The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 3

One pernicious error of the primitive Church was the conversion of the ethical ideas, indispensable to the science of morals and religion, into fixed practical laws and rules for all Christians, in all stages of spiritual growth, and under all circumstances; and with this the degradation of free and individual acts into corporate Church obligations.

Another not less pernicious was the gradual concentration of the Church into a priesthood, and the consequent rendering of the reciprocal functions of love and redemption and counsel between Christian and Christian exclusively official, and between disparates, namely, the priest and the layman.

Ib. B. II. s. ii. p. 58.

Often have I welcomed, and often have I wrestled with, the thought of writing an essay on the day of judgment. Are the passages in St. Peter's Epistle respecting the circumstances of the last day and the final conflagration, and even St. Paul's, to be regarded as apocalyptic and a part of the revelation by Christ, or are they, like the dogma of a personal Satan, accommodations of the current popular creed which they continued to believe?

Ib. s. iii. p. 105.

And therefore St. Paul left an excellent precept to the Church to avoid profanas vocum novitates, 'the prophane newness of words;' that is, it is fit that the mysteries revealed in Scripture should be preached and taught in the words of the Scripture, and with that simplicity, openness, easiness, and candor, and not with new and unhallowed words, such as that of Transubstantiation.

Are not then Trinity, Tri-unity, hypostasis, perichoresis, diphysis, and others, excluded? Yet Waterland very ingeniously, nay more, very honestly and sensibly, shews the necessity of these terms per accidens. The profanum fell back on the heretics who had occasioned the necessity.

Ib. p. 106.

"The oblation of a cake was a figure of the Eucharistical bread which the Lord commanded to do in remembrance of his passion." These are Justin's words in that place.

Justin Martyr could have meant no more, and the Greek construction means no more, than that the cake we offer is the representative, substitute, and fac-simile of the bread which Christ broke and delivered.

I find no necessary absurdity in Transubstantiation. For substance is but a notion thought on to the aggregate of accidents – hinzugedacht – conceived, not perceived, and conceived always in universals, never in concreto.

Therefore, X. Y. Z. being unknown quantities, Y. may be as well annexed by the choice of the mind as the imagined substratum as X. For we cannot distinguish substance from substance any more than X. from X.

The substrate or causa invisibilis may be the noumenon or actuality, das Ding in sich, of Christ's humanity, as well as the Ding in sich of which the sensation, bread, is the appearance.

But then, on the other hand, there is not a word of sense possible to prove that it is really so; and from the not impossible to the real is a strange ultra-Rhodian leap.

And it is opposite both to the simplicity of Evangelical meaning, and anomalous from the interpretation of all analogous phrases which all men expound as figures, – I am the gate, I am the way, I am the vine, and the like, – and to Christ's own declarations that his words were to be understood spiritually, that is, figuratively.

Ib. s. vi. p. 164.

However, if you will not commit downright idolatry, as some of their saints teach you, then you must be careful to observe these plain distinctions; and first be sure to remember that when you worship an image, you do it not materially but formally; not as it is of such a substance, but as it is a sign; next take care that you observe what sort of image it is, and then proportion your right kind to it, that you do not give latria to that where hyperdulia is only due; and be careful that if dulia only be due, that your worship be not hyperdulical, &c.

A masterly specimen of grave dignified irony. Indeed, Jeremy Taylor's Works would be of more service to an English barrister than those of Demosthenes, Æschines, and Cicero taken together.

Ib. s. vii. p. 168.

A man cannot well understand an essence, and hath no idea of it in his mind, much less can a painter's pencil do it.

Noticeable, that this is the only instance I have met in any English classic before the Revolution of the word 'idea' used as synonymous with a mental image. Taylor himself has repeatedly placed the two in opposition; and even here I doubt whether he has done otherwise. I rather think he meant by the word 'idea' a notion under an indefinite and confused form, such as Kant calls a schemaor vague outline, an imperfect embryo of a concrete, to the individuation of which the mind gives no conscious attention; just as when I say – "any thing," I may imagine a poker or a plate; but I pay no attention to its being this rather than that; and the very image itself is so wandering and unstable that at this moment it may be a dim shadow of the one, and in the next of some other thing. In this sense, idea is opposed to image in degree instead of kind; yet still contra-distinguished, as is evident by the sequel, "much less can a painter's pencil do it:" for were it an image, individui et concreti, then the painter's pencil could do it as well as his fancy or better.

A Discourse of Confirmation

Of all Taylor's works, the Discourse of Confirmation seems to me the least judicious; and yet that is not the right word either. I mean, however, that one is puzzled to know for what class of readers or auditors it was intended.

He announces his subject as one of such lofty claims; he begins with positions taken on such high ground, no less than the superior dignity and spiritual importance of Confirmation above Baptism itself – whether considered as a sacramental rite and mystery distinct from Baptism, or as its completory and crowning part (the finis coronans opus) – that we are eager to hear the proof.

But proofs differ in their value according to our previous valuation of authorities. What would pass for a very sufficient proof, because grounded on a reverend authority, with a Romanist, would be a mere fancy-medal and of no currency with a Bible Protestant.

And yet for Protestants, and those too laymen (for we can hardly suppose that Taylor thought his Episcopal brethren in need of it), must this Discourse have been intended; and in this point of view, surely never did so wise a man adopt means so unsuitable to his end, or frame a discourse so inappropriate to his audience.

The authorities of the Fathers are, indeed, as strong and decisive in favour of the Bishop's position as the warmest advocate of Confirmation could wish; but this very circumstance was calculated to create a prejudice against the doctrine in the mind of a zealous Protestant, from the contrast in which the unequivocal and explicit declarations of the Fathers stand with the remote, arbitrary, and fine-drawn inferences from the few passages of the New Testament which can be forced into an implied sanction of a rite no where mentioned, and as a distinct and separate ministration, utterly, as I conceive, unknown in the Apostolic age.

How much more rational and convincing (as to me it seems) would it have been to have shewn, that when from various causes the practice of Infant Baptism became general in the Church, Confirmation or the acknowledgment in propria persona of the obligations that had been incurred by proxy was introduced; and needed no other justification than its own evident necessity, as substantiating the preceding form as to the intended effects of Baptism on the believer himself, and then to have shewn the great uses and spiritual benefits of the institution.

But this would not do. Such was the spirit of the age that nothing less than the assertion of a divine origin, – of a formal and positive institution by Christ himself, or by the Apostles in their Apostolic capacity as legislators for the universal Church in all ages, could serve; and accordingly Bishops, liturgies, tithes, monarchy, and what not, were, de jure divino, with celestial patents, wrapped up in the womb of this or that text of Scripture to be exforcipated by the logico-obstetric skill of High Church doctors and ultra-loyal court chaplains.

The Epistle Dedicatory To The Duke Of Ormonde.

Ib. p. ccxvii.

This very poor church.

With the exception of Spain, the Church establishment in Ireland is now, I conceive, the richest in Europe; though by the most iniquitous measure of the Irish Parliament, most iniquitously permitted to acquire the force of law at the Union, the Irish Church was robbed of the tithes from all pasture lands. What occasioned so great a change in its favour since the time of Charles II?

1810.

Ib. p. ccxviii.

And amidst these and very many more inconveniences it was greatly necessary that God should send us such a king.

Such a king! O sorrow and shame! Why, why, O Genius! didst thou suffer thy darling son to crush the fairest flower of thy garland beneath a mitre of Charles's putting on!

Ib. p. ccxix.

For besides that the great usefulness of this ministry will greatly endear the Episcopal order, to which (that I may use St. Hierom's words) "if there be not attributed a more than common power and authority, there will be as many schisms as priests," &c.

On this ground the Romish divines justify the Papacy. The fact of the Scottish Church is the sufficient answer to both. Episcopacy needs not rash assertions for its support.

Ib. p. ccxx.

For it is a sure rule in our religion, and is of an eternal truth, that "they who keep not the unity of the Church, have not the Spirit of God."

Contrast with this our xixth and xxth Articles on the Church. The Irish Roman Catholic Bishops, methinks, must have read this with delight. What an over hasty simpleton that James II was! Had he waited and caressed the Bishops, they would have taken the work off his hands.

Ib. p. 229. Introduction.

It has been my conviction that in respect of the theory of the Faith, (though God be praised! not in the practical result,) the Papal and the Protestant communions are equi-distant from the true idea of the Gospel Institute, though erring from opposite directions.

The Romanists sacrifice the Scripture to the Church virtually annulling the former: the Protestants reversed this practically, and even in theory, (see the above-mentioned Articles,) annulling the latter.

The consequence has been, as might have been predicted, the extinction of the Spirit (the indifference or mesothesis) in both considered as bodies: for I doubt not that numerous individuals in both Churches live in communion with the Spirit.

Towards the close of the reign of our first James, and during the period from the accession of Charles I to the restoration of his profligate son, there arose a party of divines, Arminians (and many of them Latitudinarians) in their creed, but devotees of the throne and the altar, soaring High Churchmen and ultra royalists.

Much as I dislike their scheme of doctrine and detest their principles of government both in Church and State, I cannot but allow that they formed a galaxy of learning and talent, and that among them the Church of England finds her stars of the first magnitude.

Instead of regarding the Reformation established under Edward VI as imperfect, they accused the Reformers, some of them openly, but all in their private opinions, of having gone too far; and while they were willing to keep down (and if they could not reduce him to a primacy of honor to keep out) the Pope, and to prune away the innovations in doctrine brought in under the Papal domination, they were zealous to restore the hierarchy, and to substitute the authority of the Fathers, Canonists and Councils of the first six or seven centuries, and the least Papistic of the later Doctors and Schoolmen, for the names of Luther, Melancthon, Bucer, Calvin and the systematic theologians who rejected all testimony but that of their Bible.

As far as the principle, on which Archbishop Laud and his followers acted, went to re-actuate the idea of the Church, as a co-ordinate and living Power by right of Christ's institution and express promise, I go along with them; but I soon discover that by the Church they meant the Clergy, the hierarchy exclusively, and then I fly off from them in a tangent.

For it is this very interpretation of the Church that, according to my conviction, constituted the first and fundamental apostasy; and I hold it for one of the greatest mistakes of our polemic divines in their controversies with the Romanists, that they trace all the corruptions of the Gospel faith to the Papacy.

Meantime can we be surprised that our forefathers under the Stuarts were alarmed, and imagined that the Bishops and court preachers were marching in quick time with their faces towards Rome, when, to take one instance of a thousand, a great and famous divine, like Bishop Taylor, asserts the inferiority, in rank and efficacy, of Baptism to Confirmation, and grounds this assertion so strange to all Scriptural Protestants on a text of Cabasilas – a saying of Rupertus – a phrase of St. Denis – and a sentence of Saint Bernard in a Life of Saint Malachias! – for no Benedictine can be more liberal in his attribution of saintship than Jeremy Taylor, or more reverently observant of the beatifications and canonizations of the Old Lady of the scarlet petticoat.

P. S. If the reader need other illustrations, I refer him to Bishop Hackett's Sermons on the Advent and Nativity, which might almost pass for the orations of a Franciscan brother, whose reading had been confined to the Aurea Legenda. It would be uncandid not to add that this indiscreet traffickery with Romish wares was in part owing to the immense reading of these divines.

Ib. s. i. p. 247. Acts viii. 14-17.

This is an argument indeed, and one that of itself would suffice to decide the question, if only it could be proved, or even made probable, that by the Holy Ghost in this place was meant that receiving of the Spirit to which Confirmation is by our Church declared to be the means and vehicle.

But this I suspect cannot be done. The whole passage to which sundry chapters in St. Paul's Epistles seem to supply the comment, inclines and almost compels me to understand by the Holy Ghost in this narrative the miraculous gifts,

collectively.

And in no other sense can I understand the sentence the Holy Ghost was not yet fallen upon any of them. But the subject is beset with difficulties from the paucity of particular instances recorded by the inspired historian, and from the multitude and character of these instances found in the Fathers and Ecclesiastical historians.

Ib. s. ii. p. 254.

Still they are all

exhibitable powers, faculties. Were it otherwise what strange and fearful consequences would follow from the assertion, the Holy Spirit was not yet fallen upon any of them.

That we misunderstand the gift of tongues, and that it did not mean the power of speaking foreign languages unlearnt, I am strongly persuaded.

Yea, but this is not the question. If my heart, bears me witness that I love my brother, that I love my merciful Saviour, and call Jesus Lord and the Anointed of God with joy of heart, I am encouraged by Scripture to infer that the Spirit abideth in me; besides that I know that of myself, and estranged from the Holy Spirit, I cannot even think a thought acceptable before God.

But how will this help me to believe that I received this Spirit through the Bishop's hands laid on my head at Confirmation: when perhaps I am distinctly conscious, that I loved my Saviour, freely forgave, nay, tenderly yearned for the weal of, them that hated me before my Confirmation, – when, indeed, I must have been the most uncharitable of men if I did not admit instances of the most exemplary faith, charity, and devotion in Christians who do not practise the imposition of hands in their Churches. What! did those Christians, of whom St. Luke speaks, not love their brethren?

In fine.

I have had too frequent experience of professional divines, and how they identify themselves with the theological scheme to which they have been articled, and I understand too well the nature and the power, the effect and the consequences, of a wilful faith, – where the sensation of positiveness is substituted for the sense of certainty, and the stubborn clutch for quiet insight, – to wonder at any degree of hardihood in matters of belief.

Therefore the instant and deep-toned affirmative to the question

"And do you actually believe the presence of the material water in the baptizing of infants or adults is essential to their salvation, so indispensably so that the omission of the water in the Baptism of an infant who should die the day after would exclude that infant from the kingdom of heaven, and whatever else is implied in the loss of salvation?"

I should not be surprised, I say, to hear this question answered with an emphatic,

"Yes, Sir! I do actually believe this, for thus I find it written, and herein begins my right to the name of a Christian, that I have exchanged my reason for the Holy Scriptures: I acknowledge no reason but the Bible."

But as this intrepid respondent, though he may dispense with reason, cannot quite so easily free himself from the obligations of common sense and the canons of logic, – both of which demand consistency, and like consequences from like premisses in rebus ejusdem generis, in subjects of the same class, – I do find myself tempted to wonder, some small deal, at the unscrupulous substitution of a few drops of water sprinkled on the face for the Baptism, that is, immersion or dipping, of the whole person, even if the rivers or running waters had been thought non-essential.

And yet where every word in any and in all the four narratives is so placed under the logical press as it is in this Discourse by Jeremy Taylor, and each and every incident pronounced exemplary, and for the purpose of being imitated, I should hold even this hazardous.

But I must wonder a very great deal, and in downright earnest, at the contemptuous language which the same men employ in their controversies with the Romish Church, respecting the corporal presence in the consecrated bread and wine, and the efficacy of extreme unction.

For my own part, the assertion that what is phenomenally bread and wine is substantially the Body and Blood of Christ, does not shock my common sense more than that a few drops of water sprinkled on the face should produce a momentous change, even a regeneration, in the soul; and does not outrage my moral feelings half as much.

P. S. There is one error of very ill consequence to the reputation of the Christian community, which Taylor shares with the Romish divines, namely, the quoting of opinions, and even of rhetorical flights, from the writings of this and that individual, with 'Saint' prefixed to his name, as expressing the faith of the Church during the first five or six centuries.

Whereas it would not, perhaps, be very difficult to convince an unprejudiced man and a sincere Christian of the impossibility that even the decrees of the General Councils should represent the Catholic faith, that is, the belief essential to, or necessarily consequent on, the faith in Christ common to all the elect.

Notes on The Pilgrim's Progress

I know of no book, the Bible excepted, as above all comparison, which I, according to my judgment and experience, could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress. It is, in my conviction, incomparably the best Summa Theologiæ Evangelicæ ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired.

June 14, 1830.

It disappointed, nay surprised me, to find Robert Southey express himself so coldly respecting the style and diction of the Pilgrim's Progress. I can find nothing homely in it but a few phrases and single words. The conversation between Faithful and Talkative78 is a model of unaffected dignity and rhythmical flow.

Southey's Life of Bunyan

P. xiv.

"We intended not," says Baxter, "to dig down the banks, or pull up the hedge, and lay all waste and common, when we desired the Prelates' tyranny might cease."

No; for the intention had been under the pretext of abating one tyranny to establish a far severer and more galling in its stead: in doing this the banks had been thrown down, and the hedge destroyed; and while the bestial herd who broke in rejoiced in the havoc, Baxter, and other such erring though good men, stood marvelling at the mischief, which never could have been effected, if they had not mainly assisted in it.

But the question is, would these 'erring good' men have been either willing or able to assist in this work, if the more erring Lauds and Sheldons had not run riot in the opposite direction? And as for the 'bestial herd,' – compare the whole body of Parliamentarians, all the fanatical sects included, with the royal and prelatical party in the reign of Charles II. These were, indeed, a bestial herd. See Baxter's unwilling and Burnet's honest description of the moral discipline throughout the realm under Cromwell.

Ib. p. xv.

They passed with equal facility from strict Puritanism to the utmost license of practical and theoretical impiety, as Antinomians or as Atheists, and from extreme profligacy to extreme superstition in any of its forms.

'They!' How many? and of these how many that would not have been in Bedlam, or fit for it, under some other form? A madman falls into love or religion, and then, forsooth! it is love or religion that drove him mad.

Ib. p. xxi.

In an evil hour were the doctrines of the Gospel sophisticated with questions which should have been left in the Schools for those who are unwise enough to employ themselves in excogitations of useless subtlety.

But what, at any rate, had Bunyan to do with the Schools? His perplexities clearly rose out of the operations of his own active but unarmed mind on the words of the Apostle. If anything is to be arraigned, it must be the Bible in English, the reading of which is imposed (and, in my judgment, well and wisely imposed) as a duty on all who can read. Though Protestants, we are not ignorant of the occasional and partial evils of promiscuous Bible-reading; but we see them vanish when we place them beside the good.

Ib. p. xxiv.

False notions of that corruption of our nature which it is almost as perilous to exaggerate as to dissemble.

I would have said "which it is almost as perilous to misunderstand as to deny."

Ib. p. xli. &c.

But the wickedness of the tinker has been greatly over-charged; and it is taking the language of self-accusation too literally, to pronounce of John Bunyan that he was at any time depraved. The worst of what he was in his worst days is to be expressed in a single word … he had been a blackguard, &c.

All this narrative, with the reflections on the facts, is admirable and worthy of Robert Southey: full of good sense and kind feeling – the wisdom of love.

Ib. p. lxi.

But the Sectaries had kept their countrymen from it (the Common Prayer Book), while they had the power, and Bunyan himself in his sphere laboured to dissuade them from it.

Surely the fault lay in the want, or in the feeble and inconsistent manner, of determining and supporting the proper powers of the Church. In fact, the Prelates and leading divines of the Church were not only at variance with each other, but each with himself.

One party, the more faithful and less modified disciples of the first Reformers, were afraid of bringing anything into even a semblance of a co-ordination with the Scriptures; and, with the terriculum of Popery ever before their eyes, timidly and sparingly allowed to the Church any even subordinate power beyond that of interpreting the Scriptures; that is, of finding the ordinances of the Church implicitly contained in the ordinances of the inspired writers.