Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Essays, Lectures & Letters of S. T. Coleridge (Illustrated)

You ask me my views of the ‘Trinity’. I accept the doctrine, not as deduced from human reason, in its grovelling capacity for comprehending spiritual things, but as the clear revelation of Scripture. But perhaps it may be said, the ‘Socinians’ do not admit this doctrine as being taught in the Bible. I know enough of their shifts and quibbles, with their dexterity at explaining away all they dislike, (and that is not a little) but though beguiled once by them, I happily, for my own peace of mind, escaped from their sophistries, and now, hesitate not to affirm, that Socinians would lose all character for honesty, if they were to explain their neighbour’s will with the same latitude of interpretation, which they do the Scriptures.

I have in my head some floating ideas on the ‘Logos’, which I hope, hereafter, to mould into a consistent form; but it is a gross perversion of the truth, in ‘Socinians’, to declare that we believe in ‘Three Gods’, and they know it to be false. They might, with equal justice, affirm that we believe in ‘three suns’. The meanest peasant, who has acquired the first rudiments of Christianity, would shrink back from a thought so monstrous. Still the Trinity has its difficulties. It would be strange if otherwise. A ‘Revelation’ that revealed nothing, not within the grasp of human reason! — no religation, no binding over again, as before said: but these difficulties are shadows, contrasted with the substantive, and insurmountable obstacles with which they contend who admit the ‘Divine authority of Scripture’, with the ‘superlative excellence of Christ’, and yet undertake to prove that these Scriptures teach, and that Christ taught, his own ‘pure humanity!’

If Jesus Christ was merely a Man, — if he was not God as well as Man, be it considered, he could not have been even a ‘good man’. There is no medium. The SAVIOUR ‘in that case’ was absolutely ‘a deceiver!’ one, transcendently ‘unrighteous!’ in advancing pretensions to miracles, by the ‘Finger of God,’ which he never performed; and by asserting claims, (as a man) in the most aggravated sense, blasphemous!

These consequences, Socinians, to be consistent, must allow, and which impious arrogation of Divinity in Christ, (according to their faith,) as well as his false assumption of a community of ‘glory’ with the Father, ‘before the world was,’ even they will be necessitated to admit, completely exonerated the Jews, according to their law, in crucifying one, who ‘being a man,’ ‘made himself God!’ But, in the Christian, rather than in the ‘Socinian’, or ‘Pharisaic’ view, all these objections vanish, and harmony succeeds to inexplicable confusion. If Socinians hesitate in ascribing ‘unrighteousness’ to Christ, the inevitable result of their principles, they tremble, as well they might, at their avowed creed, and virtually renounce what they profess to uphold.

The Trinity, as Bishop Leighton has well remarked, is, ‘a doctrine of faith, not of demonstration,’ except in a ‘moral’ sense. If the New Testament declare it, not in an insulated passage, but through the whole breadth of its pages, rendering, with any other admission, the Book, which is the Christian’s anchor-hold of hope, dark and contradictory, then it is not to be rejected, but on a penalty that reduces to an atom, all the sufferings this earth can inflict.

Let the grand question be determined; Is, or is not the Bible ‘inspired?’ No one Book has ever been subjected to so rigid an investigation as the Bible, by minds the most capacious, and, in the result, which has so triumphantly repelled all the assaults of Infidels. In the extensive intercourse which I have had with this class of men, I have seen their prejudices surpassed only by their ignorance. This I found conspicuously the case in Dr. D. (Vol. i. p. 167) the prince of their fraternity. Without, therefore, stopping to contend on what all dispassionate men must deem, undebatable ground, I may assume inspiration as admitted; and, equally so, that it would be an insult to man’s understanding to suppose any other Revelation from God than the Christian Scriptures. If these Scriptures, impregnable in their strength; sustained in their pretensions by undeniable prophecies and miracles; and by the experience of the ‘inner man’, in all ages, as well as by a concatenation of arguments, all bearing upon one point, and extending, with miraculous consistency, through a series of fifteen hundred years; if all this combined proof does not establish their validity, nothing can be proved under the sun; but the world and man must be abandoned, with all its consequences to one universal scepticism! Under such sanctions, therefore, if these Scriptures, as a fundamental truth, ‘do’ inculcate the doctrine of the ‘Trinity;’ however surpassing human comprehension; then I say, we are bound to admit it on the strength of ‘moral demonstration’.

The supreme Governor of the world, and the Father of our spirits, has seen fit to disclose to us, much of his will, and the whole of his natural and moral perfections. In some instances he has given his ‘word’ only, and demanded our ‘faith’; while, on other momentous subjects, instead of bestowing a full revelation; like the ‘Via Lactea’, he has furnished a glimpse only, through either the medium of inspiration, or by the exercise of those rational faculties with which he has endowed us. I consider the Trinity as substantially resting on the first proposition, yet deriving support from the last.

I recollect when I stood on the summit of Etna, and darted my gaze down the crater; the immediate vicinity was discernible, till, lower down, obscurity gradually terminated in total darkness. Such figures exemplify many truths revealed in the Bible. We pursue them, until, from the imperfection of our faculties, we are lost in impenetrable night. All truths, however, that are essential to faith, ‘honestly’ interpreted; all that are important to human conduct, under every diversity of circumstance, are manifest as a blazing star. The promises also of felicity to the righteous, in the future world, though the precise nature of that felicity may not be defined, are illustrated by every image that can swell the imagination: while the misery of the ‘lost’, in its unutterable intensity, though the language that describes it is all necessarily figurative, is there exhibited as resulting chiefly, if not wholly, from the withdrawment of the ‘light of God’s countenance’, and a banishment from his ‘presence!’ — best comprehended in this world, by reflecting on the desolations which would instantly follow the loss of the sun’s vivifying and universally diffused ‘warmth’.

You, or rather ‘all’, should remember, that some truths, from their nature, surpass the scope of man’s limited powers, and stand as the criteria of ‘faith’, determining, by their rejection, or admission, who among the sons of men can confide in the veracity of heaven. Those more ethereal truths, of which the Trinity is conspicuously the chief, without being circumstantially explained, may be faintly illustrated by material objects. — The eye of man cannot discern the satellites of Jupiter, nor become sensible of the multitudinous stars, the rays of which have never reached our planet, and, consequently, garnish not the canopy of night; yet, are they the less ‘real’, because their existence lies beyond man’s unassisted gaze? The tube of the philosopher, and the ‘celestial telescope’, — the unclouded visions of heaven, will confirm the one class of truths, and irradiate the other.

The ‘Trinity’ is a subject on which analogical reasoning may advantageously be admitted, as furnishing, at least, a glimpse of light, and with this, for the present, we must be satisfied. Infinite Wisdom deemed clearer manifestations inexpedient; and is man to dictate to his Maker? I may further remark, that where we cannot behold a desirable object distinctly, we must take the best view we can; and I think you, and every candid and inquiring mind, may derive assistance from such reflections as the following.