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

B. iii. c. iii. 1. p. 447.

The mixture of those things by speech, which by nature are divided, is the mother of all error.

'The division in thought of those things which in nature are distinct, yet one, that is, distinguished without breach of unity, is the mother,' – so I should have framed the position. Will, reason, life, – ideas in relation to the mind, are instances; entiæ indivise interdistinctæ; and the main arguments of the atheists, materialists, deniers of our Lord's divinity and the like, all rest on the asserting of division as a necessary consequence of distinction.

B. v. c. xix. 3. vol. ii. p. 87.

Of both translations the better I willingly acknowledge that which cometh nearer to the very letter of the original verity; yet so that the other may likewise safely enough be read, without any peril at all of gainsaying as much as the least jot or syllable of God's most sacred and precious truth.

Hooker had far better have rested on the impossibility and the uselessness, if possible, of a faultless translation; and admitting certain mistakes, and oversights, have recommended them for notice at the next revision; and then asked, what objection such harmless trifles could be to a Church that never pretended to infallibility! But in fact the age was not ripe enough even for a Hooker to feel, much less with safety to expose, the Protestants' idol, that is, their Bibliolatry.

Ib. c. xxii. 10. p. 125.

Their only proper and direct proof of the thing in question had been to shew, in what sort and how far man's salvation doth necessarily depend upon the knowledge of the word of God; what conditions, properties, and qualities there are, whereby sermons are distinguished from other kinds of administering the word unto that purpose; and what special property or quality that is, which being no where found but in sermons, maketh them effectual to save souls, and leaveth all other doctrinal means besides destitute of vital efficacy.

Doubtless, Hooker was a theological Talus, with a club of iron against, opponents with pasteboard helmets, and armed only with crabsticks! But yet, I too, too often find occasion to complain of him as abusing his superior strength. For in a good man it is an abuse of his intellectual superiority, not to use a portion of it in stating his Christian opponents' cause, his brethren's (though dissentient, and perhaps erring, yet still brethren's,) side of the question, not as they had stated and argued it, but as he himself with his higher gifts of logic and foresight could have set it forth. But Hooker flies off to the general, in which he is unassailable; and does not, as in candour he should have done, inquire whether the question would not admit of, nay, demand, a different answer, when applied solely or principally to the circumstances, the condition and the needs of the English parishes, and the population at large, at the particular time when the Puritan divines wrote, and he, Hooker, replied to them. Now let the cause be tried in this way, and I should not be afraid to attempt the proof of the paramount efficacy of preaching on the scheme, and in the line of argument laid down by himself in this section. In short, Hooker frequently finds it convenient to forget the homely proverb; 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating.' Whose parishes were the best disciplined, whose flocks the best fed, the soberest livers, and the most awakened and best informed Christians, those of the zealous preaching divines, or those of the prelatic clergy with their readers? In whose churches and parishes were all the other pastoral duties, catechizing, visiting the poor and the like, most strictly practised?

Ib. 11.

The people which have no way to come to the knowledge of God, no prophesying, no teaching, perish. But that they should of necessity perish, where any one way of knowledge lacketh, is more than the words of Solomon import.

But what was the fact? Were those congregations that had those readers of whom the Puritans were speaking – were they, I say, equally well acquainted with, and practically impressed by, the saving truths of the Gospel? Were they not rather perishing for lack of knowledge? To reply, – It was their own fault; they ought to have been more regular in their attendance at church, and more attentive, when there, to what was there read, – is to my mind too shocking, nay, antichristian.

Ib. 16. p.137.

Now all these things being well considered, it shall be no intricate matter for any man to judge with indifferency, on which part the good of the church is most conveniently sought; whether on ours, whose opinion is such as hath been shewed, or else on theirs, who leaving no ordinary way of salvation for them unto whom the word of God is but only read, do seldom name them but with great disdain and contempt, who execute that service in the church of Christ.

If so, they were much to be blamed. But surely this was not the case with the better and wiser part of those who, clinging to the tenets and feelings of the first Reformers, and honouring Archbishop Grindal as much as they dreaded his Arminian successors, were denominated Puritans! They limited their censures to exclusive reading, – to reading as the substitute for, and too often for the purpose of doing away with, preaching.

Ib. lxv. 8. p. 415.

Thus was the memory of that sign which they had in baptism a kind of bar or prevention to keep them even from apostasy, whereinto the frailty of flesh and blood, overmuch fearing to endure shame, might peradventure the more easily otherwise have drawn them.

I begin to fear that Hooker is not suited to my nature. I cannot bear round-abouts for the purpose of evading the short cut straight before my eyes. Exempli gratia; I find myself tempted in this place to ejaculate Psha! somewhat abruptly, and ask, 'How many in twenty millions of Christian men and women ever reverted to the make-believe impression of the Cross on their forehead in unconscious infancy, by the wetted tip of the clergyman's finger as a preservative against anger and resentment? 'The whole church of God!' Was it not the same church which, neglecting and concealing the Scriptures of God, introduced the adoration of the Cross, the worshipping of relics, holy water, and all the other countless mummeries of Popery? Something might be pretended for the material images of the Cross worn at the bosom or hung up in the bed-chamber. These may, and doubtless often do, serve as silent monitors; but this eye-falsehood or pretence of making a mark that is not made, is a gratuitous superstition, that cannot be practised without serious danger of leading the vulgar to regard it as a charm. Hooker should have asked – Has it hitherto had this effect on Christians generally? Is it likely to produce this effect and this principally? In common honesty he must have answered, No! – Do I then blame the Church of England for retaining this ceremony? By no means. I justify it as a wise and pious condescension to the inveterate habits of a people newly dragged, rather than drawn, out of Papistry; and as a pledge that the founders and fathers of the Reformation in England regarded innovation as per se an evil, and therefore requiring for its justification not only a cause, but a weighty cause. They did well and piously in deferring the removal of minor spots and stains to the time when the good effects of the more important reforms had begun to shew themselves in the minds and hearts of the laity. – But they do not act either wisely or charitably who would eulogize these maculæ as beauty-spots and vindicate as good what their predecessors only tolerated as the lesser evil.

12th Aug. 1826.

Ib. 15. p. 424.

For in actions of this kind we are more to respect what the greatest part of men is commonly prone to conceive, than what some few men's wits may devise in construction of their own particular meanings. Plain it is, that a false opinion of some personal divine excellency to be in those things which either nature or art hath framed causeth always religious adoration.