The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 48

I. How far? First, instead of the full and entire conviction, the positive a.s.surance, which Mr. Irving entertains, I--even in those points in which my judgment most coincides with his,--profess only to regard them as probable, and to vindicate them as nowise inconsistent with orthodoxy. They may be believed, and they may be doubted, 'salva Catholica fide'. Further, from these points I exclude all prognostications of time and event; the mode, the persons, the places, of the accomplishment; and I decisively protest against all parts of Mr.

Irving's and of Lacunza's scheme grounded on the books of Daniel or the Apocalypse, interpreted as either of the two, Irving or Lacunza, understands them. Again, I protest against all identification of the coming with the Apocalyptic Millennium, which in my belief began under Constantine.

II. In what sense? In this and no other, that the objects of the Christian Redemption will be perfected on this earth;--that the kingdom of G.o.d and his Word, the latter as the Son of Man, in which the divine will shall 'be done on earth as it is in heaven', will 'come';--and that the whole march of nature and history, from the first impregnation of Chaos by the Spirit, converges toward this kingdom as the final cause of the world. Life begins in detachment from Nature, and ends in union with G.o.d.

III. Under what conditions? That I retain my former convictions respecting St. Michael, and the ex-saint Lucifer, and the Genie Prince of Persia, and the re-inst.i.tution of b.e.s.t.i.a.l sacrifices in the Temple at Jerusalem, and the rest of this cla.s.s. All these appear to me so many pimples on the face of my friend's faith from inward heats, leaving it indeed a fine handsome intelligent face, but certainly not adding to its comeliness.

Such are the convictions of S. T. Coleridge, May, 1827.

P.S. I fully agree with Mr. Irving as to the literal fulfilment of all the prophecies which respect the restoration of the Jews. ('Deuteron.'

xxv. 1-8.)

It may be long before Edward Irving sees what I seem at least to see so clearly,--and yet, I doubt not, the time will come when he too will see with the same evidentness,--how much grander a front his system would have presented to judicious beholders; on how much more defensible a position he would have placed it,--and the remark applies equally to Ben Ezra (that is, Emanuel Lacunza)--had he trusted the proof to Scriptures of undisputed catholicity, to the spirit of the whole Bible, to the consonance of the doctrine with the reason, its fitness to the needs and capacities of mankind, and its harmony with the general plan of the divine dealings with the world,--and had left the Apocalypse in the back ground. But alas! instead of this he has given it such prominence, such prosiliency of relief, that he has made the main strength of his hope appear to rest on a vision, so obscure that his own author and faith's-mate claims a meaning for its contents only on the supposition that the meaning is yet to come!

Preliminary Discourse, p. lx.x.x.

Now of these three, the office of Christ, as our prophet, is the means used by the Holy Spirit for working the redemption of the understanding of men; that faculty by which we acquire the knowledge on which proceed both our inward principles of conduct and our outward acts of power.

I cannot forbear expressing my regret that Mr. Irving has not adhered to the clear and distinct exposition of the understanding, 'genere et gradu', given in the Aids to Reflection. [3]

What can be plainer than to say: the understanding is the medial faculty or faculty of means, as reason on the other hand is the source of ideas or ultimate ends. By reason we determine the ultimate end: by the understanding we are enabled to select and adapt the appropriate means for the attainment of, or approximation to, this end, according to circ.u.mstances. But an ultimate end must of necessity be an idea, that is, that which is not representable by the sense, and has no entire correspondent in nature, or the world of the senses. For in nature there can be neither a first nor a last:--all that we can see, smell, taste, touch, are means, and only in a qualified sense, and by the defect of our language, ent.i.tled ends. They are only relatively ends in a chain of motives. B. is the end to A.; but it is itself a mean to C., and in like manner C. is a mean to D., and so on. Thus words are the means by which we reduce appearances, or things presented through the senses, to their several kinds, or 'genera'; that is, we generalize, and thus think and judge. Hence the understanding, considered specially as an intellective power, is the source and faculty of words;--and on this account the understanding is justly defined, both by Archbishop Leighton, and by Immanuel Kant, the faculty that judges by, or according to, sense.

However, practical or intellectual, it is one and the same understanding, and the definition, the medial faculty, expresses its true character in both directions alike. I am urgent on this point, because on the right conception of the same, namely, that understanding and sense (to which the sensibility supplies the material of outness, 'materiam objectivam',) const.i.tute the natural mind of man, depends the comprehension of St. Paul's whole theological system. And this natural mind, which is named the mind of the flesh, [Greek: phronaema sarks], as likewise [Greek: psychikae synesis], the intellectual power of the living or animal soul, St. Paul everywhere contradistinguishes from the spirit, that is, the power resulting from the union and co-inherence of the will and the reason;--and this spirit both the Christian and elder Jewish Church named, 'sophia', or wisdom.

Ben-Ezra. Part I. c. v. p. 67.

Eusebius and St. Epiphanius name Cerinthusas the inventor of many corruptions. That heresiarch being given up to the belly and the palate, placed therein the happiness of man. And so taught his disciples, that after the Resurrection, * * *. And what appeared most important, each would be master of an entire seraglio, like a Sultan, &c.

I find very great difficulty in crediting these black charges on Cerinthus, and know not how to reconcile them with the fact that the Apocalypse itself was by many attributed to Cerinthus. But Mr. Hunt is not more famous for blacking than some of the Fathers.

Ib. pp. 73, 4.

Against whom a very eloquent man, Dionysius Alexandrinus, a Father of the Church, wrote an elegant work, to ridicule the Millennarian fable, the golden and gemmed Jerusalem on the earth, the renewal of the Temple, the blood of victims. If the book of St. Dionysius had contained nothing but the derision and confutation of all we have just read, it is certain that he doth in no way concern himself with the harmless Millennarians, but with the Jews and Judaizers. It is to be clearly seen that Dionysius had nothing in his eye, but the ridiculous excesses of Nepos, and his peculiar tenets upon circ.u.mcision, &c.

Lacunza, I suspect, was ignorant of Greek: and seems not to have known that the object of Dionysius was to demonstrate that the Apocalypse was neither authentic nor a canonical book.

Ib. p. 85.

The ruin of Antichrist, with all that is comprehended under that name, being entirely consummated, and the King of kings remaining master of the field, St. John immediately continues in the 20th chapter, which thus commenceth: 'And I saw an angel come down from heaven, &c. And I saw thrones, &c. And when a thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.'

It is only necessary to know that the whole book from the first verse to the last is written in symbols, to be satisfied that the true meaning of this pa.s.sage is simply, that only the great Confessors and Martyrs will be had in remembrance and honour in the Church after the establishment of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. And observe, it is the souls that the Seer beholds:--there is not a word of the resurrection of the body;--for this would indeed have been the appropriate symbol of a resurrection in a real and personal sense.

Ib. c. vi. p. 108.

Now this very thing St. John likewise declareth * * to wit, 'that they who have been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of G.o.d, and they who have not wors.h.i.+pped the beast', these shall live, 'or be raised' at the coming of the Lord, 'which is the first resurrection.'

Aye! but by what authority is this synonimizing "or" a.s.serted? The Seer not only does not speak of any resurrection, but by the word [Greek: psychas], souls, expressly a.s.serts the contrary. In no sense of the word can souls, which descended in Christ's train ('chorus sacer animarum et Christi comitatus') from Heaven, be said 'resurgere'. Resurrection is always and exclusively resurrection in the body;--not indeed a rising of the 'corpus' [Greek: phantastikon], that is, the few ounces of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and phosphate of lime, the 'copula' of which that gave the form no longer exists,--and of which Paul exclaims;--'Thou fool! not this', &c.--but the 'corpus' [Greek: hypostatikn, ae noumenon].

But there is yet another and worse wresting of the text. Who that reads Lacunza, p. 108, last line but twelve, would not understand that the Apocalypt had a.s.serted this enthronement of the souls of the Gentile and Judaeo-Christian Martyrs which he beheld in the train or suite of the descending Messiah; and that he had first seen them in the descent, and afterward saw thrones a.s.signed to them? Whereas the sentence precedes, and has positively no connection with these souls. The literal interpretation of the symbols c. xx. v. 4, is, "I then beheld the Christian religion the established religion of the state throughout the Roman empire;--emperors, kings, magistrates, and the like, all Christians, and administering laws in the name of Christ, that is, receiving the Scriptures as the supreme and paramount law. Then in all the temples the name of Jesus was invoked as the King of glory, and together with him the old afflicted and tormented fellow-laborers with Christ were revived in high and reverential commemoration," &c. But that the whole Vision from first to last, in every sentence, yea, every word, is symbolical, and in the boldest, largest style of symbolic language; and secondly, that it is a work of disputed canonicity, and at no known period of the Church could truly lay claim to catholicity;--but for this, I think this verse would be worth a cartload of the texts which the Romanist divines and catechists ordinarily cite as sanctioning the invocation of Saints.

Ib. p. 110.

You will say nevertheless, that even the wicked will be raised incorruptible to inherit incorruption, because being once raised, their bodies will no more change or be dissolved, but must continue entire, for ever united with their sad and miserable souls. Well, and would you call this corruption or incorruptibility? Certainly this is not the sense of the Apostle, when he formally a.s.sures us, yea, even threatens us, that corruption cannot inherit incorruption. 'Neither doth corruption inherit incorruption'. What then may this singular expression mean? This is what it manifestly means;--that no person, whoever he may be, without any exception, who possesseth a corrupt heart and corrupt actions, and therein persevereth unto death, shall have reason to expect in the resurrection a pure, subtile, active and impa.s.sible body.

This is actually dangerous tampering with the written letter.

Without touching on the question whether St. Paul in this celebrated chapter (1 'Cor'. xv.) speaks of a partial or of the general resurrection, or even conceding to Lacunza that the former opinion is the more probable; I must still vehemently object to this Jesuitical interpretation of corruption, as used in a moral sense, and distinctive of the wicked souls. St. Paul nowhere speaks dogmatically or preceptively (not popularly and incidentally,) of a soul as the proper 'I'. It is always 'we', or the man. How could a regenerate saint put off corruption at the sound of the trump, if up to that hour it did not in some sense or other appertain to him? But what need of many words? It flashes on every reader whose imagination supplies an unpreoccupied, unrefracting, 'medium' to the Apostolic a.s.sertion, that corruption in this pa.s.sage is a descriptive synonyme of the material sensuous organism common to saint and sinner,--standing in precisely the same relation to the man that the testaceous offensive and defensive armour does to the crab and tortoise. These slightly combined and easily decomponible stuffs are as incapable of subsisting under the altered conditions of the earth as an hydatid in the blaze of a tropical sun. They would be no longer 'media' of communion between the man and his circ.u.mstances.

A heavy difficulty presses, as it appears to me, on Lacunza's system, as soon as we come to consider the general resurrection. Our Lord (in books of indubitable and never doubted catholicity) speaks of some who rise to bliss and glory, others who at the same time rise to shame and condemnation. Now if the former cla.s.s live not during the whole interval from their death to the general resurrection, including the Millennium, or 'Dies Messiae',--how should they, whose imperfect or insufficient merits excluded them from the kingdom of the Messiah on earth, be all at once fitted for the kingdom of heaven?

Ib. ch. vii. p. 118.

It appears to me that this sentence, being looked to attentively, means in good language this only, that the word 'quick', which the Apostles, full of the Holy Spirit, set down, is a word altogether useless, which might without loss have been omitted, and that it were enough to have set down the word 'dead': for by that word alone is the whole expressed, and with much more clearness and brevity.

The narrow outline within which the Jesuits confined the theological reading of their 'alumni' is strongly marked in this (in so many respects) excellent work: for example, the "most believing mind," with which Lacunza takes for granted the exploded fable of the Catechumens'

('vulgo' Apostles') Creed having been the quotient of an Apostolic 'pic-nic', to which each of the twelve contributed his several 'symbolum'.

Ib. ch. ix. p. 127.

The Apostle, St. Peter, speaking of the day of the Lord, says, that that day will come suddenly, &c. (2 Pet. iii. 10.)

There are serious difficulties besetting the authenticity of the Catholic Epistles under the name of Peter; though there exist no grounds for doubting that they are of the Apostolic age. A large portion too of the difficulties would be removed by the easy and nowise improbable supposition, that Peter, no great scholar or grammarian, had dictated the substance, the matter, and left the diction and style to his 'amanuensis', who had been an auditor of St. Paul. The tradition which connects, not only Mark, but Luke the Evangelist, the friend and biographer of Paul, with Peter, as a secretary, is in favour of this hypothesis. But what is of much greater importance, especially for the point in discussion, is the character of these and other similar descriptions of the 'Dies Messiae', the 'Dies ultima', and the like. Are we bound to receive them as articles of faith? Is there sufficient reason to a.s.sert them to have been direct revelations immediately vouchsafed to the sacred writers? I cannot satisfy my judgment that there is;--first, because I find no account of any such events having been revealed to the Patriarchs, or to Moses, or to the Prophets; and because I do find these events a.s.serted, and (for aught I have been able to discover,) for the first time, in the Jewish Church by uninspired Rabbis, in nearly or altogether the same words as those of the Apostles, and know that before and in the Apostolic age, these antic.i.p.ations had become popular, and generally received notions; and lastly, because they were borrowed by the Jews from the Greek philosophy, and like several other notions, taken from less respectable quarters, adapted to their ancient and national religious belief. Now I know of no revealed truth that did not originate in Revelation, and find it hard to reconcile my mind to the belief that any Christian truth, any essential article of faith, should have been first made known by the father of lies, or the guess-work of the human understanding blinded by Paganism, or at best without the knowledge of the true G.o.d. Of course I would not apply this to any a.s.sertion of any New Testament writer, which was the final aim and primary intention of the whole pa.s.sage; but only to sentences 'in ordine ad' some other doctrine or precept, 'ill.u.s.trandi causa', or 'ad hominem', or 'more suasorio sive ad ornaturam, et rhetorice'.

Ib. Part II. p. 145.

Second characteristic. 'The kingdom shall be divided.'--Third characteristic. 'The kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle.'--Fourth characteristic. 'They shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another.'

How exactly do these characters apply to the Greek Empire under the successors of Alexander,--when the Greeks were dispersed over the civilized world, as artists, rhetoricians, 'grammatici', secretaries, private tutors, parasites, physicians, and the like!

Ib. p. 153.

'For to them he thus speaketh in the Gospel: And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pa.s.s, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.'

I cannot deny that there is great force and an imposing verisimilitude in this and the preceding chapter, and much that demands silent thought and respectful attention. But still the great question presses on me:--'coming in a cloud'! What is the true import of this phrase? Has not G.o.d himself expounded it? To the Son of Man, the great Apostle a.s.sures us, all power is given in heaven and on earth. He became Providence,--that is, a Divine Power behind the cloudy veil of human agency and worldly events and incidents, controlling, disposing, and directing acts and events to the gradual unfolding and final consummation of the great scheme of Redemption; the casting forth of the evil and alien nature from man, and thus effecting the union of the creature with the Creator, of man with G.o.d, in and through the Son of Man, even the Son of G.o.d made manifest. Now can it be doubted by the attentive and unprejudiced reader of St. Matthew, c. xxiv, that the Son of Man, in fact, came in the utter destruction and devastation of the Jewish Temple and State, during the period from Vespasian to Hadrian, both included; and is it a sufficient reason for our rejecting the teaching of Christ himself, of Christ glorified and in his kingly character, that his Apostles, who disclaim all certain knowledge of the awful event, had understood his words otherwise, and in a sense more commensurate with their previous notions and the prejudices of their education? They communicated their conjectures, but as conjectures, and these too guarded by the avowal, that they had no revelation, no revealed commentary on their Master's words, upon this occasion, the great apocalypse of Jesus Christ while yet in the flesh. For by this t.i.tle was this great prophecy known among the Christians of the Apostolic age.

Ib. p. 253.

Never, Oh! our Lady! never, Oh! our Mother! shalt thou fall again into the crime of idolatry.