Samuel Coleridge - The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 3

I am persuaded, that the practice of the Romish church tendeth to make vain the doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ alone; but judging by her most eminent divines, I can find nothing dissonant from the truth in her express decisions on this article. Perhaps it would be safer to say: – Christ alone saves us, working in us by the faith which includes hope and love.

Ib. s. 34. p. 671.

If it were not a strong deluding spirit which hath possession of their hearts; were it possible but that they should see how plainly they do herein gainsay the very ground of apostolic faith?… The Apostle, as if he had foreseen how the Church of Rome would abuse the world in time by ambiguous terms, to declare in what sense the name of grace must be taken, when we make it the cause of our salvation, saith, He saved us according to his mercy , &c.

In all Christian communities there have been and ever will be too many Christians in name only; – too many in belief and notion only: but likewise, I trust, in every acknowledged Church, Eastern or Western, Greek, Roman, Protestant, many of those in belief, more or less erroneous, who are Christians in faith and in spirit. And I neither do nor can think, that any pious member of the Church of Rome did ever in his heart attribute any merit to any work as being his work. 16 16 But see the language of the Council of Trent: Si quis dixerit justitiam acceptam non conservari atque etiam augeri coram. Deo per bona opera ; sed opera ipsa fructus solummodo et signa esse justificationis adeptæ, non autem ipsius augendæ causam ; anathema sit. Sess . VI. Can . 24. … Si quis dixerit hominis justificati bona opera ita esse dona Dei, ut non sint etiam bona ipsius justificati merita ; aut ipsum justificatum bonis operibus , quæ ab eo per Dei gratiam, et Jesu Christi meritum, cujus vivum membrum est, fiunt, non vere mereri augmentum gratiæ, vitam æternam, et ipsius vitæ æternæ, si tamen in gratia decesserit, conscecutionem atque etiam gloriæ augmentum , anathema sit. Ib. Can. 32. – Ed. A grievous error and a mischievous error there was practically in mooting the question at all of the condignity of works and their rewards. In short, to attribute merit to any agent but God in Christ, our faith as Christians forbids us; and to dispute about the merit of works abstracted from the agent, common sense ought to forbid us.

A Supplication Made to the Council by Master Walter Travers

Ib. p. 698.

I said directly and plainly to all men's understanding, that it was not indeed to be doubted, but many of the Fathers were saved; but the means, said I, was not their ignorance, which excuseth no man with God, but their knowledge and faith of the truth, which, it appeareth, God vouchsafed them, by many notable monuments and records extant of it in all ages.

Not certainly, if the ignorance proceeded directly or indirectly from a defect or sinful propensity of the will; but where no such cause is imaginable, in such cases this position of Master Travers is little less than blasphemous to the divine goodness, and in direct contradiction to an assertion of St. Paul's 17 17 Rom. ii. 12. – Ed. , and to an evident consequence from our Saviour's own words on the polygamy of the fathers. 18 18 Matt. xix. 8. – Ed.

Answer to Travers

Ib. p. 719.

The next thing discovered, is an opinion about the assurance of men's persuasion in matters of faith. I have taught, he saith, 'That the assurance of things which we believe by the word, is not so certain as of that we perceive by sense.'

A useful instance to illustrate the importance of distinct, and the mischief of equivocal or multivocal, terms. Had Hooker said that the fundamental truths of religion, though perhaps even more certain, are less evident than the facts of sense, there could have been no misunderstanding. Thus the demonstrations of algebra possess equal certainty with those of geometry, but cannot lay claim to the same evidence. Certainty is positive, evidence relative; the former, strictly taken, insusceptible of more or less, the latter capable of existing in many different degrees.

Writing a year or more after the preceding note, I am sorry to say that Hooker's reasoning on this point seems to me sophistical throughout. That a man must see what he sees is no persuasion at all, nor bears the remotest analogy to any judgment of the mind. The question is, whether men have a clearer conception and a more stedfast conviction of the objective reality to which the image moving their eye appertains, than of the objective reality of the things and states spiritually discovered by faith. And this Travers had a right to question wherever a saving faith existed.

August, 1826.

Sermon IV a Remedy Against Sorrow and Fear

Ib. p. 801.

In spirit I am with you to the world's end.

O how grateful should I be to be made intuitive of the truth intended in the words – In spirit I am with you!

Ib. p. 808.

Touching the latter affection of fear, which respecteth evils to come, as the other which we have spoken of doth present evils; first, in the nature thereof it is plain that we are not every future evil afraid. Perceive we not how they, whose tenderness shrinketh at the least rase of a needle's point, do kiss the sword that pierceth their souls quite thorow?

In this and in sundry similar passages of this venerable writer there is a very plausible, but even therefore the more dangerous, sophism; but the due detection and exposure of which would exceed the scanty space of a marginal comment. Briefly, what does Hooker comprehend in the term 'pain?' Whatsoever the soul finds adverse to her well being, or incompatible with her free action? In this sense Hooker's position is a mere truism. But if pain be applied exclusively to the soul finding itself as life, then it is an error.

Ib. p. 811.

Fear then in itself being mere nature cannot in itself be sin, which sin is not nature, but therefore an accessary deprivation.

I suspect a misprint, and that it should be depravation . But if not nature, then it must be a super-induced and incidental depravation of nature. The principal, namely fear, is nature; but the sin, that is, that it is a sinful fear, is but an accessary

Fly-leaf. – Hannah Scollock, her book, February 10 , 1787.

28 March, 1819. 20 20 The following letter was written on, and addressed with, the book to the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. – Ed.

My Dear Derwent,

This one volume, thoroughly understood and appropriated, will place you in the highest ranks of doctrinal Church of England divines (of such as now are), and in no mean rank as a true doctrinal Church historian.

Next to this I recommend Baxter's own Life , edited by Sylvester, with my marginal notes. Here, more than in any of the prelatical and Arminian divines from Laud to the death of Charles II, you will see the strength and beauty of the Church of England, that is, its liturgy, homilies, and articles. By contrasting, too, its present state with that which such excellent men as Baxter, Calamy, and the so called Presbyterian or Puritan divines, would have made it, you will bless it as the bulwark of toleration.