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

Dr. Donne and St. Augustine said this without offence; but I much question whether the same would be endured now. That it is, however, in the spirit of Paul and of the Gospel, I doubt not to affirm, and that this great truth is obscured by what in my judgment is the post-Apostolic Christopœdia , I am inclined to think.

Ib.

What canst thou imagine he could foresee in thee? a propensness, a disposition to goodness, when his grace should come? Either there is no such propensness, no such disposition in thee, or, if there be, even that propensness and disposition to the good use of grace, is grace; it is an effect of former grace, and his grace wrought before he saw any such propensness, any such disposition; grace was first, and his grace is his, it is none of thine.

One of many instances in dogmatic theology, in which the half of a divine truth has passed into a fearful error by being mistaken for the whole truth.

Ib. p. 6. D.

God's justice required blood, but that blood is not spilt, but poured from that head to our hearts, into the veins and wounds of our own souls: there was blood shed, but no blood lost.

It is affecting to observe how this great man's mind sways and oscillates between his reason, which demands in the word 'blood' a symbolic meaning, a spiritual interpretation, and the habitual awe for the letter; so that he himself seems uncertain whether he means the physical lymph, serum, and globules that trickled from the wounds of the nails and thorns down the sides and face of Jesus, or the blood of the Son of Man, which he who drinketh not cannot live. Yea, it is most affecting to see the struggles of so great a mind to preserve its inborn fealty to the reason under the servitude to an accepted article of belief, which was, alas! confounded with the high obligations of faith; – faith the co-adunation of the finite individual will with the universal reason, by the submission of the former to the latter. To reconcile redemption by the material blood of Jesus with the mind of the spirit, he seeks to spiritualize the material blood itself in all men! And a deep truth lies hidden even in this. Indeed the whole is a profound subject, the true solution of which may best, God's grace assisting, be sought for in the collation of Paul with John, and specially in St. Paul's assertion that we are baptized into the death of Christ, that we may be partakers of his resurrection and life 32 32 Rom. vi.3, 4, 5. – Ed. . It was not on the visible cross, it was not directing attention to the blood-drops on his temples and sides, that our blessed Redeemer said, This is my body , and this is my blood !

Ib. p. 9. A.

But if we consider those who are in heaven, and have been so from the first minute of their creation, angels, why have they, or how have they any reconciliation? &c.

The history and successive meanings of the term 'angels' in the Old and New Testaments, and the idea that shall reconcile all as so many several forms, and as it were perspectives, of one and the same truth – this is still a desideratum in Christian theology.

Ib. C.

For, at the general resurrection, (which is rooted in the resurrection of Christ, and so hath relation to him) the creature shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God; for which the whole creation groans, and travails in pain yet . (Rom. viii. 21.) This deliverance then from this bondage the whole creature hath by Christ, and that is their reconciliation. And then are we reconciled by the blood of his cross, when having crucified ourselves by a true repentance, we receive the real reconciliation in his blood in the sacrament. But the most proper and most literal sense of these words, is, that all things in heaven and earth be reconciled to God (that is, to his glory, to a fitter disposition to glorify him) by being reconciled to another in Christ; that in him, as head of the church, they in heaven, and we upon earth, be united together as one body in the communion of saints.

A very meagre and inadequate interpretation of this sublime text. The philosophy of life, which will be the corona et finis coronans of the sciences of comparative anatomy and zoology, will hereafter supply a fuller and nobler comment.

Ib. p. 9. A. and B.

The blood of the sacrifices was brought by the high priest in sanctum sanctorum , into the place of greatest holiness; but it was brought but once, in festo expiationis , in the feast of expiation; but in the other parts of the temple it was sprinkled every day. The blood of the cross of Christ Jesus hath had this effect in sancto sanctorum , &c. … (to) Christ Jesus.

A truly excellent and beautiful paragraph.

Ib. C.

If you will mingle a true religion, and a false religion, there is no reconciling of God and Belial in this text. For the adhering of persons born within the Church of Rome to the Church of Rome, our law says nothing to them if they come; but for reconciling to the Church of Rome, for persons born within the allegiance of the king, or for persuading of men to be so reconciled, our law hath called by an infamous and capital name of treason, and yet every tavern and ordinary is full of such traitors, &c.

A strange transition from the Gospel to the English statute-book! But I may observe, that if this statement could be truly made under James I, there was abundantly ampler ground for it in the following reign. And yet with what bitter spleen does Heylyn, Laud's creature, arraign the Parliamentarians for making the same complaint!

Serm. II. Isaiah vii. 14. p. 11.

The fear of giving offence, especially to good men, of whose faith in all essential points we are partakers, may reasonably induce us to be slow and cautious in making up our minds finally on a religious question, and may, and ought to, influence us to submit our conviction to repeated revisals and rehearings. But there may arrive a time of such perfect clearness of view respecting the particular point, as to supersede all fear of man by the higher duty of declaring the whole truth in Jesus. Therefore, having now overpassed six-sevenths of the ordinary period allotted to human life, – resting my whole and sole hope of salvation and immortality on the divinity of Christ, and the redemption by his cross and passion, and holding the doctrine of the Triune God as the very ground and foundation of the Gospel faith, – I feel myself enforced by conscience to declare and avow, that, in my deliberate judgment, the Christopædia prefixed to the third Gospel and concorporated with the first, but, according to my belief, in its present form the latest of the four, was unknown to, or not recognized by, the Apostles Paul and John; and that, instead of supporting the doctrine of the Trinity, and the Filial Godhead of the Incarnate Word, as set forth by John i 1, and by Paul, it, if not altogether irreconcilable with this faith, doth yet greatly weaken and bedim its evidence; and that, by the too palpable contradictions between the narrative in the first Gospel and that in the third, it has been a fruitful magazine of doubts respecting the historic character of the Gospels themselves. I have read most of the criticisms on this text, and my impression is, that no learned Jew can be expected to receive the common interpretation as the true primary sense of the words. The severely literal Aquila renders the Hebrew word . But were it asked of me: Do you then believe our Lord to have been the Son of Mary by Joseph? I reply: It is a point of religion with me to have no belief one way or the other. I am in this way like St. Paul, more than content not to know Christ himself . It is enough for me to know that the Son of God became flesh , 33 33 John i 14. Gal . iv 4. Ed. and more than this, it appears to me, was unknown to the Apostles, or, if known, not taught by them as appertaining to a saving faith in Christ.