The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 39

But this deficiency in the Mosaic account of the creation is amply supplied by early tradition, which inculcates not only that the angels were created, but that they were created, either on the second day, according to R. Jochanan, or on the fifth, according to R. Chanania.

Inspired Scripture amply supplied by the Talmudic and Rabbinical traditions!--This from a Clergyman of the Church of England!

I am, I confess, greatly disappointed. I had expected, I scarce know why, to have had some light thrown on the existence of the Cabala in its present form, from Ezekiel to Paul and John. But Mr. Oxlee takes it as he finds it, and gravely ascribes this patch-work of corrupt Platonism or Plotinism, with Chaldean, Persian, and Judaic fables and fancies, to the Jewish Doctors, as an original, profound, and pious philosophy in its fountain-head! The indispensable requisite not only to a profitable but even to a safe study of the Cabala is a familiar knowledge of the docimastic philosophy, that is, a philosophy, which has for its object the trial and testing of the weights and measures themselves, the first principles, definitions, postulates, axioms of logic and metaphysics.

But this is in no other way possible but by our enumeration of the mental faculties, and an investigation of the const.i.tution, function, limits, and applicability 'ad quas res', of each. The application to this subject of the rules and forms of the understanding, or discursive logic, or even of the intuitions of the reason itself, if reason be a.s.sumed as the first and highest, has Pantheism for its necessary result. But this the Cabalists did: and consequently the Cabalistic theosophy is Pantheistic, and Pantheism, in whatever drapery of pious phrases disguised, is (where it forms the whole of a system) Atheism, and precludes moral responsibility, and the essential difference of right and wrong. One of the two contra-distinctions of the Hebrew Revelation is the doctrine of positive creation. This, if not the only, is the easiest and surest criterion between the idea of G.o.d and the notion of a 'mens agitans molem'. But this the Cabalists evaded by their double meaning of the term, 'nothing', namely as nought = 0, and as no 'thing'; and by their use of the term, as designating G.o.d. Thus in words and to the ear they taught that the world was made out of nothing; but in fact they meant and inculcated, that the world was G.o.d himself expanded. It is not, therefore, half a dozen pa.s.sages respecting the first three 'proprietates'[2] in the Sephiroth, that will lead a wise man to expect the true doctrine of the Trinity in the Cabalistic scheme: for he knows that the scholastic value, the theological necessity, of this doctrine consists in its exhibiting an idea of G.o.d, which rescues our faith from both extremes, Cabalo-Pantheism, and Anthropomorphism. It is, I say, to prevent the necessity of the Cabalistic inferences that the full and distinct developement of the doctrine of the Trinity becomes necessary in every scheme of dogmatic theology. If the first three 'proprietates' are G.o.d, so are the next seven, and so are all ten.

G.o.d according to the Cabalists is all in each and one in all. I do not say that there is not a great deal of truth in this; but I say that it is not, as the Cabalists represent it, the whole truth. Spinoza himself describes his own philosophy as in substance the same with that of the ancient Hebrew Doctors, the Cabalists--only unswathed from the Biblical dress.

Ib. p. 61.

Similar to this is the declaration of R. Moses ben Maimon. "For that influence, which flows from the Deity to the actual production of abstract intelligences flows also from the intelligences to their production from each other in succession," &c.

How much trouble would Mr. Oxlee have saved himself, had he in sober earnest asked his own mind, what he meant by emanation; and whether he could attach any intelligible meaning to the term at all as applied to spirit.

Ib. p. 65.

Thus having, by variety of proofs, demonstrated the fecundity of the G.o.dhead, in that all spiritualities, of whatever gradation, have originated essentially and substantially from it, like streams from their fountain; I avail myself of this as another sound argument, that in the sameness of the divine essence subsists a plurality of Persons.

A plurality with a vengeance! Why, this is the very scoff of a late Unitarian writer,--only that he inverts the order. Mr. Oxlee proves ten trillions of trillions in the Deity, in order to deduce 'a fortiori' the rationality of three: the Unitarian from the Three pretends to deduce the equal rationality of as many thousands.

Ib. p. 66.

So, if without detriment to piety great things may be compared with small, I would contend, that every intelligency, descending by way of emanation or impart.i.tion from the G.o.dhead, must needs be a personality of that G.o.dhead, from which it has descended, only so vastly unequal to it in personal perfection, that it can form no part of its proper existency.

Is not this to all intents and purposes ascribing partibility to G.o.d?

Indeed it is the necessary consequence of the emanation scheme?--Unequal!--Aye, various 'wicked' personalities of the G.o.dhead?--How does this rhyme?--Even as a metaphor, emanation is an ill-chosen term; for it applies only to fluids. 'Ramenta', unravellings, threads, would be more germane.

[Footnote 1: The Christian Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation considered and maintained on the principles of Judaism. By the Rev. John Oxlee. London, 1815.]

[Footnote 2: That is, Intelligence or the Crown, Knowledge, Wisdom. Ed.]

NOTES ON A BARRISTER'S HINTS ON EVANGELICAL PREACHING. 1810. [1]

For only that man understands in deed Who well remembers what he well can do; The faith lives only where the faith doth breed Obedience to the works it binds us to.

And as the Life of Wisdom hath exprest-- 'If this ye know, then do it and be blest'.

LORD BROOK.

'In initio'.

There is one misconception running through the whole of this Pamphlet, the rock on which, and the quarry out of which, the whole reasoning, is built;--an error therefore which will not indeed destroy its efficacy as a [Greek: misaetron] or anti-philtre to inflame the scorn of the enemies of Methodism, but which must utterly incapacitate it for the better purpose of convincing the consciences or allaying the fanaticism of the Methodists themselves; this is the uniform and gross mis-statement of the one great point in dispute, by which the Methodists are represented as holding the compatibility of an impure life with a saving faith: whereas they only a.s.sert that the works of righteousness are the consequence, not the price, of Redemption, a gift included in the great gift of salvation;--and therefore not of merit but of imputation through the free love of the Saviour.

Part I. p. 49.

It is enough, it seems, that all the disorderly cla.s.ses of mankind, prompted as they are by their worst pa.s.sions to trample on the public welfare, should 'know' that they are, what every one else is convinced they are, the pests of society, and the evil is remedied. They are not to be exhorted to honesty, sobriety, or the observance of any laws, human or divine--they must not even be entreated to do their best.

"Just as 'absurd' would it be," we are told, "in a physician to send away his patient, when labouring under some desperate disease, with a recommendation to do his utmost towards his own cure, and then to come to him to finish it, as it is in the minister of the 'Gospel' to propose to the sinner 'to do his best', by way of healing the disease of the soul--and then to come to the Lord Jesus to perfect his recovery. The 'only' previous qualification is to 'know' our misery, and the remedy is prepared." See Dr. Hawker's Works, vol. vi. p. 117.

For "know," let the Barrister subst.i.tute "feel;" that is, we know it as we know our life; and then ask himself whether the production of such a state of mind in a sinner would or would not be of greater promise as to his reformation than the repet.i.tion of the Ten Commandments with paraphrases on the same.--But why not both? The Barrister is at least as wrong in the undervaluing of the one as the pseudo-Evangelists in the exclusion of the other.

Ib. p. 51.

Whatever these new Evangelists may teach to the contrary, the present state of public morals and of public happiness would a.s.sume a very different appearance if the thieves, swindlers, and highway robbers, would 'do their best' towards maintaining themselves by honest labour, instead of perpetually planning new systems of fraud, and new schemes of depredation.

That is, if these thieves had a different will--not a mere wish, however anxious:--for this wish "the libertine" doubtless has, as described in p. 50,--but an effective will. Well, and who doubts this? The point in dispute is, as to the means of producing this reformation in the will; which, whatever the Barrister may think, Christ at least thought so difficult as to speak of it, not once or twice, but uniformly, as little less than miraculous, as tantamount to a re-creation. This Barrister may be likened to an ignorant but well-meaning Galenist, who writing against some infamous quack, who lived by puffing and vending pills of mercurial sublimate for all cases of a certain description, should have no stronger argument than to extol 'sarsaparilla', and 'lignum vitae', or 'senna' in contempt of all mercurial preparations.

Ib. p. 56.

Not for the revenues of an Archbishop would he exhort them to a duty 'unknown in Scripture', of adding their five talents to the five they have received, &c.

All this is mere calumny and wilful misstatement of the tenets of Wesley, who never doubted that we are bound to improve our 'talents', or, on the other hand, that we are equally bound, having done so, to be equally thankful to the Giver of all things for the power and the will by which we improved the talents, as for the original capital which is the object of the improvement. The question is not whether Christ will say, 'Well done thou good and faithful servant', &c.;--but whether the servant is to say it of himself. Now Christ has delivered as positive a precept against our doing this as the promise can be that he will impute it to us, if we do not impute it to our own merits.

Ib. p. 60.

The complaints of the profligacy of servants of every cla.s.s, and of the depravity of the times are in every body's hearing:--and these Evangelical tutors--the dear Mr. Lovegoods of the day--deserve the best attention of the public for thus instructing the ignorant mult.i.tude, who are always ready enough to neglect their moral duties, to despise and insult those by whom they are taught.

All this is no better than infamous slander, unless the Barrister can prove that these depraved servants and thieves are Methodists, or have been wicked in proportion as they were proselyted to Methodism. O folly!

This is indeed to secure the triumph of these enthusiasts.

Ib.

It must afford him (Rowland Hill) great consolation, amidst the increasing immorality * * * that when their village Curate exhorts them, if they have 'faith' in the doctrine of a world to come, to add to it those 'good works' in which the sum and substance of religion consist, he has led them to ridicule him, as 'chopping a new-fas.h.i.+oned' logic.

That this is either false or nugatory, see proved in The Friend.

Ib. p. 68.