The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 24

HEINRICHS'S COMMENTARY ON THE APOCALYPSE. [1]

P. 245.

It seems clear that Irenaeus invented the unmeaning 'Teitan', in order to save himself from the charge of treason, to which the 'Lateinos' might have exposed him. See Rabelais 'pa.s.sim'.

P.246.

'Nec magis blandiri poterit alterum illud nomen, Teitan, quod studiose commendavit Irenoeus'.

No! 'non studiose, sed ironice commendavit Irenaeus'. Indeed it is ridiculous to suppose that Irenaeus was in earnest with 'Teitan'. His meaning evidently is:--if not 'Lateinos', which has a meaning, it is some one of the many names having the same numeral power, to which a meaning is to be found by the fulfillment of the prophecy. My own conviction is, that the whole is an ill-concerted conundrum, the secret of which died with the author. The general purpose only can be ascertained, namely, some test, partaking of religious obligation, of allegiance to the sovereignty of the Roman Emperor.

If I granted for a moment the truth of Heinrichs's supposition, namely, that, according to the belief of the Apocalypt, the line of the Emperors would cease in t.i.tus the seventh or complete number (Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, being omitted) by the advent of the Messiah;--if I found my judgment more coerced by his arguments than it is,--then I should use this book as evidence of the great and early discrepance between the Jewish-Christian Church and the Pauline; and my present very serious doubts respecting the ident.i.ty of John the Theologian and John the Evangelist would become fixed convictions of the contrary.

P. 91. Rev. xvii. 11.

Among other grounds for doubting this interpretation (that 'the eighth'

in v.11. is Satan), I object, 1. that it almost necessitates the subst.i.tution of the Coptic [Greek: aggelos] for [Greek: ogdoos] against all the MSS., and without any Patristic hint. For it seems a play with words unworthy the writer, to make Satan, who possessed all the seven, himself an 'eighth', and still worse if 'the eighth': 2. that it is not only a great and causeless inconcinnity in style, but a wanton adding of obscurity to the obscure to have, first, so carefully distinguished (c.

xiii. 1-11.) the [Greek: drak_on] from the two [Greek: thaeria], and the one [Greek: thaerion] from the other, and then to make [Greek: thaerion]

the appellative of the [Greek: drak_on]: as if having in one place told of Nicholas 'senior', d.i.c.k and another d.i.c.k his cousin, I should soon after talk of d.i.c.k, meaning old Nicholas by that name; that is, having discriminated Nicholas from d.i.c.k, then to say d.i.c.k, meaning Nicholas!

Rev. xix. 9.

These words might well bear a more recondite interpretation; that is, [Greek: outoi] (these blessed ones) are the true [Greek: logoi] or [Greek: tekna Theou], as the Logos is the [Greek: huis Theou].

Ib. 10.

According to the law of symbolic poetry this sociable angel (the Beatrice of the Hebrew Dante) ought to be, and I doubt not is, 'sensu symbolico', an angel; that is, the angel of the Church of Ephesus, John the Evangelist, according to the opinion of Eusebius.

P. 294. Rev. xx. 'Millennium'.

'Die vorzuglichsten Bekenner Jesu sollen auferstehen, die ubrigen Menschen sollen es nicht. Hiesse jenes, sie sollen noch nach ihrem Tode fortwurken, so ware das letztere falsch: denn auch die ubrigen wurken nach ihrem Tode durch ihre schriften, ihre Andenken, ihre Beispiel.'

'Euge! Heinrichi'. O, the sublime bathos of thy prosaism--the muddy eddy of thy logic! Thou art the only man to understand a poet!

I have too clearly before me the idea of a poet's genius to deem myself other than a very humble poet; but in the very possession of the idea, I know myself so far a poet as to feel a.s.sured that I can understand and interpret a poem in the spirit of poetry, and with the poet's spirit.

Like the ostrich, I cannot fly, yet have I wings that give me the feeling of flight; and as I sweep along the plain, can look up toward the bird of Jove, and can follow him and say:

"Sovereign of the air,--who descendest on thy nest in the cleft of the inaccessible rock, who makest the mountain pinnacle thy perch and halting-place, and, scanning with steady eye the orb of glory right above thee, imprintest thy lordly talons in the stainless snows, that shoot back and scatter round his glittering shafts,--I pay thee homage. Thou art my king. I give honor due to the vulture, the falcon, and all thy n.o.ble baronage; and no less to the lowly bird, the sky-lark, whom thou permittest to visit thy court, and chant her matin song within its cloudy curtains; yea the linnet, the thrush, the swallow, are my brethren:--but still I am a bird, though but a bird of the earth.

"Monarch of our kind, I am a bird, even as thou; and I have shed plumes, which have added beauty to the beautiful, and grace to terror, waving over the maiden's brow and on the helmed head of the war-chief; and majesty to grief, drooping o'er the car of death!"

[Footnote 1: Gottingen, 1821. The few following notes are, something out of order, inserted here in consequence of their connection with the immediately preceding remarks in the text.--Ed.]

LIFE OF BISHOP HACKET. [1]

Ib. p. 8.

Yet he would often dispute the necessity of a country living for a London minister to retire to in hot summer time, out of the sepulchral air of a churchyard, where most of them are housed in the city, and found for his own part that by Whitsuntide he did 'rus anhelare', and unless he took fresh air in the vacation, he was stopt in his lungs and could not speak clear after Michaelmas.

A plausible reason certainly why A. and B. should occasionally change posts, but a very weak one, methinks, for A.'s having both livings all the year through.

Ib. p. 42-3.

The Bishop was an enemy to all separation from the Church of England; but their hypocrisy he thought superlative that allowed the doctrine, and yet would separate for mislike of the discipline. ... And therefore he wished that as of old all kings and other Christians subscribed to the Conciliary Decrees, so now a law might pa.s.s that all justices of peace should do so in England, and then they would be more careful to punish the depravers of Church Orders.

The little or no effect of recent experience and sufferings still more recent, in curing the mania of persecution! How was it possible that a man like Bishop Hacket should not have seen that if separation on account of the imposition of things by himself admitted to be indifferent, and as such justified, was criminal in those who did not think them indifferent,--how doubly criminal must the imposition have been, and how tenfold criminal the perseverance in occasioning separation; how guilty the imprisoning, impoveris.h.i.+ng, driving into wildernesses their Christian brethren for admitted indifferentials in direct contempt of St. Paul's positive command to the contrary!

HACKET'S SERMONS.

Serm. I. Luke ii. 7.

Moreover as the woman Mary did bring forth the son who bruised the serpent's head, which brought sin into the world by the woman Eve, so the Virgin Mary was the occasion of grace as the Virgin Eve was the cause of d.a.m.nation. Eve had not known Adam as yet when she was beguiled and seduced the man; so Mary, &c.

A Rabbinical fable or gloss on Gen. iii. 1. Hacket is offensively fond of these worse than silly vanities.

Ib. p. 5.

The more to ill.u.s.trate this, you must know that there was a twofold root or foundation of the children of Israel for their temporal being: Abraham was the root of the people; the kingdom was rent from Saul, and therefore David was the root of the kingdom; among all the kings in the pedigree none but he hath the name; and Jesse begat David the king, and David the king begat Solomon; and therefore so often as G.o.d did profess to spare the people, though he were angry, he says he would do it for Abraham's sake: so often as he professeth to spare the kingdom of Judah, he says he would do it for his servant David's sake; so that 'ratione radicis', as Abraham and David are roots of the people and kingdom, especially Christ is called the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.

A valuable remark, and confirmative of my convictions respecting the conversion of the Jews, namely, that whatever was ordained for them as 'Abrahamidae' is not repealed by Christianity, but only what appertained to the republic, kingdom, or state. The modern conversions are, as it seems to me, in the face of G.o.d's commands.

Ib.

I come to the third strange condition of the birth; it was without travel, or the pangs of woman, as I will shew you out of these words; 'fasciis involvit', that 'she wrapt him in swaddling clouts, and laid him in a manger. Ipsa genitrix fuit obstetrix', says St. Cyprian. Mary was both the mother and the midwife of the child; far be it from us to think that the weak hand of the woman could facilitate the work which was guided only by the miraculous hand of G.o.d. The Virgin conceived our Lord without the l.u.s.ts of the flesh, and therefore she had not the pangs and travel of woman upon her, she brought him forth without the curse of the flesh. These be the Fathers' comparisons. As bees draw honey from the flower without offending it, as Eve was taken out of Adam's side without any grief to him, as a sprig issues out of the bark of a tree, as the sparkling light from the brightness of the star, such ease was it to Mary to bring forth her first born son; and therefore having no weakness in her body, feeling no want of vigor, she did not deliver him to any profane hand to be drest, but by a special ability, above all that are newly delivered, she wrapt him in swaddling clouts. 'Gravida, sed non gravabatur'; she had a burden in her womb, before she was delivered, and yet she was not burdened for her journey which she took so instantly before the time of the child's birth. From Nazareth to Bethlem was above forty miles, and yet she suffered it without weariness or complaint, for such was the power of the Babe, that rather he did support the Mother's weakness than was supported; and as he lighted his Mother's travel by the way from Nazareth to Bethlem that it was not tedious to her tender age, so he took away all her dolour and imbecility from her travel in child-birth, and therefore 'she wrapt him in swaddling clouts'.

A very different paragraph indeed, and quite on the cross road to Rome!

It really makes me melancholy; but it is one of a thousand instances of the influence of Patristic learning, by which the Reformers of the Latin Church were distinguished from the renovators of the Christian religion.