The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 3

Ib. p. 305.

Only for their comfort this they might have also observed in that book, – that there is not half so much excuse for the Papists as there is for the Anabaptists; and yet it was but an excuse at the best, as appears in those full answers I have given to all their arguments, in the last edition of that book, among the polemical discourses in folio.

Nay, dear Bishop! but such an excuse, as compared with your after attempt to evacuate it, resembles a coat of mail of your own forging, which you boil, in order to melt it away into invisibility. You only hide it by foam and bubbles, by wavelets and steam-clouds, of ebullient rhetoric: I speak of the Anabaptists as Anti-pædobaptists.

Ib. s. i. p. 337.

Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doth; but I have called you friends, for all things I have heard from the Father I have made known to you.

I never thought of this text before, but it seems to me a stronger passage in favour of Psilanthropism, or modern Socinianism, – a doctrine which of all heresies I deem the most fundamental and the worst (the impurities of madmen out of the question), – than I have ever seen, and far stronger than that concerning the day of judgment, which in its apparent sense is clearly high Arianism, or teaching the super-angelical, yet infra-divine, nature of Christ. We must interpret it

not as all things absolutely, but as all things concerning your interests, all things that it behoves you to know. Else it would contradict Christ's words, None knoweth the Father but the Son, that is, truly and totally. For Christ does not promise in this life to give us the same degree of knowledge as he himself possessed, but only a quantum sufficit of the kind. This is clear by St. John's all things, which assuredly did not include either the discoveries of Newton or of Davy.

14 August, 1811.

Ib. s. iii. p. 348.

The Churches have troubled themselves with infinite variety of questions, and divided their precious unity, and destroyed charity, and instead of contending against the devil and all his crafty methods, they have contended against one another, and excommunicated one another, and anathematized and damned one another; and no man is the better after all, but most men are very much the worse; and the Churches are in the world still divided about questions that commenced twelve or thirteen ages since, and they are like to be so for ever, till Elias come, &c.

I remember no passages of the Fathers nearer to inspired Scripture than this and similar ones of Jeremy Taylor, in which, quitting the acute logician, he combines his heart with his head, and utters general, and inclusive, and reconciling truths of charity and of common sense. All amounts but to this: – what is binding on all must be possible to all. But conformity of intellectual conclusions is not possible. Faith therefore cannot reside totally in the understanding. But to do what we believe we ought to do is possible to all, therefore binding on all; therefore the unum necessarium of Christian faith. Talk not of bad conscience; it is like bad sense, that is, no sense; and we all know that we may wilfully lie till we involuntarily believe the lie as truth; but causa causæ est causa vera causati.

Ib. p. 347.

But if you mean the Catholic Church, then, if you mean her, an abstracted separate being from all particulars, you pursue a cloud, and fall in love with an idea and a child of fancy.

Here Taylor uses 'idea' as opposed to image or distinct phantasm; and this is with few exceptions his general sense, and even the exceptions are only metaphors from the general sense, that is, images so faint, indefinite and fluctuating as to be almost no images, that is, ideas; as we say of a very thin body, it is a ghost or spirit, the lowest degree of one kind being expressed by the opposite kind.

Ib. p. 380.

'Miracles' were, in the beginning of Christianity, a note of true believers: Christ told us so. And he also taught us that Anti-Christ should be revealed in lying signs and wonders, and commanded us, by that token, to take heed of them.

An excellent distinction between a note or mark by which a thing already proved may be known, and the proofs of the thing. Thus the poisonous qualities of the nightshade are established by the proper proofs, and the marks by which a plant may be known to be the nightshade, are the number, position, colour, and so on, of its filaments, petals, and the rest.

Ib.

The 'spirit of prophecy' is also a pretty sure note of the true Church, and yet…I deny not but there have been some prophets in the Church of Rome: Johannes de Rupe Scissa, Anselmus, Marsicanus, Robert Grosthead, Bishop of Lincoln, St. Hildegardis, Abbot Joachim, whose prophecies and pictures prophetical were published by Theophrastus Paracelsus, and John Adrasder, and by Paschalinus Regiselmus, at Venice, 1589; but (as Ahab said concerning Micaiah) these do not prophesy good concerning Rome, but evil, &c.

This paragraph is an exquisite specimen of grave and dignified irony, telum quod cedere simulat retorquentis. In contrast with this stands the paragraph on note 15, (p. 381.) which is a coarse though not unmerited sneer, or, as a German would have expressed himself, 'an of-Jeremy-Taylor-unworthy, though a-not-of-the-Roman-Catholic-Papicolar-polemics-unmerited, sneer.'

Ib. p. 381.

… excepting only some Popes have been remarked by their own histories for funest and direful deaths.

In the adoption of this word 'funest' into the English language by apocope of the final us, Taylor is supported by 'honest' and 'modest;' but then the necessity of pronouncing funest should have excluded it, the superlative final being an objection to all of them, though outweighed in the others. A common reader would pronounce it 'funest,' and perhaps mistake it for 'funniest.'

Ib. p. 382.

… sacraments, which to be seven, is with them an article of faith.

The fastidious exclusion of this and similar idioms in modern writing occasions unnecessary embarrassment for the writer, both in narration and argumenting, and contributes to the monotony of our style.

Ib.

The Fathers and Schoolmen differ greatly in the definition of a Sacrament.

Had it been in other respects advisable, it would, I think, have been theologically convenient, if our Reformers had contra-distinguished Baptism and the Lord's Supper by the term Mysteries, and allowed the name of Sacrament to Ordination, Confirmation, and Marriage.

Ib. s. iii. p. 388.

And he did so to the Jews … tradition was not relied upon; it was not trusted with any law of faith or manners.

This all the later Jews deny, affirming an oral communication from Moses to the Seventy, on as lame pretences as the Roman Catholics, and for the same vile purposes as reproved by Christ, who, if he had believed the story, would not have condemned traditions of men generally without exception, and would not have proved the immortality of the Patriarchs by a text which seems to have had no such primary intention, though it may contain the deduction potentialiter.

But Taylor's 1st and 7th arguments following are, the former weak and incorrect, the latter dictum et vulgatum, sed non probatum, ne dicam improbatum. Who doubts that all that is indispensable to the salvation of each and every one is contained in the New Testament?

But is it not contained in the first chapter of St. John's Gospel? Is it not contained in the eleventh of the Acts, and in a score other separable portions? Necessary, indispensable, and the like, are multivocal terms. Dogs have survived (and without any noticeable injury) the excision of the spleen.

Dare we conclude from this fact that the spleen is not necessary to the continuance of the canine race? What is not indispensable for even the majority of individual believers may be necessary for the Church.

Instead, therefore, of these terms, put 'true,' 'important,' and 'constitutive,' that is, appertaining to the chain (ad catenam auream) of truths interdependent and rendered mutually intelligible, which constitute the system of the Christian religion, including not alone the faith and morals of individuals, but the organismus likewise of the Church, as a body spiritual, yet outward and historical; and this again not as an aggregate or sum total, like a corn-sheaf, but a unity.

Let the question, I say, be thus restated, and then let the cause come to trial between the Romish and the Protestant divines.

N. B. As a running comment on all these marginal notes, let it be understood that I hold the far greater part – the only not all of what our great Author urges, to apply with irrefutable force against the doctrine and practice of the Romish Church, as it in fact exists, and no less against the Familists and istius farinæ enthusiastas.

I contend only, that he himself, in several assertions, lies open to attack from the supporters of a scheme of faith, as unlike either the Romish or the Fanatical, as Taylor's own, and which scheme, namely, the co-ordinate authority of the Word, the Spirit and the Church, I believe to be the true Apostolic and Catholic doctrine, and that to this scheme his objections do not apply.

When I can bring myself to believe that from the mere perusal of the New Testament a man might have sketched out by anticipation the constitution, discipline, creeds, and sacramental ritual of the Episcopal Reformed Church of England; or that it is not a true and orthodox Church, because this is incredible; then I may perhaps be inclined to echo Chillingworth.

As I cannot think that it detracts from a dial that in order to tell the time the sun must shine upon it; so neither does it detract from the Scriptures, that though the best and holiest they are yet Scripture, and require a pure heart and the consequent assistances of God's enlightening grace in order to understand them to edification.

1812.

I still agree with the preceding note, and add that Jeremy Taylor should have cited the Arians and Socinians on the other side. But the Romish Papal hierarchy cannot for shame say, or only from want of shame can pretend to say, what a Catholic would be entitled to urge on the triple link of the Scripture, the Spirit, and the Church.

27 April, 1826.

Ib. s. vi. p. 392.

From this principle, as it is promoted by the Fanatics, they derive a wandering, unsettled, and a dissolute religion, &c.

The evils of the Fanatic persuasion here so powerfully, so exquisitely, stated and enforced by our all-eloquent Bishop, supply no proof or even presumption against the tenet of the Spirit rightly expressed. For catholicity is the distinctive mark, the conditio sine qua non, of a spiritual teaching; and if men that dream with their eyes open mistake for this the very contrary, that is, their own particular fancies, or perhaps sensations, who can help it?

Ib. s. vii. p. 394.

They affirm that the Scriptures are full, that they are a perfect rule, that they contain all things necessary to salvation; and from hence they confuted all heresies.

Yes, the heretics were so confuted, I grant; because these would not acknowledge any other authority but that of the Scriptures, and these too forged or corrupted by themselves; but by the Scriptures that remained unaltered the early Fathers of the Church both demonstrated the omissions and interpolations of the heretical canons and the false doctrines of the heresy itself. But so far from following the same rule to the members of the true Church, they made the applicability of this way of proof the criterion of a heretic.

Ib. p. 394.

'Which truly they then preached, but afterwards by the will of God delivered to us in the Scriptures, which was to be the pillar and ground to our faith.'

Lessing has shown this to be a false and even ungrammatical rendering of Irenæus's words. The columen et fundamentum fidei, are the Creed, or economy of salvation.

Ib. vii. p. 395. Extracts from Clement's Stromata.

It would require a volume to shew the qualifications with which these excerpta must be read. There is no one source of error and endless controversy more fruitful than this custom of quoting detached sentences. I would pledge myself in the course of a single morning to bring an equal number of passages from the same (Ante-Nicene) Fathers in proof of the Roman Catholic theory. One palpable cheat in these transcripts is the neglect of appreciating the words, 'inspired,' a 'Spiritu dicta', and the like, in the Patristic use; as if the Fathers did not frequently apply the same terms to the discourses of the Bishops, their contemporaries, and to writings not canonical. It is wonderful how so acute and learned a man as Taylor could have read Tertullian, Irenæus and Clemens Alexandrinus, and not have seen that the passages are all against him so far as they all make the Scriptures subsidiary only to the Spirit in the Church and the Baptismal creed, the

regula fidei, or æconomia salutis.

Ib. p. 396.

… that the tradition ecclesiastical, that is, the whole doctrine taught by the Church of God, and preached to all men, is in the Scripture.

It is only by the whole context and purpose of the work, and this too interpreted by the known doctrine of the age, that the intent of the sentences here quoted can be determined, relatively to the point in question. But even as they stand here, they do not assert that the Traditio Ecclesiastica was grounded on, or had been deduced from, the Scriptures; nor that by Scripture Clemens meant principally the New Testament; and that the Scriptures contain the Tradition Ecclesiastical or Catholic Faith the Romish divines admit and contend.

Ib. p. 399. Extract from Origen.

As our Saviour imposed silence upon the Sadducees by the word of his doctrine, and faithfully convinced that false opinion which they thought to be truth; so also shall the followers of Christ do, by the examples of Scripture, by which according to sound doctrine every voice of Pharaoh ought to be silent.

Does not this prove too much; namely, that nothing exists in the New which does not likewise exist in the Old Testament?

One objection to Jeremy Taylor's argument here must, I think, strike every reflecting mind; namely, that in order to a fair and full view of the sentiments of the Fathers of the first four centuries, all they declare of the Church, and her powers and prerogatives, ought to have been likewise given.

As soon as I receive any writing as inspired by the Spirit of Truth, of course I must believe it on its own authority. But how am I assured that it is an inspired work? Now do not these Fathers reply, By the Church? To the Church it belongs to declare what books are Holy Scriptures, and to interpret their right sense. Is not this the common doctrine among the Fathers? And how was the Church to judge?

First, by the same spirit surviving in her; and secondly by the accordance of the Book itself with the canon of faith, that is the Baptismal Creed. And what was this? Traditio Ecclesiastica. As to myself, I agree with Taylor against the Romanists, that the Bible is for us the only rule of faith; but I do not adopt his mode of proving it.

In the earliest period of Christianity the Scriptures of the New Testament and the Ecclesiastical Tradition were reciprocally tests of each other; but for the Christians of the second century the Scriptures were tried by the Ecclesiastical Tradition, while for us the order is reversed, and we must try the Ecclesiastical Tradition by the Scriptures. Therefore I do not expect to find the proofs of the supremacy of Scripture in the early Fathers, nor do we need their authority. Our proofs are stronger without it.

Ib. p. 403.

Which words I the rather remark, because this article of the consubstantiality of Christ with the Father is brought as an instance (by the Romanists) of the necessity of tradition, to make up the insufficiency of Scripture.

How shall I make this rhyme to Taylor's own assertion, in the last paragraph of sect. xix. of his Episcopacy Asserted,75 in which he clearly refers to this very question as relying on tradition for its clearness? Jeremy Taylor was a true Father of the Church, and would furnish as fine a subject for a concordantia discordantiarum as St. Austin himself. For the exoteric and esoteric he was a very Pythagoras.

Ib. p. 406.

… for one or two of them say, Theophilus spake against Origen, for broaching fopperies of his own, and particularly, that Christ's flesh was consubstantial with the Godhead.

Origen doubtless meant the caro noumenon, and was quite right. But never was a great man so misunderstood as Origen.

Ib. p. 408. n.

Sed et alia, quoe absque auctoritate et testimoniis Scripturarum, quasi traditione Apostolica, sponte reperiunt atque contingunt, percutit gladius Dei.

"Those things which they make and find, as it were, by Apostolical tradition, without the authority and testimonies of Scripture, the word of God smites."

Is it clear that Scripturarum depends on auctoritate? It may well mean they who without the authority of the Church, or Scriptural testimony pretend to an Apostolical Tradition.

Ib. p. 411.

But lastly, if in the plain words of Scripture be contained all that is simply necessary to all, then it is clear, by Bellarmine's confession, that St. Austin affirmed that the plain places of Scripture are sufficient to all laics and all idiots, or private persons, and then it is very ill done to keep them from the knowledge and use of the Scriptures, which contain all their duty both of faith and good life; so it is very unnecessary to trouble them with any thing else, there being in the world no such treasure and repository of faith and manners, and that so plain, that it was intended for all men, and for all such men is sufficient. "Read the Holy Scriptures wherein you shall find some things to be holden, and some to be avoided."

And yet in the preface to his Apology for authorized and set forms of Liturgy,76 Taylor regrets that the Church of England was not able to confine the laity to such selections of Holy Writ as are in her Liturgy. But Laud was then alive: and Taylor partook of his trepidatiunculæ towards the Church of Rome.

Ib. p. 412.

And all these are nothing else, but a full subscription to, and an excellent commentary upon, those words of St. Paul, Let no man pretend to be wise above what is written.

Had St. Paul anything beyond the Law and the Prophets in his mind?

Ib. p. 416.

St. Paul's way of teaching us to expound Scripture is, that he that prophesies should do it

according to the analogy of faith.

Yet in his Liberty of Prophesying77 Taylor turns this way into mere ridicule. I love thee, Jeremy! but an arrant theological barrister that thou wast, though thy only fees were thy desires of doing good in questionibus singulis.

Ib. s. iii. p. 419.

Only, because we are sure there was some false dealing in this matter, and we know there might be much more than we have discovered, we have no reason to rely upon any tradition for any part of our faith, any more than we could do upon Scripture, if one book or chapter of it should be detected to be imposture.

What says Jeremy Taylor then to the story of the woman taken in adultery, (John, c. viii. 3-11.) which Chrysostom disdains to comment on? If true, how could it be omitted in so many, and these the most authentic, copies? And if this for fear of scandal, why not others? And who does not know that falsehood may be effected as well by omissions as by interpolations? But if false, – then – but Taylor draws the consequence himself.

Ib. p. 427.

So that the tradition concerning the Scriptures being extrinsical to Scripture is also extrinsical to the question: this tradition cannot be an objection against the sufficiency of Scripture to salvation, but must go before this question. For no man inquires whether the Scriptures contain all things necessary to salvation, unless he believe that there are Scriptures, that these are they, and that they are the word of God. All this comes to us by tradition, that is, by universal undeniable testimony.

Very just, and yet this idle argument is the favourite, both shield and sword, of the Romanists: as if I should pretend to learn the Roman history from tradition, because by tradition I know such histories to have been written by Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus!

Ib. p. 435.

The more natural consequence is that their proposition is either mistaken or uncertain, or not an article of faith (which is rather to be hoped, lest we condemn all the Greek Churches as infidels or perverse heretics), or else that it can be derived from Scripture, which last is indeed the most probable, and pursuant to the doctrine of those wiser Latins who examined things by reason and not by prejudice.

It is remarkable that both Stillingfleet and Taylor favoured the Greek opinion. But Bull's Defensio Fidei Nicænæ was not yet published. It is to me evident that if the Holy Ghost does not proceed through and from the Son as well as from the Father, then the Son is not the adequate substantial idea of the Father. But according to St. Paul, he is – ergo, &c. N.B. These "ergos, &c." in legitimate syllogisms, where the major and minor have been conceded, are binding on all human beings, with the single anomaly of the Quakers. For with them nothing is more common than to admit both major and minor, and, when you add the inevitable consequence, to say "Nay! I do not think so, Friend! Thou art worldly wise, Friend!"

For example: major, it is agreed on both sides that we ought not to withhold from a man what he has a just right to: minor, property in land being the creature of law, a just right in respect of landed property is determined by the law of the land: – "agreed, such is the fact:" ergo: the clergyman has a just right to the tithe. "Nay, nay; this is vanity, and tithes an abomination of Judaism!"

Ib. s. v. p. 492.

And since that villain of a man, Pope Hildebrand, as Cardinal Beno relates in his Life, could, by shaking of his sleeve make sparks of fire fly from it.

If this was fact, was it an idiosyncrasy, as I have known those who by combing their hair can elicit sparks with a crackling as from a cat's back rubbed. It is very possible that the sleeve might be silk, tightened either on a very hairy arm, or else on woollen, and by shaking it might be meant stripping the silk suddenly off, which would doubtless produce flashes and sparks.

Vol. XI. s. x. p. 1.

As a general remark suggested indeed by this section, but applicable to very many parts of Taylor's controversial writings, both against the anti-Prelatic and the Romish divines, especially to those in which our incomparable Church-aspist attempts, not always successfully, to demonstrate the difference between the dogmas and discipline of the ancient Church, and those which the Romish doctors vindicate by them, – I would say once for all, that it was the fashion of the Arminian court divines of Taylor's age, that is, of the High Church party, headed by Archbishop Laud, to extol, and (in my humble judgment) egregiously to overrate, the example and authority of the first four, nay, of the first six centuries; and at all events to take for granted the Evangelical and Apostolical character of the Church to the death of Athanasius.

Now so far am I from conceding this, that before the first Council of Nicaea, I believe myself to find the seeds and seedlings of all the worst corruptions of the Latin Church of the thirteenth century, and not a few of these even before the close of the second.