists, as he is, 'me judice', a worse psychologist?

Part II. p. 40.

The former authorities on this subject I had quoted from the Gospel according to St. Luke: that Gospel most positively and most solemnly declares the 'repentance' of sinners to be the 'condition' on which 'alone' salvation can be obtained. But the doctors of the new divinity 'deny' this: they tell us distinctly 'it cannot' be. For the future, the Gospel according to Calvin must be received as the truth. Sinners will certainly prefer it as the more comfortable of the two beyond all comparison.

Mercy! but only to read Calvin's account of that repentance, without which there is no sign of election, and to call it "the more comfortable of the two?" The very term by which the German New-Birthites express it is enough to give one goose-flesh--'das Herzknirschen'--the very heart crashed between the teeth of a lock-jaw'd agony!

Ib.

What is 'faith'? Is it not a conviction produced in the mind by adequate testimony?

No! that is not the meaning of faith in the Gospel, nor indeed anywhere else. Were it so, the stronger the testimony, the more adequate the faith. Yet who says, I have faith in the existence of George II., as his present Majesty's antecessor and grandfather?--If testimony, then evidence too;--and who has faith that the two sides of all triangles are greater than the third? In truth, faith, even in common language, always implies some effort, something of evidence which is not universally adequate or communicable at will to others. "Well! to be sure he has behaved badly hitherto, but I have faith in him." If it were otherwise, how could it be imputed as righteousness? Can morality exist without choice;--nay, strengthen in proportion as it becomes more independent of the will? "A very meritorious man! he has faith in every proposition of Euclid, which he understands."

Ib. p. 41.

"I could as easily create a world (says Dr. Hawker) as create either faith or repentance in my own heart." Surely this is a most monstrous confession. What! is not the Christian religion a 'revealed' religion, and have we not the most miraculous attestation of its truth?

Just look at the answer of Christ himself to Nicodemus, 'John' iii. 2, 3. Nicodemus professed a full belief in Christ's divine mission. Why? It was attested by his miracles. What answered Christ? "Well said, O believer?" No, not a word of this; but the proof of the folly of such a supposition. 'Verily, verily, I say unto thee; except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of G.o.d',--that is, he cannot have faith in me.

Ib. p. 42.

How can this evangelical preacher declaim on the necessity of seriously searching into the truth of revelation, for the purpose either of producing or confirming our belief of it, when he has already p.r.o.nounced it to be just as possible to arrive at conviction as to create a world?

Did Dr. Hawker say that it was impossible to produce an a.s.sent to the historic credibility of the facts related in the Gospel? Did he say that it was impossible to become a Socinian by the weighing of outward evidences? No! but Dr. Hawker says,--and I say,--that this is not, cannot be, what Christ means by faith, which, to the misfortune of the Socinians, he always demands as the condition of a miracle, instead of looking forward to it as the natural effect of a miracle. How came it that Peter saw miracles countless, and yet was without faith till the Holy Ghost descended on him? Besides, miracles may or may not be adequate evidence for Socinianism; but how could miracles prove the doctrine of Redemption, or the divinity of Christ? But this is the creed of the Church of England.

It is wearisome to be under the necessity, or at least the constant temptation, of attacking Socinianism, in reviewing a work professedly written against Methodism. Surely such a work ought to treat of those points of doctrine and practice, which are peculiar to Methodism. But to publish a 'diatribe' against the substance of the Articles and Catechism of the English Church, nay, of the whole Christian world, excepting the Socinians, and to call it "Hints concerning the dangerous and abominable absurdities of Methodism," is too bad.

Ib. p. 43.

But this Calvinistic Evangelist tells us, by way of accounting for the utter impossibility of producing in himself either faith or repentance, that both are of divine origin, and like the light, and the rain, and the dew of heaven, which tarrieth not for man, neither waiteth for the sons of men, are from above, and come down from the Father of lights, from whom alone cometh every good and perfect gift!

Is the Barrister--are the Socinian divines--inspired, or infallibly sure that it is a crime for a Christian to understand the words of Christ in their plain and literal sense, when a Socinian chooses to give his paraphrase,--often, too, as strongly remote from the words, as the old spiritual paraphrases on the Song of Solomon?

Ib. p. 46.

According to that Gospel which hath hitherto been the pillar of the Christian world, we are taught that whosoever endeavours to the best of his ability to reform his manners, and amend his life, will have pardon and acceptance.

As interpreted by whom? By the Socini, or the Barrister?--Or by Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome, the Gregories, Eusebius, Athanasius?--By Thomas Aquinas, Bernard, Thomas-a-Kempis?--By Luther, Melancthon, Zuinglius, Calvin?--By the Reformers and martyrs of the English Church?--By Cartwright and the learned Puritans?--By Knox?--By George Fox?--With regard to this point, that mere external evidence is inadequate to the production of a saving faith, and in the majority of other opinions, all these agree with Wesley. So they all understood the Gospel. But it is not so! 'Ergo', the Barrister is infallible.

Ib. p. 47.

'When the wicked man turneth away from the wickedness which he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive'. This gracious declaration the old moral divines of our Church have placed in the front of its Liturgy.

In the name of patience, over and over again, who has ever denied this?

The question is, by what power, his own, or by the free grace of G.o.d through Christ, the wicked man is enabled to turn from his wickedness.

And again and again I ask:--Were not these "old moral divines" the authors and compilers of the Homilies? If the Barrister does not know this, he is an ignorant man; if knowing it, he has yet never examined the Homilies, he is an unjust man; but if he have, he is a slanderer and a sycophant.

Is it not intolerable to take up three bulky pamphlets against a recent Sect, denounced as most dangerous, and which we all know to be most powerful and of rapid increase, and to find little more than a weak declamatory abuse of certain metaphysical dogmas concerning free will, or free will forfeited, 'de libero vel servo arbitrio'--of grace, predestination, and the like;--dogmas on which, according to Milton, G.o.d and the Logos conversed, as soon as man was in existence, they in heaven, and Adam in paradise, and the devils in h.e.l.l;--dogmas common to all religions, and to all ages and sects of the Christian religion;--concerning which Brahmin disputes with Brahmin, Mahometan with Mahometan, and Priestley with Price;--and all this to be laid on the shoulders of the Methodists collectively: though it is a notorious fact, that a radical difference on this abstruse subject is the ground of the schism between the Whitfieldite and Wesleyan Methodists; and that the latter coincide in opinion with Erasmus and Arminius, by which latter name they distinguish themselves; and the former with Luther, Calvin, and their great guide, St. Augustine? This I say is intolerable,--yea, a crime against sense, candour, and white paper.

Ib. p. 50.

"For so very peculiarly directed to the sinner, and to him only (says the evangelical preacher) is the blessed Gospel of the Lord Jesus, that unless you are a sinner, you are not interested in its saving truths."

Does not Christ himself say the same in the plainest and most unmistakable words? 'I come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick'. Can he, who has no share in the danger, be interested in the saving? Pleased from benevolence he may be; but interested he cannot be.

'Estne aliquid inter salvum et salutem; inter liberum et libertatem?

Salus est pereuntis, vel saltem periditantis: redemptio, quasi pons divinus, inter servum et libertatem,--amissam, ideoque optatam'.

Ib. p. 52.

It was reserved for these days of 'new discovery' to announce to mankind that, unless they are sinners, they are excluded from the promised blessings of the Gospel.

Merely read 'that unless they are sick they are precluded from the offered remedies of the Gospel;' and is not this the dictate of common sense, as well as of Methodism? But does not Methodism cry aloud that all men are sick--sick to the very heart? 'If we say we are without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us'. This shallow-pated Barrister makes me downright piggish, and without the stratagem of that famed philosopher in pig-nature almost drives me into the Charon's hoy of Methodism by his rude and stupid tail-hauling me back from it.

Ib. p. 53.

I can a.s.sure these gentlemen that I regard with a reverence as pure and awful as can enter into the human mind, that blood which was shed upon the Cross.

That is, in the Barrister's creed, that mysterious flint, which with the subordinate aids of mutton, barley, salt, turnips, and potherbs, makes most wonderful fine flint broth. Suppose Christ had never shed his blood, yet if he had worked his miracles, raised Lazarus, and taught the same doctrines, would not the result have been the same?--Or if Christ had never appeared on earth, yet did not Daniel work miracles as stupendous, which surely must give all the authority to his doctrines that miracles can give? And did he not announce by the Holy Spirit the resurrection to judgment, of glory or of punishment?

Ib. p. 54.

Let them not attempt to escape it by quoting a few disconnected phrases in the Epistles, but let them adhere solely and steadfastly to that Gospel of which they affect to be the exclusive preachers.

And whence has the Barrister learnt that the Epistles are not equally binding on Christians as the four Gospels? Surely, of St. Paul's at least, the authenticity is incomparably clearer than that of the first three Gospels; and if he give up, as doubtless he does, the plenary inspiration of the Gospels, the personal authority of the writers of all the Epistles is greater than two at least of the four Evangelists.

Secondly, the Gospel of John and all the Epistles were purposely written to teach the Christian Faith; whereas the first three Gospels are as evidently intended only as 'memorabilia' of the history of the Christian Revelation, as far as the process of Redemption was carried on in the life, death, and resurrection of the divine Founder. This is the blank, brazen, blushless, or only bra.s.s-blus.h.i.+ng, impudence of an Old Bailey Barrister, attempting to browbeat out of Court the better and more authentic half of the witnesses against him. If I wished to understand the laws of England, shall I consult Hume or Blackstone--him who has written his volumes expressly as comments on those laws, or the historian who mentions them only as far as the laws were connected with the events and characters which he relates or describes? Nay, it is far worse than this; far Christ himself repeatedly defers the publication of his doctrines till after his death, and gives the reason too, that till he had sent the Holy Ghost, his disciples were not capable of comprehending them. Does he not attribute to an immediate influence of especial inspiration even Peter's acknowledgment of his Filiation to G.o.d, or Messiahs.h.i.+p?--Was it from the Gospels that Paul learned to know Christ?--Was the Church sixty years without the awful truths taught exclusively in John's Gospel?

Part III. p. 5.

The 'nostrum' of the mountebank will he preferred to the prescription of the regular pract.i.tioner. Why is this? Because there is something in the authoritative arrogance of the pretender, by which ignorance is overawed.