The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 7

2. That there is a Redeemer:

3. That the redemption relatively to each individual captive is, if not effected under certain conditions, yet manifestable as far as is fitting for the soul by certain signs and consequents:--and

4. That these signs are in myself; that the conditions under which the redemption offered to all men is promised to the individual, are fulfilled in myself;

these are the four great points of faith, in which the humble Christian finds and feels a gradation from trembling hope to full a.s.surance; yet the will, the act of trust, is the same in all. Might I not almost say, that it rather increases with the decrease of the consciously discerned evidence? To a.s.sert that I have the same a.s.surance of mind that I am saved as that I need a Saviour, would be a contradiction to my own feelings, and yet I may have an equal, that is, an equivalent a.s.surance.

How is it possible that a sick man should have the same certainty of his convalescence as of his sickness? Yet he may be a.s.sured of it. So again, my faith in the skill and integrity of my physician may be complete, but the application of it to my own case may be troubled by the sense of my own imperfect obedience to his prescriptions. The sort of our beliefs and a.s.surances is necessarily modified by their different subjects. It argues no want of saving faith on the whole, that I cannot have the same trust in myself as I have in my G.o.d. That Christ's righteousness can save me,--that Christ's righteousness alone can save--these are simple positions, all the terms of which are steady and copresent to my mind.

But that I shall be so saved,--that of the many called I have been one of the chosen,--this is no mere conclusion of mind on known or a.s.sured premisses. I can remember no other discourse that sinks into and draws up comfort from the depths of our being below our own distinct consciousness, with the clearness and G.o.dly loving-kindness of this truly evangelical G.o.d-to-be-thanked-for sermon. But how large, how important a part of our spiritual life goes on like the circulation, absorptions, and secretions of our bodily life, unrepresented by any specific sensation, and yet the ground and condition of our total sense of existence!

While I feel, acknowledge, and revere the almost measureless superiority of the sermons of the divines, who labored in the first, and even the first two centuries of the Reformation, from Luther to Leighton, over the prudential morals and apologizing theology that have characterized the unfanatical clergy since the Revolution in 1688, I cannot but regret, especially while I am listening to a Hooker, that they withheld all light from the truths contained in the words 'Satan', 'the Serpent', 'the Evil Spirit', and this last used plurally.

A DISCOURSE OF JUSTIFICATION, WORKS, AND HOW THE FOUNDATION OF FAITH IS OVERTHROWN.

Ib. s. 31. p. 659-661.

But we say, our salvation is by Christ alone; therefore howsoever, or whatsoever, we add unto Christ in the matter of salvation, we overthrow Christ. Our case were very hard, if this argument, so universally meant as it is proposed, were sound and good. We ourselves do not teach Christ alone, excluding our own faith, unto justification; Christ alone, excluding our own work, unto sanctification; Christ alone, excluding the one or the other as unnecessary unto salvation. ... As we have received, so we teach that besides the bare and naked work, wherein Christ, without any other a.s.sociate, finished all the parts of our redemption and purchased salvation himself alone; for conveyance of this eminent blessing unto us, many things are required, as, to be known and chosen of G.o.d _before_ the foundations of the world; _in_ the world to be called, justified, sanctified; _after_ we have left the world to be received into glory; Christ in every of these hath somewhat which he worketh alone. &c. &c.

No where out of the Holy Scripture have I found the root and pith of Christian faith so clearly and purely propounded as in this section.

G.o.d, whose thoughts are eternal, beholdeth the end, and in the completed work seeth and accepteth every stage of the process. I dislike only the word 'purchased;'--not that it is not Scriptural, but because a metaphor well and wisely used in the enforcement and varied elucidation of a truth, is not therefore properly employed in its exact enunciation. I will ill.u.s.trate, amplify and _divide_ the word with Paul; but I will propound it collectively with John. If in this admirable pa.s.sage aught else dare be wished otherwise, it is the division and yet confusion of time and eternity, by giving an anteriority to the latter.

I am persuaded, that the practice of the Romish church tendeth to make vain the doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ alone; but judging by her most eminent divines, I can find nothing dissonant from the truth in her express decisions on this article. Perhaps it would be safer to say:--Christ alone saves us, working in us by the faith which includes hope and love.

Ib. s. 34. p. 671.

If it were not a strong deluding spirit which hath possession of their hearts; were it possible but that they should see how plainly they do herein gainsay the very ground of apostolic faith? ... The Apostle, as if he had foreseen how the Church of Rome would abuse the world in time by ambiguous terms, to declare in what sense the name of grace must be taken, when we make it the cause of our salvation, saith, 'He saved us according to his mercy', &c.

In all Christian communities there have been and ever will be too many Christians in name only;--too many in belief and notion only: but likewise, I trust, in every acknowledged Church, Eastern or Western, Greek, Roman, Protestant, many of those in belief, more or less erroneous, who are Christians in faith and in spirit. And I neither do nor can think, that any pious member of the Church of Rome did ever in his heart attribute any merit to any work as being his work. [12] A grievous error and a mischievous error there was practically in mooting the question at all of the condignity of works and their rewards. In short, to attribute merit to any agent but G.o.d in Christ, our faith as Christians forbids us; and to dispute about the merit of works abstracted from the agent, common sense ought to forbid us.

A SUPPLICATION MADE TO THE COUNCIL BY MASTER WALTER TRAVERS.

Ib. p. 698.

I said directly and plainly to all men's understanding, that it was not indeed to be doubted, but many of the Fathers were saved; but the means, said I, was not their ignorance, which excuseth no man with G.o.d, but their knowledge and faith of the truth, which, it appeareth, G.o.d vouchsafed them, by many notable monuments and records extant of it in all ages.

Not certainly, if the ignorance proceeded directly or indirectly from a defect or sinful propensity of the will; but where no such cause is imaginable, in such cases this position of Master Travers is little less than blasphemous to the divine goodness, and in direct contradiction to an a.s.sertion of St. Paul's, [13] and to an evident consequence from our Saviour's own words on the polygamy of the fathers. [14]

ANSWER TO TRAVERS.

Ib. p. 719.

The next thing discovered, is an opinion about the a.s.surance of men's persuasion in matters of faith. I have taught, he saith, 'That the a.s.surance of things which we believe by the word, is not so certain as of that we perceive by sense.'

A useful instance to ill.u.s.trate the importance of distinct, and the mischief of equivocal or multivocal, terms. Had Hooker said that the fundamental truths of religion, though perhaps even more certain, are less evident than the facts of sense, there could have been no misunderstanding. Thus the demonstrations of algebra possess equal certainty with those of geometry, but cannot lay claim to the same evidence. Certainty is positive, evidence relative; the former, strictly taken, insusceptible of more or less, the latter capable of existing in many different degrees.

Writing a year or more after the preceding note, I am sorry to say that Hooker's reasoning on this point seems to me sophistical throughout.

That a man must see what he sees is no persuasion at all, nor bears the remotest a.n.a.logy to any judgment of the mind. The question is, whether men have a clearer conception and a more stedfast conviction of the objective reality to which the image moving their eye appertains, than of the objective reality of the things and states spiritually discovered by faith. And this Travers had a right to question wherever a saving faith existed.

August, 1826.

SERMON IV. A REMEDY AGAINST SORROW AND FEAR.

Ib. p. 801.

In spirit I am with you to the world's end.

O how grateful should I be to be made intuitive of the truth intended in the words--'In spirit I am with you!'

Ib. p. 808.

Touching the latter affection of fear, which respecteth evils to come, as the other which we have spoken of doth present evils; first, in the nature thereof it is plain that we are not every future evil afraid.

Perceive we not how they, whose tenderness shrinketh at the least rase of a needle's point, do kiss the sword that pierceth their souls quite thorow?

In this and in sundry similar pa.s.sages of this venerable writer there is [Greek: h_os emoige dokei], a very plausible, but even therefore the more dangerous, sophism; but the due detection and exposure of which would exceed the scanty s.p.a.ce of a marginal comment. Briefly, what does Hooker comprehend in the term 'pain?' Whatsoever the soul finds adverse to her well being, or incompatible with her free action? In this sense Hooker's position is a mere truism. But if pain be applied exclusively to the soul finding itself as life, then it is an error.

Ib. p. 811.

Fear then in itself being mere nature cannot in itself be sin, which sin is not nature, but therefore an accessary deprivation.

I suspect a misprint, and that it should be depravation'. But if not nature, then it must be a super-induced and incidental depravation of nature. The princ.i.p.al, namely fear, is nature; but the sin, that is, that it is a sinful fear, is but an accessary.

[Footnote 1: The references are to Mr. Keble's edition (1836.)--Ed.]

[Footnote 2: But see Mr. Keble's statement (Pref. xxix.), and the argument founded on discoveries and collation of MSS. since the note in the text was written.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: See Mr. Coleridge's work 'On the const.i.tution of the Church and State according to the idea of each.'--Ed.]

[Footnote 4: See E. P. I. ii. 3. p. 252.--Ed.]