The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 2

In like manner if he sincerely repent and believe, his sins are forgiven, whether the minister absolve him or not. Now if M + 5 =5, and 5-M = 5, M = O. If he be impenitent and unbelieving, his sins are detained, no doubt, whether the minister do or do not detain them.

Ib. p. 163.

Adam was created of G.o.d in such sort righteous, as that he became of a righteous an unrighteous person; as Paul himself argueth, and withall instructeth himself, where he saith, The law is not given for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient.

This follows from the very definition or idea of righteousness;-it is itself the law;--[Greek: pas gar dikais autonomos.]

Ib.

The Scripture saith, G.o.d maketh the unG.o.dly righteous; there he calleth us all, one with another, despairing and wicked wretches; for what will an unG.o.dly creature not dare to accomplish, if he may but have occasion, place, and opportunity?

That is with a l.u.s.t within correspondent to the temptation from without.

A Christian's conscience, methinks, ought to be a 'Ja.n.u.s bifrons',--a Gospel-face retrospective, and smiling through penitent tears on the sins of the past, and a Moses-face looking forward in frown and menace, frightening the harlot will into a holy abortion of sins conceived but not yet born, perchance not yet quickened. The fanatic Antinomian reverses this; for the past he requires all the horrors of remorse and despair, till the moment of a.s.surance; thenceforward, he may do what he likes, for he cannot sin.

Ib. p. 165.

All natural inclinations (said Luther) are either against or without G.o.d; therefore none are good. We see that no man is so honest as to marry a wife, only thereby to have children, to love and to bring them up in the fear of G.o.d.

This is a very weak instance. If a man had been commanded to marry by G.o.d, being so formed as that no sensual delight accompanied, and refused to do so, unless this appet.i.te and gratification were added,--then indeed!

Chap. X. p. 168, 9.

Ah Lord G.o.d (said Luther), why should we any way boast of our free-will, as if it were able to do anything in divine and spiritual matters were they never so small? * * * I confess that mankind hath a free-will, but it is to milk kine, to build houses, &c., and no further: for so long as a man sitteth well and in safety, and sticketh in no want, so long he thinketh he hath a free-will which is able to do something; but, when want and need appeareth, that there is neither to eat nor to drink, neither money nor provision, where is then the free will? It is utterly lost, and cannot stand when it cometh to the pinch. But faith only standeth fast and sure, and seeketh Christ.

Luther confounds free-will with efficient power, which neither does nor can exist save where the finite will is one with the absolute Will. That Luther was practically on the right side in this famous controversy, and that he was driving at the truth, I see abundant reason to believe. But it is no less evident that he saw it in a mist, or rather as a mist with dissolving outline; and as he saw the thing as a mist, so he ever and anon mistakes a mist for the thing. But Erasmus and Saavedra were equally indistinct; and shallow and unsubstantial to boot. In fact, till the appearance of Kant's 'Kritiques' of the pure and of the practical Reason the problem had never been accurately or adequately stated, much less solved.

26 June, 1826.

Ib. p. 174.

Loving friends, (said Luther) our doctrine that free-will is dead and nothing at all is grounded powerfully in Holy Scripture.

It is of vital importance for a theological student to understand clearly the utter diversity of the Lutheran, which is likewise the Calvinistic, denial of free-will in the unregenerate, and the doctrine of the modern Necessitarians and ('proh pudor!') of the later Calvinists, which denies the proper existence of will altogether. The former is sound, Scriptural, compatible with the divine justice, a new, yea, a mighty motive to morality, and, finally, the dictate of common sense grounded on common experience. The latter the very contrary of all these.

Chap. xii. p. 187.

This is now (said Luther), the first instruction concerning the law; namely, that the same must be used to hinder the unG.o.dly from their wicked and mischievous intentions. For the Devil, who is an Abbot and a Prince of this world, driveth and allureth people to work all manner of sin and wickedness; for which cause G.o.d hath ordained magistrates, elders, schoolmasters, laws, and statutes, to the end, if they cannot do more, yet at least that they may bind the claws of the Devil, and to hinder him from raging and swelling so powerfully (in those which are his) according to his will and pleasure.

And (said Luther), although thou hadst not committed this or that sin, yet nevertheless, thou art an unG.o.dly creature, &c. but what is done cannot he undone, he that hath stolen, let him henceforward steal no more.

Secondly, we use the law spiritually, which is done in this manner; that it maketh the transgressions greater, as Saint Paul saith; that is, that it may reveal and discover to people their sins, blindness, misery, and unG.o.dly doings wherein they were conceived and born; namely, that they are ignorant of G.o.d, and are his enemies, and therefore have justly deserved death, h.e.l.l, G.o.d's judgments, his everlasting wrath and indignation. Saint Paul, (said Luther), expoundeth such spiritual offices and works of the law with many words.

Rom. vii.

Nothing can be more sound or more philosophic than the contents of these two paragraphs. They afford a sufficient answer to the pretence of the Romanists and Arminians, that by the law St. Paul meant only the ceremonial law.

Ib. p. 189.

And if Moses had not cas.h.i.+ered and put himself out of his office, and had not taken it away with these words, (where he saith, 'The Lord thy G.o.d will raise up unto thee another prophet out of thy brethren; Him shall thou hear'. (Deut. xviii.)) who then at any time would or could have believed the Gospel, and forsaken Moses?

If I could be persuaded that this pa.s.sage (Deut. xviii. 15-19.) primarily referred to Christ, and that Christ, not Joshua and his successors, was the prophet here promised; I must either become a Unitarian psilanthrophist, and join Priestley and Belsham,--or abandon to the Jews their own Messiah as yet to come, and cling to the religion of John and Paul, without further reference to Moses than to Lycurgus, Solon and Numa; all of whom in their different spheres no less prepared the way for the coming of the Lord, 'the desire of the nations'.

Ib. p. 190.

It is therefore most evident (said Luther), that the law can but only help us to know our sins, and to make us afraid of death. Now sins and death are such things as belong to the world, and which are therein.

Both in Paul and Luther, (names which I can never separate),--not indeed peculiar to these, for it is the same in the Psalms, Ezekiel, and throughout the Scriptures, but which I feel most in Paul and Luther, --there is one fearful blank, the wisdom or necessity of which I do not doubt, yet cannot help groping and straining after like one that stares in the dark; and this is Death. The law makes us afraid of death. What is death?--an unhappy life? Who does not feel the insufficiency of this answer? What a.n.a.logy does immortal suffering bear to the only death which is known to us?

Since I wrote the above, G.o.d has, I humbly trust, given me a clearer light as to the true nature of the 'death' so often mentioned in the Scriptures.

Ib.

It is (said Luther), a very hard matter: yea, an impossible thing for thy human strength, whosoever thou art (without G.o.d's a.s.sistance) that (at such a time when Moses setteth upon thee with his law, and fearfully affrighteth thee, accuseth and condemneth thee, threateneth thee with G.o.d's wrath and death) thou shouldest as then be of such a mind; namely, as if no law nor sin had ever been at any time:--I say, it is in a manner a thing impossible, that a human creature should carry himself in such a sort, when he is and feeleth himself a.s.saulted with trials and temptations, and when the conscience hath to do with G.o.d, as then to think no otherwise, than that from everlasting nothing hath been, but only and alone Christ, altogether grace and deliverance.

Yea, verily, Amen and Amen! For this short heroic paragraph contains the sum and substance, the heighth and the depth of all true philosophy.

Most a.s.suredly right difficult it is for us, while we are yet in the narrow chamber of death, with our faces to the dusky falsifying looking-gla.s.s that covers the scant end-side of the blind pa.s.sage from floor to ceiling,--right difficult for us, so wedged between its walls that we cannot turn round, nor have other escape possible but by walking backward, to understand that all we behold or have any memory of having ever beholden, yea, our very selves as seen by us, are but shadows, and when the forms that we loved vanish, impossible not to feel as if they were real.

Ib. p. 197.

Nothing that is good proceedeth out of the works of the law, except grace be present; for what we are forced to do, the same goeth not from the heart, neither is acceptable.

A law supposes a law-giver, and implies an actuator and executor, and consequently rewards and punishments publicly announced, and distinctly a.s.signed to the deeds enjoined or forbidden; and correlatively in the subjects of the law, there are supposed, first, a.s.surance of the being, the power, the veracity and seeingness of the law-giver, in whom I here comprise the legislative, judicial and executive functions; and secondly, self-interest, desire, hope and fear. Now from this view, it is evident that the deeds or works of the Law are themselves null and dead, deriving their whole significance from their attachment or alligation to the rewards and punishments, even as this diversely shaped and ink colored paper has its value wholly from the words or meanings, which have been arbitrarily connected therewith; or as a ladder, or flight of stairs, of a provision-loft, or treasury. If the architect or master of the house had chosen to place the store-room or treasury on the ground floor, the ladder or steps would have been useless. The life is divided between the rewards and punishments on the one hand, and the hope and fear on the other: namely, the active life or excitancy belongs to the former, the pa.s.sive life or excitability to the latter. Call the former the afficients, the latter the affections, the deeds being merely the signs or impresses of the former, as the seal, on the latter as the wax. Equally evident is it, that the affections are wholly formed by the deeds, which are themselves but the lifeless unsubstantial shapes of the actual forms ('formae formantes'), namely, the rewards and punishments.

Now contrast with this the process of the Gospel. There the affections are formed in the first instance, not by any reference to works or deeds, but by an unmerited rescue from death, liberation from slavish task-work; by faith, grat.i.tude, love, and affectionate contemplation of the exceeding goodness and loveliness of the Saviour, Redeemer, Benefactor: from the affections flow the deeds, or rather the affections overflow in the deeds, and the rewards are but a continuance and continued increase of the free grace in the state of the soul and in the growth and gradual perfecting of that state, which are themselves gifts of the same free grace, and one with the rewards; for in the kingdom of Christ which is the realm of love and inter-community, the joy and grace of each regenerated spirit becomes double, and thereby augments the joys and the graces of the others, and the joys and graces of all unite in each;--Christ, the head, and by his Spirit the bond, or unitive 'copula'

of all, being the spiritual sun whose entire image is reflected in every individual of the myriads of dew-drops. While under the Law, the all was but an aggregate of subjects, each striving after a reward for himself, --not as included in and resulting from the state,--but as the stipulated wages of the task-work, as a loaf of bread may be the pay or bounty promised for the hewing of wood or the breaking of stones!

Ib.

He (said Luther), that will dispute with the Devil, &c.

Queries.

I. Abstractedly from, and independently of, all sensible substances, and the bodies, wills, faculties, and affections of men, has the Devil, or would the Devil have, a personal self-subsistence? Does he, or can he, exist as a conscious individual agent or person? Should the answer to this query be in the negative: then--

II. Do there exist finite and personal beings, whether with composite and decomponible bodies, that is, embodied, or with simple and indecomponible bodies, (which is all that can be meant by disembodied as applied to finite creatures), so eminently wicked, or wicked and mischievous in so peculiar a kind, as to const.i.tute a distinct 'genus' of beings under the name of devils?

III. Is this second 'hypothesis' compatible with the acts and functions attributed to the Devil in Scripture? O! to have had these three questions put by Melancthon to Luther, and to have heard his reply!