The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 19

There are two senses in which the words, 'Church of England,' may be used;--first, with reference to the idea of the Church as an estate of this Christian Realm, protesting against the Papal usurpation, comprising, first, the interests of a permanent learned cla.s.s, that is, the Clergy;--secondly, those of the proper, that is, the infirm poor, from age or sickness;--and thirdly, the adequate proportional instruction of all in all cla.s.ses by public prayer, recitation of the Scriptures, by expounding, preaching, catechizing, and schooling, and last, not least, by the example and influence of a pastor and a schoolmaster placed as a germ of civilization and cultivation in every parish throughout the land. To this idea, the Reformed Church of England with its marriable and married Clergy would have approximated, if the revenues of the Church, as they existed at the death of Henry VII., had been rightly transferred by his successor;--transferred, I mean, from reservoirs, which had by degeneracy on the one hand, and progressive improvement on the other, fallen into ruin, and in which those revenues had stagnated into contagion or uselessness,--transferred from what had become public evils to their original and inherent purpose of public benefits, instead of being sacrilegiously alienated by a transfer to private proprietors. That this was impracticable, is historically true; but no less true is it philosophically, that this impracticability, arising wholly from moral causes, (namely, the loose manners and corrupt principles of a great majority in all cla.s.ses during the dynasty of the Tudors,) does not prevent this wholesale sacrilege, from deserving the character of the "first and deadliest wound inflicted on the Const.i.tution of the kingdom; which term, in the body politic, as in bodies natural, expresses not only what is and has been evolved, but likewise whatever is potentially contained in the seminal principle of the particular body, and which would in its due time have appeared but for emasculation in its infancy. This, however, is the first sense of the words, Church of England. [4]

The second is the Church of England as now by law established, and by practice of the law actually existing. That in the first sense it is the object of my admiration and the earthly 'ne plus ultra' of my religious aspirations, it were superfluous to say: but I may be allowed to express my conviction, that on our recurring to the same ends and objects, (the restoration of a national and circulating property in counterpoise of individual possession, disposable and heritable) though in other forms and by other means perhaps, the decline or progress of this country depends. In the second sense of the words I can sincerely profess, that I love and honour the Church of England, comparatively, beyond any other Church established or unestablished now existing in Christendom; and it is wholly in consequence of this deliberate and most affectionate filial preference, that I have read this work, and Calamy's historical writings, with so deep and so melancholy an interest. And I dare avow that I cannot but regard as an ignorant bigot every man who (especially since the publicity and authentication of the contents of the Stuart Papers, Memoirs and Life of James II. &c.) can place the far later furious High Church compilations and stories of Walker and others in compet.i.tion with the veracity and general verity of Baxter and Calamy; or can forget that the great body of Non-conformists to whom these great and good men belonged, were not dissenters from the established Church willingly, but an orthodox and numerous portion of the Church. Omitting then the wound received by religion generally under Henry VIII., and the shameless secularizations clandestinely effected during the reigns of Elizabeth and the first James, I am disposed to consider the three following as the grand evil epochs of our present Church. First, The introduction and after-predominance of Lat.i.tudinarianism under the name of Arminianism, and the spirit of a conjoint Romanism and Socinianism at the latter half or towards the close of the reign of James I. in the persons of Montague, Laud, and their confederates. Second, The ejection of the two thousand ministers after the Restoration, with the other violences in which the Churchmen made themselves the dupes of Charles, James, the Jesuits, and the French Court. (See the Stuart Papers 'pa.s.sim'). It was this that gave consistence and enduring strength to Schism in this country, prevented the pacation of Ireland, and prepared for the separation of America at a far too early period for the true interest of either country. Third, The surrender by the Clergy of the right of taxing themselves, and the Jacobitical follies that combined with the former to put it in the power of the Whig party to deprive the Church of her Convocation,--a bitter disgrace and wrong, to which most unhappily the people were rendered indifferent by the increasing contrast of the sermons of the Clergy with the Articles and Homilies of the Church itself,--but a wrong nevertheless which already has avenged, and will sooner or later be seen to avenge, itself on the State and the governing cla.s.ses that continue this boast of a short-sighted policy; the same policy which in our own days would have funded the property of the Church, and, by converting the Clergy into salaried dependents on the Government 'pro tempore', have deprived the Establishment of its fairest honor, that of being neither enslaved to the court, nor to the congregations; the same policy, alas! which even now pays and patronizes a Board of Agriculture to undermine all landed property by a succession of false, shallow, and inflammatory libels against t.i.thes.

These are my weighed sentiments: and fervently desiring, as I do, the perpetuity and prosperity of the established Church, zealous for its rights and dignity, preferring its forms, believing its Articles of Faith, and holding its Book of Common Prayer and its translation of the Scriptures among my highest privileges as a Christian and an Englishman, I trust that I may both entertain and avow these sentiments without forfeiting any part of my claim to the name of a faithful member of the Church of England.

June 1820.

N. B. As to Warburton's Alliance of the Church and State, I object to the t.i.tle (Alliance), and to the matter and mode of the reasoning. But the inter-dependence of the Church and the State appears to me a truth of the highest practical importance. Let but the temporal powers protect the subjects in their just rights as subjects merely: and I do not know of any one point in which the Church has the right or the necessity to call in the temporal power as its ally for any purpose exclusively ecclesiastic. The right of a firm to dissolve its partners.h.i.+p with any one partner, breach of contract having been proved, and publicly to announce the same, is common to all men as social beings.

I spoke above of "Romanism." But call it, if you like, Laudism, or Lambethism in temporalities and ceremonials, and of Socinianism in doctrine, that is, a retaining of the word but a rejecting or interpreting away of the sense and substance of the Scriptural Mysteries. This spirit has not indeed manifested itself in the article of the Trinity, since Waterland gave the deathblow to Arianism, and so left no alternative to the Clergy, but the actual divinity or mere humanity of our Lord; and the latter would be too impudent an avowal for a public reader of our Church Liturgy: but in the articles of original sin, the necessity of regeneration, the necessity of redemption in order to the possibility of regeneration, of justification by faith, and of prevenient and auxiliary grace,--all I can say with sincerity is, that our orthodoxy seems so far in an improving state, that I can hope for the time when Churchmen will use the term Arminianism to express a habit of belief opposed not to Calvinism, or the works of Calvin, but to the Articles of our own Church, and to the doctrine in which all the first Reformers agreed.

Note--that by Lat.i.tudinarianism, I do not mean the particular tenets of the divines so called, such as Dr. H. More, Cudworth and their compeers, relative to toleration, comprehension, and the general belief that in the greater number of points then most controverted, the pious of all parties were far more nearly of the same mind than their own imperfections, and the imperfection of language allowed them to see: I mean the disposition to explain away the articles of the Church on the pretext of their inconsistency with right reason;--when in fact it was only an incongruity with a wrong understanding, the faculty which St.

Paul calls [Greek: phronaema sarks], the rules of which having been all abstracted from objects of sense, (finite in time and s.p.a.ce,) are logically applicable to objects of the sense alone. This I have elsewhere called the spirit of Socinianism, which may work in many whose tenets are anti-Socinian.

Law is--'conclusio per regulam generis singulorum in genere isto inclusorum'. Now the extremes 'et inclusa' are contradictory terms.

Therefore extreme cases are not capable subjects of law 'a priori', but must proceed on knowledge of the past, and antic.i.p.ation of the future, and the fulfilment of the antic.i.p.ation is the proof, because the only possible determination, of the accuracy of the knowledge. In other words the agents may be condemned or honored according to their intentions, and the apparent source of their motives; so we honor Brutus, but the extreme case itself is tried by the event.

[Footnote 1: 'Relliquiae Baxterianae': or Mr. Richard Baxter's Narrative of the most memorable pa.s.sages of his life and times. Published from his ma.n.u.script, by Matthew Sylvester.--London, 'folio'. 1699.]

[Footnote 2: See Hooker E. P. V. xviii. 3. Vol. II. p. 80. Keble. Ed.]

[Footnote 3: See Table Talk, p. 162. 2nd edit. Ed.]

[Footnote 4: See the Church and State, p. 73, 3rd edit.--Ed.]

NOTES ON LEIGHTON. [1]

Surely if ever work not in the sacred Canon might suggest a belief of inspiration,--of something more than human,--this it is. When Mr. Elwyn made this a.s.sertion, I took it as the hyperbole of affection: but now I subscribe to it seriously, and bless the hour that introduced me to the knowledge of the evangelical, apostolical Archbishop Leighton.

April 1814.

Next to the inspired Scriptures--yea, and as the vibration of that once struck hour remaining on the air, stands Leighton's Commentary on the 1st Epistle of St. Peter.

Comment Vol. I. p. 2.

--their redemption and salvation by Christ Jesus; that inheritance of immortality bought by his blood for them, and the evidence and stability of their right and t.i.tle to it.

By the blood of Christ I mean this. I contemplate the Christ,

1;--As 'Christus agens', the Jehovah Christ, the Word:

2;--As 'Christus patiens', The G.o.d Incarnate.

In the former he is 'relative ad intellectum humanum, lux lucifica, sol intelligibilis: relative ad existentiam humanam, anima animans, calor fovens'. In the latter he is 'vita vivificans, principium spiritualis, id est, verae reproductionis in vitam veram'. Now this principle, or 'vis vitae vitam vivificans', considered in 'forma pa.s.siva, a.s.similationem patiens', at the same time that it excites the soul to the vital act of a.s.similating--this is the Blood of Christ, really present through faith to, and actually partaken by, the faithful. Of this the body is the continual product, that is, a good life-the merits of Christ acting on the soul, redemptive.

Ib. pp. 13-15.

Of their sanctification: 'elect unto obedience', &c.

That the doctrines a.s.serted in this and the two or three following pages cannot be denied or explained away, without removing (as the modern Unitarians), or (as the Arminians) unsettling and undermining, the foundations of the Faith, I am fully convinced; and equally so, that nothing is gained by the change, the very same logical consequences being deducible from the tenets of the Church Arminians;--scarcely more so, indeed, from those which they still hold in common with Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, Knox, and Cranmer and the other Fathers of the Reformation in England, and which are therefore most unfairly ent.i.tled Calvinism--than from those which they have attempted to subst.i.tute in their place. Nay, the shock given to the moral sense by these consequences is, to my feelings, aggravated in the Arminian doctrine by the thin yet dishonest disguise. Meantime the consequences appear to me, in point of logic, legitimately concluded from the terms of the premisses. What shall we say then? Where lies the fault? In the original doctrines expressed in the premisses? G.o.d forbid. In the particular deductions, logically considered? But these we have found legitimate.

Where then? I answer in deducing any consequences by such a process, and according to such rules. The rules are alien and inapplicable; the process presumptuous, yea, preposterous. The error, [Greek: to proton pseudos], lies in the false a.s.sumption of a logical deducibility at all, in this instance.

First:--because the terms from which the conclusion must be drawn-('termini in majore praemissi, a quibus scientialiter et scientifice demonstrandum erat') are accommodations and not scientific--that is, proper and adequate, not 'per idem', but 'per quam maxime simile', or rather 'quam maxime dissimile':

Secondly;--because the truths in question are transcendant, and have their evidence, if any, in the ideas themselves, and for the reason; and do not and cannot derive it from the conceptions of the understanding, which cannot comprehend the truths, but is to be comprehended in and by them, ('John' i. 5.):

Lastly, and chiefly;--because these truths, as they do not originate in the intellective faculty of man, so neither are they addressed primarily to our intellect; but are substantiated for us by their correspondence to the wants, cravings, and interests of the moral being, for which they were given, and without which they would be devoid of all meaning,--'vox et praeterea nihil'. The only conclusions, therefore, that can be drawn from them, must be such as are implied in the origin and purpose of their revelation; and the legitimacy of all conclusions must be tried by their consistency with those moral interests, those spiritual necessities, which are the proper final cause of the truths and of our faith therein. For some of the faithful these truths have, I doubt not, an evidence of reason; but for the whole household of faith their certainty is in their working. Now it is this, by which, in all cases, we know and determine existence in the first instance. That which works in us or on us exists for us. The shapes and forms that follow the working as its results or products, whether the shapes cognizable by sense or the forms distinguished by the intellect, are after all but the particularizations of this working; its proper names, as it were, as John, James, Peter, in respect of human nature. They are all derived from the relations in which finite beings stand to each other; and are therefore heterogeneous and, except by accommodation, devoid of meaning and purpose when applied to the working in and by which G.o.d makes his existence known to us, and (we may presume to say) especially exists for the soul in whom he thus works. On these grounds, therefore, I hold the doctrines of original sin, the redemption therefrom by the Cross of Christ, and change of heart as the consequent; without adopting the additions to the doctrines inferred by one set of divines, the modern Calvinists, or acknowledging the consequences burdened on the doctrines by their antagonists. Nor is this my faith fairly liable to any inconvenience, if only it be remembered that it is a spiritual working, of which I speak, and a spiritual knowledge,--not through the 'medium'

of image, the seeking after which is superst.i.tion; nor yet by any sensation, the watching for which is enthusiasm, and the conceit of its presence fanatical distemperature. "Do the will of the Father, and ye shall 'know' it."

We must distinguish the life and the soul; though there is a certain sense in which the life may be called the soul; that is, the life is the soul of the body. But the soul is the life of the man, and Christ is the life of the soul. Now the spirit of man, the spirit subsistent, is deeper than both, not only deeper than the body and its life, but deeper than the soul; and the Spirit descendent and supersistent is higher than both. In the regenerated man the height and the depth become one--the Spirit communeth with the spirit--and the soul is the 'inter-ens', or 'ens inter-medium' between the life and the spirit;--the 'participium', not as a compound, however, but as a 'medium indifferens'--in the same sense in which heat may be designated as the indifference between light and gravity. And what is the Reason?--The spirit in its presence to the understanding abstractedly from its presence in the will,--nay, in many, during the negation of the latter. The spirit present to man, but not appropriated by him, is the reason of man:--the reason in the process of its identification with the will is the spirit.

Ib. pp. 63-4.

Can we deny that it is unbelief of those things that causeth this neglect and forgetting of them? The discourse, the tongue of men and angels cannot beget divine belief of the happiness to come; only He that gives it, gives faith likewise to apprehend it, and lay hold upon it, and upon our believing to be filled with joy in the hopes of it.

Most true, most true!

Ib. p. 68.

In spiritual trials that are the sharpest and most fiery of all, when the furnace is within a man, when G.o.d doth not only shut up his loving-kindness from its feeling, but seems to shut it up in hot displeasure, when he writes bitter things against it; yet then to depend upon him, and wait for his salvation, this is not only a true, but a strong and very refined faith indeed, and the more he smites, the more to cleave to him. * * * Though I saw, as it were, his hand lifted up to destroy me, yet from that same hand would I expect salvation.

Bless G.o.d, O my soul, for this sweet and strong comforter! It is the honey in the lion.

Ib. p. 75.