The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iii Part 29

'Ea omnia super Christo Pilatus, et ipse jam pro sua conscientia Christia.n.u.s, Caesari tum Tiberio nuntiavit.'

Apologet, ii. 624. See the account in Eusebius. Hist. Eccl. ii. 2.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: See 'M. T. Ciceronis de Republica quae supersunt. Zell.

Stuttgardt'. 1827.--Ed.]

[Footnote 4: See 'supra'.--Ed].

[Footnote 5: Folio. 1693.--Ed.]

[Footnote 6: See The Church and State.--Ed.]

NOTES ON JEREMY TAYLOR.

I have not seen the late Bishop Heber's edition of Jeremy Taylor's 'Works'; but I have been informed that he did little more than contribute the 'Life', and that in all else it is a mere London booksellers' job. This, if true, is greatly to be regretted. I know no writer whose works more require, I need not say deserve, the annotations, aye, and occasional animadversions, of a sound and learned divine. One thing is especially desirable in reference to that most important, because (with the exception perhaps of the 'Holy Living and Dying') the most popular, of Taylor's works, 'The Liberty of Prophesying'; and this is a careful collation of the different editions, particularly of the first printed before the Restoration, and the last published in Taylor's lifetime, and after his promotion to the episcopal bench. Indeed, I regard this as so nearly concerning Taylor's character as a man, that if I find that it has not been done in Heber's edition, and if I find a first edition in the British Museum, or Sion College, or Dr. Williams's library, I will, G.o.d permitting, do it myself. There seems something cruel in giving the name, Anabaptist, to the English Anti-paedo-baptists; but still worse in connecting this most innocent opinion with the mad Jacobin ravings of the poor wretches who were called Anabaptists, in Munster, as if the latter had ever formed part of the Baptists' creeds. In short 'The Liberty of Prophesying' is an admirable work, in many respects, and calculated to produce a much greater effect on the many than Milton's treatise on the same subject: on the other hand, Milton's is throughout unmixed truth; and the man who in reading the two does not feel the contrast between the single-mindedness of the one, and the 'strabismus' in the other, is--in the road of preferment.

GENERAL DEDICATION OF THE POLEMICAL DISCOURSES. [1]

Vol. vii. p. ix.

And the breath of the people is like the voice of an exterminating angel, not so killing but so secret.

That is, in such wise. It would be well to note, after what time 'as'

became the requisite correlative to 'so,' and even, as in this instance, the preferable subst.i.tute. We should have written 'as' in both places probably, but at all events in the latter, transplacing the sentences 'as secret though not so killing;' or 'not so killing, but quite as secret.' It is not generally true that Taylor's punctuation is arbitrary, or his periods reducible to the post-Revolutionary standard of length by turning some of his colons or semi-colons into full stops.

There is a subtle yet just and systematic logic followed in his pointing, as often as it is permitted by the higher principle, because the proper and primary purpose, of our stops, and to which alone from their paucity they are adequate,--that I mean of enabling the reader to prepare and manage the proportions of his voice and breath. But for the true scheme of punctuation, [Greek: h_os emoige dokei], see the blank page over leaf which I will try to disblank into a prize of more worth than can be got at the E.O.'s and little goes of Lindley Murray. [2]

Ib. p. xv.

But the most complained that, in my ways to persuade a toleration, I helped some men too far, and that I armed the Anabaptists with swords instead of s.h.i.+elds, with a power to offend us, besides the proper defensitives of their own ... But wise men understand the thing and are satisfied. But because all men are not of equal strength; I did not only in a discourse on purpose demonstrate the true doctrine in that question, but I have now in this edition of that book answered all their pretensions, &c.

No; in the might of his genius he called up a spirit which he has in vain endeavored to lay, or exorcise from the conviction.

Ib. p. xvii.

For episcopacy relies not upon the authority of Fathers and Councils, but upon Scripture, upon the inst.i.tution of Christ, or the inst.i.tution of the Apostles, upon a universal tradition, and a universal practice, not upon the words and opinions of the doctors: it hath as great a testimony as Scripture itself hath, &c.

We must make allowance for the intoxication of recent triumph and final victory over a triumphing and victorious enemy; or who but would start back at the aweless temerity of this a.s.sertion? Not to mention the evasion; for who ever denied the historical fact, or the Scriptural occurrence of the word expressing the fact, namely, 'episcopi, episcopatus?'? What was questioned by the opponents was,

1;--Who and what these 'episcopi' were; whether essentially different from the presbyter, or a presbyter by kind in his own 'ecclesia', and a president or chairman by accident in a synod of presbyters:

2;--That whatever the 'episcopi' of the Apostolic times were, yet were they prelates, lordly diocesans; were they such as the Bishops of the Church of England? Was there Scripture authority for Archbishops?

3;--That the establishment of Bishops by the Apostle Paul being granted (as who can deny it?)--yet was this done 'jure Apostolico' for the universal Church in all places and ages; or only as expedient for that time and under those circ.u.mstances; by Paul not as an Apostle, but as the head and founder of those particular churches, and so ent.i.tled to determine their bye laws?

DEDICATION OF THE SACRED ORDER AND OFFICES OF EPISCOPACY.

Ib. p. xxiii.

But the interest of the Bishops is conjunct with the prosperity of the King, besides the interest of their own security, by the obligation of secular advantages. For they who have their livelihood from the King, and are in expectance of their fortune from him, are more likely to pay a tribute of exacter duty, than others, whose fortunes are not in such immediate dependency on His Majesty.

The cat out of the bag! Consult the whole reigns of Charles I. and II.

and the beginning of James II. Jeremy Taylor was at this time (blamelessly for himself and most honourably for his patrons) ambling on the high road of preferment; and to men so situated, however sagacious in other respects, it is not given to read the signs of the times.

Little did Taylor foresee that to indiscreet avowals, like these, on the part of the court clergy, the exauctorations of the Bishops and the temporary overthrow of the Church itself would be in no small portion attributable. But the scanty measure and obscurity (if not rather, for so bright a luminary, the occultation) of his preferment after the Restoration is a problem, of which perhaps his virtues present the most probable solution.

Ib. p. xxv.

A second return that episcopacy makes to royalty, is that which is the duty of all Christians, the paying tributes and impositions.

This is true; and it was an evil hour for the Church,--and led to the loss of its Convocation, the greatest and, in an enlarged state-policy, the most impolitic affront ever offered by a government to its own established Church,--in which the clergy surrendered their right of taxing themselves.

Ib. p. xxvii.

I mean the conversion of the kingdom from Paganism by St. Augustine, Archbishop of Canterbury; and the Reformation begun and promoted by Bishops.

From Paganism in part; but in part from primitive Christianity to Popery. But neither this nor the following boast will bear narrow looking into, I suspect.

'In fine.'

Like all Taylor's dedications and dedicatory epistles, this is easy, dignified, and pregnant. The happiest 'synthesis' of the divine, the scholar, and the gentleman was perhaps exhibited in him and Bishop Berkeley.

Introd. p.3.

In all those accursed machinations, which the device and artifice of h.e.l.l hath invented for the supplanting of the Church, 'inimicus h.o.m.o,'

that old superseminator of heresies and crude mischiefs, hath endeavoured to be curiously compendious, and, with Tarquin's device, 'putare summa papaverum.'

Quoere-spiritualiter papaveratorurn?

Ib.