The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 23

NOTES ON SHERLOCK'S VINDICATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. [1]

Sect. I. p. 3.

Some new philosophers will tell you that the notion of a spirit or an immaterial substance is a contradiction; for by substance they understand nothing but matter, and then an immaterial substance is immaterial matter, that is, matter and no matter, which is a contradiction; but yet this does not prove an immaterial substance to be a contradiction, unless they could first prove that there is no substance but matter; and that they cannot conceive any other substance but matter, does not prove that there is no other.

Certainly not: but if not only they, but Dr. Sherlock himself and all mankind, are incapable of attaching any sense to the term substance, but that of matter,--then for us it would be a contradiction, or a groundless a.s.sertion. Thus: By 'substance' I do not mean the only notion we can attach to the word; but a somewhat, I know not what, may, for aught I know, not be contradictory to spirit! Why should we use the equivocal word, 'substance' (after all but an 'ens logic.u.m'), instead of the definite term 'self-subsistent?' We are equally conscious of mind, and of that which we call 'body;' and the only possible philosophical questions are these three:

1. Are they co-ordinate as agent and re-agent;

2. Or is the one subordinate to the other, as effect to cause, and which is the cause or ground, which the effect or product;

3. Or are they co-ordinate, but not inter-dependent, that is, 'per harmonium praestabilitam'.

Ib. p. 4.

Now so far as we understand the nature of any being, we can certainly tell what is contrary and contradictious to its nature; as that accidents should subsist without 'their subject', &c.

That accidents should subsist (rather, exist) without a subject, may be a contradiction, but not that they exist without this or that subject.

The words 'their subject' are 'a pet.i.tio principii'.

Ib.

These and such like are the manifest absurdities and contradictions of Transubstantiation; and we know that they are so, because we know the nature of a body, &c.

Indeed! Were I either Romanist or Unitarian, I should desire no better than the admission of body having an 'esse' not in the 'percipi', and really subsisting, ([Greek: aut t chraema]) as the supporter of its accidents. At all events, the Romanist, declaring the accidents to be those ordinarily impressed on the senses ([Greek: ta phainomena ka aisthaeta]) by bread and wine, does at the same time declare the flesh and blood not to be the [Greek: phainomena ka aisthaeta] so called, but the [Greek: noumena ka auta ta chraemata]. There is therefore no contradiction in the terms, however reasonless the doctrine may be, and however unnecessary the interpretation on which it is pretended. I confess, had I been in Luther's place, I would not have rested so much of my quarrel with the Papists on this point; nor can I agree with our Arminian divines in their ridicule of Transubstantiation. The most rational doctrine is perhaps, for some purposes, at least, the 'rem credimus, modum nescimus'; next to that, the doctrine of the Sacramentaries, that it is 'signum sub rei nomine', as when we call a portrait of Caius, Caius. But of all the remainder, Impanation, Consubstantiation, and the like, I confess that I should prefer the Transubstantiation of the Pontifical doctors.

Ib. p. 6.

The proof of this comes to this one point, that we may have sufficient evidence of the being of a thing whose nature we cannot conceive and comprehend: he who will not own this, contradicts the sense and experience of mankind; and he who confesses this, and yet rejects the belief of that which he has good evidence for, merely because he cannot conceive it, is a very absurd and senseless infidel.

Here again, though a zealous believer of the truth a.s.serted, I must object to the Bishop's logic. None but the weakest men have objected to the Tri-unity merely because the 'modus' is above their comprehension: for so is the influence of thought on muscular motion; so is life itself; so in short is every first truth of necessity; for to comprehend a thing, is to know its antecedent and consequent. But they affirm that it is against their reason. Besides, there seems an equivocation in the use of 'comprehend' and 'conceive' in the same meaning. When a man tells me, that his will can lift his arm, I conceive his meaning; though I do not comprehend the fact, I understand 'him'. But the Socinians say;--We do not understand 'you'. We cannot attach to the word 'G.o.d,' more than three possible meanings; either,

1. A person, or self-conscious being;

2. Or a thing;

3. Or a quality, property, or attribute.

If you take the first, then you admit the contradiction; if either of the latter two, you have not three Persons and one G.o.d, but three Persons having equal shares in one thing, or three with the same attributes, that is, three G.o.ds. Sherlock does not meet this.

Let me repeat the difficulty, if possible, more clearly. The argument of the philosophic Unitarians, as Wissowatius, who, mistaken as they were, are not to be confounded with their degenerate successors, the Priestleyans and Belshamites, may be thus expressed. By the term, G.o.d, we can only conceive you to suppose one or other of three meanings.

1. Either you understand by it a person, in the common sense of an intelligent or self-conscious being;--or,

2. a thing with its qualities and properties;--or,

3. certain powers and attributes, comprised under the word nature.

If we suppose the first, the contradiction is manifest, and you yourselves admit it, and therefore forbid us so to interpret your words.

For if by G.o.d you mean Person, then three Persons and one G.o.d, would be the same as three Persons and one Person. If we take the second as your meaning, as an infinite thing is an absurdity, we have three finite G.o.ds, like Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, who shared the universe between them. If the latter, we have three Persons with the same attributes; --and if a Person with infinite attributes be what we mean by G.o.d, then we have either three G.o.ds, or involve the contradiction above mentioned.

It is unphilosophic, by admission of all philosophers, they add, to multiply causes beyond the necessity. Now if there are three Persons of infinite and the same attributes, dismiss two, and you lose nothing but a numerical phantom."

The answer to this must commence by a denial of the premisses 'in toto': and this both Bull and Waterland have done most successfully. But I very much doubt, whether Sherlock on his principles could have evaded the Unitarian logic. In fact it is scarcely possible to acquit him altogether of a 'quasi-Tritheism'.

Sect. II. p. 13.

'For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by himself to be G.o.d and Lord';--

(That is, by especial revelation.)

'So are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say, There are three G.o.ds, or three Lords.'

That is, by the religion contained in, and given in accompaniment with, the universal reason, 'the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world'.

Ib. p. 14.

This Creed (Athanasian) does not pretend to explain how there are three Persons, each of which is G.o.d, and yet but One G.o.d, (of which more hereafter,) but only a.s.serts the thing, that thus it is, and thus it must be if we believe a Trinity in Unity; which should make all men, who would be thought neither Arians nor Socinians, more cautious how they express the least dislike of the Athanasian Creed, which must either argue, that they condemn it, before they understand it, or that they have some secret dislike to the doctrine of the Trinity.

The dislike commonly felt is not of the doctrine of the Trinity, but of the positive anathematic a.s.sertion of the everlasting perdition of all and of each who doubt the same;--an a.s.sertion deduced from Scripture only by a train of captious consequences, and equivocations. Thus, A.: "I honour and admire Caius for his great learning." B.: "The knowledge of the Sanscrit is an important article in Caius's learning." A.: "I have been often in his company, and have found no reason for believing this." B.: "O! then you deny his learning, are envious, and Caius's enemy." A.: "G.o.d forbid! I love and admire him. I know him for a transcendant linguist in the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and modern European languages;--and with or without the Sanscrit, I look up to him, and rely on his erudition in all cases, in which I am concerned. And it is this perfect trust, this unfeigned respect, that is the appointed criterion of Caius's friends and disciples, and not their full acquaintance with each and all particulars of his superiority." Thus without Christ, or in any other power but that of Christ, and (subjectively) of faith in Christ, no man can be saved; but does it follow, that no man can have Christian faith who is ignorant or erroneous as to any one point of Christian theology? Will a soul be condemned to everlasting perdition for want of logical 'ac.u.men' in the perception of consequences?--If he verily embrace Christ as his Redeemer, and unfeignedly feel in himself the necessity of Redemption, he implicitly holds the Divinity of Christ, whatever from want or defect of logic may be his notion 'explicite'.

Ib. p. 18.

'But the whole three Persons are co-eternal, and co-equal'. And yet this we must acknowledge to be true, if we acknowledge all three Persons to be eternal, for in eternity there can be no 'afore, or after other'.

It must, however, be considered as a serious defect in a Creed, if excluding subordination, without mentioning any particular form, it gives no hint of any other form in which it admits it. The only 'minus'

admitted by the Athanasian Creed is the inferiority of Christ's Humanity to the Divinity generally; but both Scripture and the Nicene Creed teach a subordination of the Son to the Father, independent of the Incarnation of the Son. Now this is not inserted, and therefore the denial in the a.s.sertion 'none is greater or less than another', is universal, and a plain contradiction of Christ speaking of Himself as the co-eternal Son; 'My Father is greater than I'. Speaking of himself as the co-eternal Son, I say;--for how superfluous would it have been, a truism how unworthy of our Lord, to have said in effect, that "a creature is less than G.o.d!" And after all, Creeds a.s.suredly are not to be imposed 'ad libitum'--a new Creed, or at least a new form and choice of articles and expressions, at the pleasure of individuals. Now where is the authority of the Athanasian Creed? In what consists its necessity? If it be the same as the Nicene, why not be content with the Nicene? If it differs, how dare we retain both? [2] If the Athanasian does not say more or different, but only differs by omission of a necessary article, then to impose it, is as absurd as to force a mutilated copy on one who has already the perfect original. Lastly, it is not enough that an abstract contains nothing which may not by a chain of consequences be deduced from the books of the Evangelists and Apostles, in order for it to be a Creed for the whole Christian Church. For a Creed is or ought to be a 'syllepsis' of those primary fundamental truths that are, as it were, the starting-post, from which the Christian must commence his progression. The full-grown Christian needs no other Creed than the Scriptures themselves. Highly valuable is the Nicene Creed; but it has its chief value as an historical doc.u.ment, proving that the same texts in Scripture received the same interpretation, while the Greek was a living language, as now.

Sect. III. p. 23.

If what he says is true: 'He that errs in a question of faith, after having used reasonable diligence to be rightly informed, is in no fault at all'; how comes an atheist, or an infidel, a Turk, or a Jew, to be in any fault? Does our author think that no atheist or infidel, no unbelieving Jew or heathen, ever used reasonable diligence to be rightly informed? * * * If you say, he confines this to such points as have always been controverted in the churches of G.o.d, I desire to know a reason why he thus confines it? For does not his reason equally extend to the Christian Faith itself, as to those points which have been controverted in Christian Churches?

And the Notary might ask in his turn: "Do you believe that the Christians either of the Greek or of the Western Church will be d.a.m.ned, according as the truth may be respecting the procession of the Holy Ghost? or that either the Sacramentary or the Lutheran? or again, the Consubstantiationist, or the Transubstantiationist? If not, why do you stop here? Whence this sudden palsy in the limbs of your charity? Again, does this eternal d.a.m.nation of the individual depend on the supposed importance of the article denied? Or on the moral state of the individual, on the inward source of this denial? And lastly, who authorized either you, or the pseudo-Athanasius, to interpret Catholic faith by belief, arising out of the apparent predominance of the grounds for, over those against, the truth of the positions a.s.serted; much more, by belief as a mere pa.s.sive acquiescence of the understanding? Were all d.a.m.ned who died during the period when 'totus fere mundus factus est Aria.n.u.s', as one of the Fathers admits? Alas! alas! how long will it be ere Christians take the plain middle road between intolerance and indifference, by adopting the literal sense and Scriptural import of heresy, that is, wilful error, or belief originating in some perversion of the will; and of heretics, (for such there are, nay, even orthodox heretics), that is, men wilfully unconscious of their own wilfulness, in their limpet-like adhesion to a favourite tenet?"

Ib. p. 26.

All Christians must confess, that there is no other name given under heaven whereby men can be saved, but only the name of Christ.

Now this is a most awful question, on which depends whether Christ was more than Socrates; for to bring G.o.d from heaven to reproclaim the Ten Commandments, is 'too too' ridiculous. Need I say I incline to Sherlock?