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

Thirdly, you must read Eichorn's Introduction to the Old and New Testament , and the Apocrypha , and his comment on the Apocalypse ; to all which my notes and your own previous studies will supply whatever antidote is wanting; – these will suffice for your Biblical learning, and teach you to attach no more than the supportable weight to these and such like outward evidences of our holy and spiritual religion.

So having done, you will be in point of professional knowledge such a clergyman as will make glad the heart of your loving father,

N. B. – See Book iv Chap. 7, p. 351, both for a masterly confutation of the Paleyo-Grotian evidences of the Gospel, and a decisive proof in what light that system was regarded by the Church of England in its best age. Like Grotius himself, it is half way between Popery and Socinianism.

B. i. c. 3. p. 5.

But men desired only to be like unto God in omniscience and the general knowledge of all things which may be communicated to a creature, as in Christ it is to his human soul.

Surely this is more than doubtful; and even the instance given is irreconcilable with Christ's own assertion concerning the last day, which must be understood of his human soul, by all who hold the faith delivered from the foundation, namely, his deity. Field seems to have excerpted this incautiously from the Schoolmen, who on this premiss could justify the communicability of adoration, as in the case of the saints. Omniscience, it may be proved, implies omnipotence. The fourth of the arguments in this section, and, as closely connected with it, the first (only somewhat differently stated) seem the strongest, or rather the only ones. For the second is a mere anticipation of the fourth, and all that is true in the third is involved in it.

Ib. c. 5. p. 9.

And began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

That is, I humbly apprehend, in other than the Hebrew and Syrochaldaic languages, which (with rare and reluctant exceptions in favor of the Greek) were appropriated to public prayer and exhortation, just as the Latin in the Romish Church. The new converts preached and prayed, each to his companions in his and their dialect; – they were all Jews, but had assembled from all the different provinces of the Roman and Parthian empires, as the Quakers among us to the yearly meeting in London; this was a sign, not a miracle. The miracle consisted in the visible and audible descent of the Holy Ghost, and in the fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel, as explained by St. Peter himself. Acts ii. 15.

Ib. p. 10.

Aliud est etymologia nominis et aliud significatio nominis. Etymologia attenditur secundum id it quo imponitur nomen ad significandum: nominis vero significatio secundum id ad quod significandum imponitur.

This passage from Aquinas would be an apt motto for a critique on Horne Tooke's Diversions of Purley. The best service of etymology is, when the sense of a word is still unsettled, and especially when two words have each two meanings; A=a-b, and B=a-b, instead of A=a and B=b. Thus reason and understanding as at present popularly confounded. Here the etyma, – ratio, the relative proportion of thoughts and things, – and understanding, as the power which substantiates phænomena (substat eis) – determine the proper sense. But most often the etyma being equivalent, we must proceed ex arbitrio, as 'law compels,' 'religion obliges;' or take up what had been begun in some one derivative. Thus 'fanciful' and 'imaginative,' are discriminated; – and this supplies the ground of choice for giving to fancy and imagination, each its own sense. Cowley is a fanciful writer, Milton an imaginative poet. Then I proceed with the distinction, how ill fancy assorts with imagination, as instanced in Milton's Limbo. 21 21 P. L. III. 487. – Ed.

Ib.

I should rather express the difference between the faithful of the Synagogue and those of the Church, thus: – That the former hoped generally by an implicit faith; – "It shall in all things be well with all that love the Lord; therefore it cannot but be good for us and well with us to rest with our forefathers." But the Christian hath an assured hope by an explicit and particular faith, a hope because its object is future, not because it is uncertain. The one was on the road journeying toward a friend of his father's, who had promised he would be kind to him even to the third and fourth generation. He comforts himself on the road, first, by means of the various places of refreshment, which that friend had built for travellers and continued to supply; and secondly, by anticipation of a kind reception at the friend's own mansion-house. But the other has received an express invitation to a banquet, beholds the preparations, and has only to wash and put on the proper robes, in order to sit down.

Ib. p. 11.

The reason why our translators, in the beginning, did choose rather to use the word 'congregation' than 'Church,' was not, as the adversary maliciously imagineth, for that they feared the very name of the Church; but because as by the name of religion and religious men, ordinarily in former times, men understood nothing but factitias religiones , as Gerson out of Anselme calleth them, that is, the professions of monks and friars, so, &c.

For the same reason the word religion for in St. James 22 22 i. 27. See Aids to Reflection . 3d edit . p. 17. n. – Ed. ought now to be altered to ceremony or ritual. The whole version has by change of language become a dangerous mistranslation, and furnishes a favorite text to our moral preachers, Church Socinians and other christened pagans now so rife amongst us. What was the substance of the ceremonial law is but the ceremonial part of the Christian religion; but it is its solemn ceremonial law, and though not the same, yet one with it and inseparable, even as form and substance. Such is St. James's doctrine, destroying at one blow Antinomianism and the Popish popular doctrine of good works.

Ib. c. 18. p. 27.

But if the Church of God remains in Corinth, where there were divisions, sects, emulations , &c. … who dare deny those societies to be the Churches of God, wherein the tenth part of these horrible evils and abuses is not to be found?

It is rare to meet with sophistry in this sound divine; but here he seems to border on it. For first the Corinthian Church upon admonition repented of its negligence; and secondly, the objection of the Puritans was, that the constitution of the Church precluded discipline.

B. II. c. 2. p. 31.

'Miscreant' is twice used in this page in its original sense of misbeliever.

Ib . c. 4. p. 35.

'Discourse' is here used for the discursive acts of the understanding, even as 'discursive, is opposed to 'intuitive' by Milton 23 23 – — whence the soul Reason receives, and reason is her being, Discursive or intuitive. P. L. v. 426. – Ed. and others. Thus understand Shakspeare's "discourse of reason" for those discursions of mind which are peculiar to rational beings.

B. III. c. 1.p. 53.

The first publishers of the Gospel of Christ delivered a rule of faith to the Christian Churches which they founded, comprehending all those articles that are found in that epitome of Christian religion, which we call the Apostles' Creed.

This needs proof. I rather believe that the so called Apostles' Creed was really the Creed of the Roman or Western church, (and possibly in its present form, the catechismal rather than the baptismal creed), – and that other churches in the East had Creeds equally ancient, and, from their being earlier troubled with Anti Trinitarian heresies, more express on the divinity of Christ than the Roman.