The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 38

Chap. IV. 1. p. 266.

Justin accordingly sets himself to shew, that in the beginning, before all creatures, G.o.d generated a certain rational power out of himself.

Is it not monstrous that the Jews having, according to Whitaker, fully believed a Trinity, one and all, but half a century or less before Trypho, Justin should never refer to this general faith, never reproach Trypho with the present opposition to it as a heresy from their own forefathers, even those who rejected Christ, or rather Jesus as Christ?--But no!--not a single objection ever strikes Mr. Whitaker, or appears worthy of an answer. The stupidest become authentic--the most fantastic abstractions of the Alexandrine dreamers substantial realities! I confess this book has satisfied me how little erudition will gain a man now-a-days the reputation of vast learning, if it be only accompanied with dash and insolence. It seems to me impossible, that Whitaker can have written well on the subject of Mary, Queen of Scots, his powers of judgment being apparently so abject. For instance, he says that the grossest moral improbability is swept away by positive evidence:--as if positive evidence (that is, the belief I am to yield to A. or B.) were not itself grounded on moral probabilities. Upon my word Whitaker would have been a choice judge for Charles II. and t.i.tus Oates.

Ib. p. 267.

Justin therefore proceeds to demonstrate it, (the pre-existence of Christ,) a.s.serting Joshua to have given only a temporary inheritance to the Jews, &c.

A precious beginning of a precious demonstration! It is well for me that my faith in the Trinity is already well grounded by the Scriptures, by Bishop Bull, and the best parts of Plotinus, or this man would certainly have made me either a Socinian or a Deist.

Ib. 2. p. 270.

The general mode of commencing and concluding the Epistles of St.

Paul, is a prayer of supplication for the parties, to whom they were addressed; in which he says, 'Grace to you and peace from G.o.d our Father, and'--from whom besides?--'the Lord Jesus Christ'; in which our Saviour is at times invoked alone, as 'the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all'; and is even 'invoked' the first at times as, 'the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of G.o.d, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all'; shews us plainly, &c.

Invoked! Surely a pious wish is not an invocation. "May good angels attend you!" is no invocation or wors.h.i.+p of angels. The essence of religions adoration consists in the attributing, by an act of prayer or praise, a necessary presence to an object--which not being distinguishable, if the object be sensuously present, we may safely define adoration as an acknowledgement of the actual and necessary presence of an intelligent being not present to our senses. "May lucky stars shoot influence on you!" would be a very foolish superst.i.tion, --but to say in earnest! "O ye stars, I pray to you, shoot influences on me," would be idolatry. Christ was visually present to Stephen; his invocation therefore was not perforce an act of religious adoration, an acknowledgment of Christ's deity.

[Footnote 1: The Origin of Arianism Disclosed. By John Whitaker, B.D.

London, 1791.]

NOTES ON OXLEE ON THE TRINITY AND INCARNATION. [1] 1827

Strange--yet from the date of the book of the Celestial Hierarchies of the pretended Dionysius the Areopagite to that of its translation by Joannes Scotus Erigena, the contemporary of Alfred, and from Scotus to the Rev. John Oxlee in 1815, not unfrequent--delusion of mistaking Pantheism, disguised in a fancy dress of pious phrases, for a more spiritual and philosophic form of Christian Faith! Nay, stranger still:--to imagine with Scotus and Mr. Oxlee that in a scheme which more directly than even the grosser species of Atheism, precludes all moral responsibility and subverts all essential difference of right and wrong, they have found the means of proving and explaining, "the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation," that is, the great and only sufficient antidotes of the right faith against this insidious poison.

For Pantheism--trick it up as you will--is but a painted Atheism. A mask of perverted Scriptures may hide its ugly face, but cannot change a single feature.

Introduction, p. 4.

In the infancy of the Christian Church, and immediately after the general dispersion which necessarily followed the sacking of Jerusalem and Bither, the Greek and Latin Fathers had the fairest opportunity of disputing with the Jews, and of evincing the truth of the Gospel dispensation; but unfortunately for the success of so n.o.ble a design, they were totally ignorant of the Hebrew Scriptures, and so wanted in every argument that stamp of authority, which was equally necessary to sanction the principles of Christianity, and to command the respect of their Jewish antagonists. For the confirmation of this remark I may appeal to the Fathers themselves, but especially to Barnabas, Justin, and Irenaeus, who in their several attempts at Hebrew learning betray such portentous signs of ignorance and stupidity, that we are covered with shame at the sight of their criticisms.

Mr. Oxlee would be delighted in reading Jacob Rhenferd's Disquisition on the Ebionites and other supposed heretics among the Jewish Christians.

And I cannot help thinking that Rhenferd, who has so ably antic.i.p.ated Mr. Oxlee on this point, and in Jortin's best manner displayed the gross ignorance of the Gentile Fathers in all matters relating to Hebrew learning, and the ludicrous yet mischievous results thereof, has formed a juster though very much lower opinion of these Fathers, with a few exceptions, than Mr. Oxlee. I confess that till the light of the twofoldness of the Christian Church dawned on my mind, the study of the history and literature of the Church during the first three or four centuries infected me with a spirit of doubt and disgust which required a frequent recurrence to the writings of John and Paul to preserve me whole in the Faith.

Prop. I. ch. i. p. 16.

The truth of the doctrine is vehemently insisted on, in a variety of places, by the great R. Moses ben Maimon; who founds upon it the unity of the G.o.dhead, and ranks it among the fundamental articles of the Jewish religion. Thus in his celebrated Letter to the Jews of Ma.r.s.eilles he observes, &c.

But what is obtained by quotations from Maimonides more than from Alexander Hales, or any other Schoolman of the same age? The metaphysics of the learned Jew are derived from the same source, namely, Aristotle; and his object was the same, as that of the Christian Schoolmen, namely, to systematize the religion he professed on the form and in the principles of the Aristotelian philosophy.

By the by, it is a serious defect in Mr. Oxlee's work, that he does not give the age of the writers whom he cites. He cannot have expected all his readers to be as learned as himself.

Ib. ch. iii. p. 26.

Mr. Oxlee seems too much inclined to identify the Rabbinical interpretations of Scripture texts with their true sense; when in reality the Rabbis themselves not seldom used those interpretations as a convenient and popular mode of conveying their own philosophic opinions.

Neither have I been able to admire the logic so general among the divines of both Churches, according to which if one, two, or perhaps three sentences in any one of the Canonical books appear to declare a given doctrine, all a.s.sertions of a different character must have been meant to be taken metaphorically.

Ib. p. 26-7.

The Prophet Isaiah, too, clearly inculcates the spirituality of the G.o.dhead in the following declaration: 'But Egypt is man, and not G.o.d: and their horses flesh, and not spirit'. (c. x.x.xi. 3.) * * *. In the former member the Prophet declares that Egypt was man, and not G.o.d; and then in terms of strict opposition enforces the sentiment by adding, that their cavalry was flesh, and not spirit; which is just as if he had said: 'But Egypt, which has horses in war, is only a man, that is, flesh, and not G.o.d, who is spirit'.

a.s.suredly this is a false interpretation, and utterly unpoetical. It is even doubtful whether [Hebrew: unable to transliterate. txt Ed.]

('ruach') in this place means 'spirit' in contradistinction to 'matter'

at all, and not rather air or wind. At all events, the poetic decorum, the proportion, and the ant.i.thetic parallelism, demand a somewhat as much below G.o.d, as the horse is below man. The opposition of 'flesh' and 'spirit' in the Gospel of St. John, who thought in Hebrew, though he wrote in Greek, favours our common version,--'flesh and not spirit': but the place in which this pa.s.sage stands, namely, in one of the first forty chapters of Isaiah, and therefore written long before the Captivity, together with the majestic simplicity characteristic of Isaiah's name gives perhaps a greater probability to the other: 'Egypt is man, and not G.o.d; and her horses flesh, and not wind'. If Mr. Oxlee renders the fourth verse of Psalm civ.--'He maketh spirits his messengers', (for our version--'He maketh his angels spirits'--is without a violent inversion senseless), this is a case in point for the use of the word, 'spirits', in the sense of incorporeal beings. (Mr.

Oxlee will hardly, I apprehend, attribute the opinion of some later Rabbis, that G.o.d alone and exclusively is a Spirit, to the Sacred Writers, easy as it would be to quote a score of texts in proof of the contrary.) I, however, cannot doubt that the true rendering of the above-mentioned verse in the Psalms is;--'He maketh the winds his angels or messengers, and the lightnings his ministrant servants'.

As to Mr. Oxlee's 'abstract intelligences,' I cannot but think 'abstract' for 'pure,' and even pure intelligences for incorporeal, a lax use of terms. With regard to the point in question, the truth seems to be this. The ancient Hebrews certainly distinguished the principle or ground of life, understanding, and will from ponderable, visible, matter. The former they considered and called 'spirit', and believed it to be an emission from the Almighty Father of Spirits: the latter they called 'body'; and in this sense they doubtless believed in the existence of incorporeal beings. But that they had any notion of immaterial beings in the sense of Des Cartes, is contrary to all we know of them, and of every other people in the same degree of cultivation.

Air, fire, light, express the degrees of ascending refinement. In the infancy of thought the life, soul, mind, are supposed to be air--'anima, animus', that is, [Greek: anemos], spiritus, [Greek: pneuma]. In the childhood, they are fire, 'mens ignea, ignicula', and G.o.d himself [Greek: pur noern, pur aeizoon]. Lastly, in the youth of thought, they are refined into light; and that light is capable of subsisting in a latent state, the experience of the stricken flint, of lightning from the clouds, and the like, served to prove, or at least, it supplied a popular answer to the objection;--"If the soul be light, why is it not visible?" That the purest light is invisible to our gross sense, and that visible light is a compound of light and shadow, were answers of a later and more refined period. Observe, however, that the Hebrew Legislator precluded all unfit applications of the materializing fancy by forbidding the people to 'imagine' at all concerning G.o.d. For the ear alone, to the exclusion of all other bodily sense, was he to be designated, that is, by the Name. All else was for the mind--by power, truth, wisdom, holiness, mercy.

Prop. II. ch. ii. p. 36.

I fear I must surrender my hope that Mr. Oxlee was an exception to the rule, that the study of Rabbinical literature either finds a man 'whimmy', or makes him so. If neither the demands of poetic taste, nor the peculiar character of oracles, were of avail, yet morality and piety might seem enough to convince any one that this vision of Micaiah, (2 'Chron'. c. xviii. 18, &c.) was the poetic form, the veil, of the Prophet's meaning. And a most sublime meaning it was. Mr. Oxlee should recollect that the forms and personages of visions are all and always symbolical.

Ib. pp. 39-40.

It will not avail us much, however, to have established their incorporeity or spirituality, if what R. Moses affirms be true * * *.

This impious paradox * *. Swayed, however, by the authority of so great a man, even R. David Kimchi has dilapsed into the same error, &c.

To what purpose then are the crude metaphysics of these later Rabbis brought forward, differing as they do in no other respect from the theological 'dicta' of the Schoolmen, but that they are written in a sort of Hebrew. I am far from denying that an interpreter of the Scriptures may derive important aids from the Jewish commentators: Aben Ezra, (about 1150) especially, was a truly great man. But of this I am certain, that he only will be benefited who can look down upon their works, whilst studying them;--that is, he must thoroughly understand their weaknesses, superst.i.tions, and rabid appet.i.te for the marvellous and the monstrous; and then read them as an enlightened chemist of the present day would read the writings of the old alchemists, or as a Linnaeus might peruse the works of Pliny and Aldrovandus. If he can do this, well;--if not, he will line his skull with cobwebs.

Ib. pp. 40, 41.

But how, I would ask, is this position to be defended? Surely not by contradicting almost every part of the inspired volumes, in which such frequent mention occurs of different and distinct angels appearing to the Patriarchs and Prophets, sometimes in groups, and sometimes in limited numbers * *. It is, indeed, so wholly repugnant to the general tenor of the Sacred Writings, and so abhorrent from the piety of both Jew and Christian, that the learned author himself, either forgetting what he had before advanced, or else postponing his philosophy to his religion, has absolutely maintained the contrary in his explication of the Cherubim, &c.

I am so far from agreeing with Mr. Oxlee on these points, that I not only doubt whether before the Captivity any fair proof of the existence of Angels, in the present sense, can be produced from the inspired Scriptures,--but think also that a strong argument for the divinity of Christ, and for his presence to the Patriarchs and under the Law, rests on the contrary, namely, that the Seraphim were images no less symbolical than the Cherubim. Surely it is not presuming too much of a Clergyman of the Church of England to expect that he would measure the importance of a theological tenet by its bearings on our moral and spiritual duties, by its practical tendencies. What is it to us whether Angels are the spirits of just men made perfect, or a distinct cla.s.s of moral and rational creatures? Augustine has well and wisely observed that reason recognizes only three essential kinds;--G.o.d, man, beast. Try as long as you will, you can never make an Angel anything but a man with wings on his shoulders.

Ib. ch. III. p. 58.