The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 8

[Footnote 5: See the 'Church and State,' in which the 'ecclesia' or Church in Christ, is distinguished from the 'enclesia', or national Church.--Ed.]

[Footnote 6: See the essays generally from the fourth to the ninth, both inclusively, in Vol. III. 3rd edition, more especially, the fifth essay.--Ed.]

[Footnote 7: Part I. c. i. vv. 151--6.--Ed.]

[Footnote 8: See the essay on the idea of the Prometheus of aeschylus.

Literary Remains, Vol. II. p. 323.--Ed.]

[Footnote 9:

'Every man is born an Aristotelian, or a Platonist. I do not think it possible that any one born an Aristotelian can become a Platonist; and I am sure no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They are the two cla.s.ses of men, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a third. The one considers reason a quality, or attribute; the other considers it a power. I believe that Aristotle never could get to understand what Plato meant by an idea. ... Aristotle was, and still is, the sovereign lord of the understanding; the faculty judging by the senses. He was a conceptualist, and never could raise himself into that higher state, which was natural to Plato, and has been so to others, in which the understanding is distinctly contemplated, and, as it were, looked down upon, from the throne of actual ideas, or living, inborn, essential truths.'

'Table Talk', 2d Edit. p. 95.--Ed.]

[Footnote 10: See the 'Church and State,' c. i.--Ed.]

[Footnote 11: See 'post'.--Ed.]

[Footnote 12: But see the language of the Council of Trent:

Si quis dixerit just.i.tiam acceptam non conservari 'atque etiam augeri coram. Deo per bona opera'; sed opera ipsa fructus solummodo et signa esse justificationis adeptae,' non autem ipsius augendae causam'; anathema sit.

'Sess'. VI. 'Can'. 24.

... Si quis dixerit hominis justificati 'bona opera' ita esse dona Dei, 'ut non sint etiam bona ipsius justificati merita'; aut ipsum justificatum 'bonis operibus', quae ab eo per Dei gratiam, et Jesu Christi meritum, cujus vivum membrum est, fiunt, 'non vere mereri augmentum gratiae, vitam aeternam, et ipsius vitae aeternae, si tamen in gratia decesserit, conscecutionem atque etiam gloriae augmentum', anathema sit.

'Ib. Can.' 32.--Ed.]

[Footnote 13: Rom. ii. 12.--Ed.]

[Footnote 14: Matt. xix. 8.--Ed.]

NOTES ON FIELD ON THE CHURCH. [1]

'Fly-leaf.--Hannah Scollock, her book, February 10', 1787.

This, Hannah Scollock! may have been the case; Your writing therefore I will not erase.

But now this book, once yours, belongs to me, The Morning Post's and Courier's S. T. C.;-- Elsewhere in College, knowledge, wit and scholerage To friends and public known, as S. T. Coleridge.

Witness hereto my hand, on Ashly Green, One thousand, twice four hundred, and fourteen Year of our Lord--and of the month November, The fifteenth day, if right I do remember.

28 March, 1819. [2]

MY DEAR DERWENT,

This one volume, thoroughly understood and appropriated, will place you in the highest ranks of doctrinal Church of England divines (of such as now are), and in no mean rank as a true doctrinal Church historian.

Next to this I recommend Baxter's own Life, edited by Sylvester, with my marginal notes. Here, more than in any of the prelatical and Arminian divines from Laud to the death of Charles II, you will see the strength and beauty of the Church of England, that is, its liturgy, homilies, and articles. By contrasting, too, its present state with that which such excellent men as Baxter, Calamy, and the so called Presbyterian or Puritan divines, would have made it, you will bless it as the bulwark of toleration.

Thirdly, you must read Eichorn's Introduction to the Old and New Testament, and the Apocrypha, and his comment on the Apocalypse; to all which my notes and your own previous studies will supply whatever antidote is wanting;--these will suffice for your Biblical learning, and teach you to attach no more than the supportable weight to these and such like outward evidences of our holy and spiritual religion.

So having done, you will be in point of professional knowledge such a clergyman as will make glad the heart of your loving father,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

N. B.--See Book iv Chap. 7, p. 351, both for a masterly confutation of the Paleyo-Grotian evidences of the Gospel, and a decisive proof in what light that system was regarded by the Church of England in its best age.

Like Grotius himself, it is half way between Popery and Socinianism.

B. i. c. 3. p. 5.

But men desired only to be like unto G.o.d in omniscience and the general knowledge of all things which may be communicated to a creature, as in Christ it is to his human soul.

Surely this is more than doubtful; and even the instance given is irreconcilable with Christ's own a.s.sertion concerning the last day, which must be understood of his human soul, by all who hold the faith delivered from the foundation, namely, his deity. Field seems to have excerpted this incautiously from the Schoolmen, who on this premiss could justify the communicability of adoration, as in the case of the saints. Omniscience, it may be proved, implies omnipotence. The fourth of the arguments in this section, and, as closely connected with it, the first (only somewhat differently stated) seem the strongest, or rather the only ones. For the second is a mere antic.i.p.ation of the fourth, and all that is true in the third is involved in it.

Ib. c. 5. p. 9.

And began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

That is, I humbly apprehend, in other than the Hebrew and Syrochaldaic languages, which (with rare and reluctant exceptions in favor of the Greek) were appropriated to public prayer and exhortation, just as the Latin in the Romish Church. The new converts preached and prayed, each to his companions in his and their dialect;--they were all Jews, but had a.s.sembled from all the different provinces of the Roman and Parthian empires, as the Quakers among us to the yearly meeting in London; this was a sign, not a miracle. The miracle consisted in the visible and audible descent of the Holy Ghost, and in the fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel, as explained by St. Peter himself. 'Acts' ii. 15.

Ib. p.10.

'Aliud est etymologia nominis et aliud significatio nominis.

Etymologia attenditur secundum id it quo imponitur nomen ad significandum: nominis vero significatio secundum id ad quod significandum imponitur.'

This pa.s.sage from Aquinas would be an apt motto for a critique on Horne Tooke's Diversions of Purley. The best service of etymology is, when the sense of a word is still unsettled, and especially when two words have each two meanings; A=a-b, and B=a-b, instead of A=a and B=b. Thus reason and understanding as at present popularly confounded.

Here the 'etyma,--ratio,' the relative proportion of thoughts and things,--and understanding, as the power which substantiates 'phaenomena (substat eis)'--determine the proper sense. But most often the 'etyma' being equivalent, we must proceed 'ex arbitrio,' as 'law compels,' 'religion obliges;' or take up what had been begun in some one derivative. Thus 'fanciful' and 'imaginative,' are discriminated;--and this supplies the ground of choice for giving to fancy and imagination, each its own sense. Cowley is a fanciful writer, Milton an imaginative poet. Then I proceed with the distinction, how ill fancy a.s.sorts with imagination, as instanced in Milton's Limbo. [3]

Ib.