The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 47

Ib. p. 370.

'Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.'

Almost every page of this volume makes me feel my own ignorance respecting the interpretation of the language of the Hebrew Prophets, and the want of the one idea which would supply the key. Suppose an Infidel to ask me, how the Jews were to ascertain that John the Baptist was Elijah the Prophet;--am I to a.s.sert the pre-existence of John's personal ident.i.ty as Elijah? If not, why Elijah rather than any other Prophet? One answer is obvious enough, that the contemporaries of John held Elijah as the common representative of the Prophets; but did Malachi do so?

Ib. p. 373.

I cannot conceive a more beautiful synopsis of a work on the Prophecies of the Old Testament, than is given in this Recapitulation. Would that its truth had been equally well substantiated! That it can be, that it will be, I have the liveliest faith;--and that Mr. Davison has contributed as much as we ought to expect, and more than any contemporary divine, I acknowledge, and honor him accordingly. But much, very much, remains to be done, before these three pages merit the name of a Recapitulation.

Disc. VII. p. 375.

If I needed proof of the immense importance of the doctrine of Ideas, and how little it is understood, the following discourse would supply it.

The whole discussion on Prescience and Freewill, with exception of the page or two borrowed from Skelton, displays an unacquaintance with the deeper philosophy, and a helplessness in the management of the particular question, which I know not how to reconcile with the steadiness and clearness of insight evinced in the earlier Discourses. I neither do nor ever could see any other difficulty on the subject, than what is contained and antic.i.p.ated in the idea of eternity.

By Ideas I mean intuitions not sensuous, which can be expressed only by contradictory conceptions, or, to speak more accurately, are in themselves necessarily both inexpressible and inconceivable, but are suggested by two contradictory positions. This is the essential character of all ideas, consequently of eternity, in which the attributes of omniscience and omnipotence are included. Now prescience and freewill are in fact nothing more than the two contradictory positions by which the human understanding struggles to express successively the idea of eternity. Not eternity in the negative sense as the mere absence of succession, much less eternity in the senseless sense of an infinite time; but eternity,--the Eternal; as Deity, as G.o.d.

Our theologians forget that the objection applies equally to the possibility of the divine will; but if they reply that prescience applied to an eternal, 'Entis absoluti tota et simultanea fruitio', is but an anthropomorphism, or term of accommodation, the same answer serves in respect of the human will; for the epithet human does not enter into the syllogism. As to contingency, whence did Mr. Davison learn that it is a necessary accompaniment of freedom, or of free action? My philosophy teaches me the very contrary.

Ib. p. 392.

He contends, without reserve, that the free actions of men are not within the divine prescience; resting his doctrine partly on the a.s.sumption that there are no strict and absolute predictions in Scripture of those actions in which men are represented as free and responsible; and partly on the abstract reason, that such actions are in their nature impossible to be certainly foreknown.

I utterly deny contingency except in relation to the limited and imperfect knowledge of man. But the misery is, that men write about freewill without a single meditation on will absolutely; on the idea [Greek: katt' exochaen] without any idea; and so bewilder themselves in the jungle of alien conceptions; and to understand the truth they overlay their reason.

Disc. VIII. p. 416.

It would not be easy to calculate the good which a man like Mr. Davison might effect, under G.o.d, by a work on the Messianic Prophecies, specially intended for and addressed to the present race of Jews,--if only he would make himself acquainted with their objections and ways of understanding Scripture. For instance, a learned Jew would perhaps contend that this prophecy of Isaiah (c. ii. 2-4,) cannot fairly be interpreted of a mere local origination of a religion historically; as the drama might be described as going forth from Athens, and philosophy from Academus and the Painted Porch, but must refer to an established and continuing seat of wors.h.i.+p, 'a house of the G.o.d of Jacob'. The answer to this is provided in the preceding verse, 'in the top of the mountains'; which irrefragably proves the figurative character of the whole prediction.

Ib. p. 431.

One point, however, is certain and equally important, namely, that the Christian Church, when it comes to recognize more truly the obligation imposed upon it by the original command of its Founder, 'Go teach all nations', &c.

That the duty here recommended is deducible from this text is quite clear to my mind; but whether it is the direct sense and primary intention of the words; whether the first meaning is not negative,--('Have no respect to what nation a man is of, but teach it to all indifferently whom you have an opportunity of addressing',)--this is not so clear. The larger sense is not without its difficulties, nor is this narrower sense without its practical advantages.

Disc. IX. p. 453, 4.

The striking inferiority of several of these latter Discourses in point of style, as compared with the first 150 pages of this volume, perplexes me. It seems more than mere carelessness, or the occasional 'infausta tempora scribendi', can account for. I question whether from any modern work of a tenth part of the merit of these Discourses, either in matter or in force and felicity of diction and composition, as many uncouth and awkward sentences could be extracted. The paragraph in page 453 and 454, is not a specimen of the worst. In a volume which ought to be, and which probably will be, in every young Clergyman's library, these 'maculae' are subjects of just regret. The utility of the work, no less than its great comparative excellence, render its revision a duty on the part of the author; specks are no trifles in diamonds.

Disc. XII. p. 519.

Four such ruling kingdoms did arise. The first, the Babylonian, was in being when the prophecy is represented to have been given. It was followed by the Persian; the Persian gave way to the Grecian; the Roman closed the series.

This is stoutly denied by Eichhorn, who contends that the Mede or Medo-Persian is the second--if I recollect aright. But it always struck me that Eichhorn, like other learned Infidels, is caught in his own snares. For if the prophecies are of the age of the first Empire, and actually delivered by Daniel, there is no reason why the Roman Empire should not have been predicted;--for superhuman predictions, the last two at least must have been. But if the book was a forgery, or a political poem like Gray's Bard or Lycophron's Ca.s.sandra, and later than Antiochus Epiphanes, it is strange and most improbable that the Roman should have escaped notice. In both cases the omission of the last and most important Empire is inexplicable.

Ib. p. 521.

Yet we have it on authority of Josephus, that Daniel's prophecies were read publicly among the Jews in their wors.h.i.+p, as well as their other received Scriptures.

It is but fair, however, to remember that the Jewish Church ranked the book of Daniel in the third cla.s.s only, among the Hagiographic --pa.s.sionately almost as the Jews before and at the time of our Saviour were attached to it.

Ib. p. 522-3.

But to a Jewish eye, or to any eye placed in the same position of view in the age of Antiochus Epiphanes, it is utterly impossible to admit that this superior strength of the Roman power to reduce and destroy, this heavier arm of subjugation, could have revealed itself so plainly, as to warrant the express deliberate description of it.

'Quaere'. See Polybius.

Ib.

We shall yet have to inquire how it could be foreseen that this fourth, this yet unestablished empire, should be the last in the line.

This is a sound and weighty argument, which the preceding does not, I confess, strike me as being. On the contrary, the admission that by a writer of the Maccabaic aera the Roman power could scarcely have been overlooked, greatly strengthens this second argument, as naturally suggesting expectations of change, and wave-like succession of empires, rather than the idea of a last. In the age of Augustus this might possibly have occurred to a profound thinker; but the age of Antiochus was too late to permit the Roman power to escape notice; and not late enough to suggest its exclusive establishment so as to leave no source of succession.

[Footnote 1: Discourses on Prophecy, in which are considered its structure, use and inspiration, being the substance of twelve Sermons preached in the Chapel of Lincoln's Inn in the Lecture founded by the Right Rev. William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester. By John Davison, B.D. 2nd edit. London, 1825.]

NOTES ON IRVING'S BEN-EZRA. [1] 1827.

Christ the WORD.

The Scriptures--The Spirit--The Church.

The Preacher.

Such seemeth to me to be the scheme of the Faith in Christ. The written Word, the Spirit and the Church, are co-ordinate, the indispensable conditions and the working causes of the perpetuity and continued re-nascence and spiritual life of Christ still militant. The Eternal Word, Christ from everlasting, is the 'prothesis' or ident.i.ty;--the Scriptures and the Church are the two poles, or the 'thesis' and 'ant.i.thesis'; the Preacher in direct line under the Spirit, but likewise the point of junction of the written Word and the Church, being the 'synthesis'. And here is another proof of a principle elsewhere by me a.s.serted and exemplified, that divine truths are ever a 'tetractys', or a triad equal to a 'tetractys': 4=1 or 3=4=1. But the entire scheme is a pentad--G.o.d's hand in the world. [2]

It may be not amiss that I should leave a record in my own hand, how far, in what sense, and under what conditions, I agree with my friend, Edward Irving, respecting the second coming of the Son of Man.