The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 44

Edgeworth.)

How mortifying that one is never lucky enough to meet with any of these 'virtuosissimos', fifteen or twenty years of age. But perhaps they are such rare jewels, that they are always kept in cotton! The Kilcrops! I would not exchange the heart, which I myself had when a boy, while reading the life of Colonel Jack, or the Newgate Calendar, for a waggon-load of these brilliants.

Ib. p. 78.

"When a man turns his back on this world, and is in good earnest resolved for everlasting life, his carnal friends, and unG.o.dly neighbours, will pursue him with hue and cry; but death is at his heels, and he cannot stop short of the city of Refuge." (Notes to the Pilgrim's Progress by Hawker, Burder, &c.) This representation of the state of real Christians is as mischievous as it is false.

Yet Christ's a.s.sertion on this head is positive, and universal; and I believe it from my inmost soul, and am convinced that it is just as true A.D. 1810, as A.D. 33.

Ib. p. 82.

The spirit with which all their merciless treatment is to be borne is next pointed out. * * "'Patient bearing of injuries' is true Christian fort.i.tude, and will always be more effectual to 'disarm our enemies', and to bring others to the knowledge of the truth, than all 'arguments' whatever."

Is this Barrister a Christian of any sort or sect, and is he not ashamed, if not afraid, to ridicule such pa.s.sages as these? If they are not true, the four Gospels are false.

Ib. p. 86.

It is impossible to give them credit for integrity when we behold the obstinacy and the artifice with which they defend their system against the strongest argument, and against the clearest evidence.

Modest gentleman! I wonder he finds time to write bulky pamphlets: for surely modesty, like his, must secure success and clientage at the bar.

Doubtless he means his own arguments, the evidence he himself has adduced:--I say doubtless, for what are these pamphlets but a long series of attacks on the doctrines of the strict Lutherans and Calvinists, (for the doctrines he attacks are common to both,) and if he knew stronger arguments, clearer evidence, he would certainly have given them;--and then what obstinate rogues must our Bishops be, to have suffered these Hints to pa.s.s into a third edition, and yet not have brought a bill into Parliament for a new set of Articles? I have not heard that they have even the grace to intend it.

Ib. p. 88.

On this subject I will quote the just and striking observations of an excellent modern writer. "In whatever village," says he, "the fanatics get a footing, drunkenness and swearing,--sins which, being more exposed to the eye of the world, would be ruinous to their great pretensions to superior sanct.i.ty--will, perhaps, be found to decline; but I am convinced, from personal observation, that every species of fraud and falsehood--sins which are not so readily detected, but which seem more closely connected with worldly advantage--will be found invariably to increase." (Religion without Cant; by R. Fellowes, A.M.

of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford.)

In answer to this let me make a "very just observation," by some other man of my opinion, to be hereafter quoted "from an excellent modern writer;"--and it is this, that from the birth of Christ to the present hour, no sect or body of men were zealous in the reformation of manners in society, without having been charged with the same vices in the same words. When I hate a man, and see nothing bad in him, what remains possible but to accuse him of crimes which I cannot see, and which cannot be disproved, because they cannot be proved? Surely, if Christian charity did not preclude these charges, the shame of convicted parrotry ought to prevent a man from repeating and republis.h.i.+ng them. The very same thoughts, almost the words, are to be found of the early Christians; of the poor Quakers; of the Republicans; of the first Reformers.--Why need I say this? Does not every one know, that a jovial pot-companion can never believe a water-drinker not to be a sneaking cheating knave who is afraid of his thoughts; that every libertine swears that those who pretend to be chaste, either have their mistress in secret, or far worse, and so on?

Ib. p. 89.

The same religious abstinence from all appearance of recreation on the Lord's day; and the same neglect of the weightier matters of the moral law, in the course of the week, &c.

This sentence thus smuggled in at the bottom of the chest ought not to pa.s.s unnoticed; for the whole force of the former depends on it. It is a true trick, and deserves reprobation.

Ib. p. 97.

Note. It was procured, Mr. Collyer informs us, by the merit of his "Lectures on Scripture facts." It should have been "Lectures on 'Scriptural' Facts." What should we think of the grammarian, who, instead of 'Historical', should present us with "Lectures on 'History'

Facts?"

But Law Tracts? And is not 'Scripture' as often used semi-adjectively?

Ib. p. 98.

"Do you really believe," says Dr. Hawker, "that, because man by his apostacy hath lost his power and ability to obey, G.o.d hath lost his right to command? Put the case that you were called upon, as a barrister, to recover a debt due from one man to another, and you knew the debtor had not the ability to pay the 'creditor', would you tell your client that his debtor was under no legal or moral obligation to pay what he had no power to do? And would you tell him that the very expectation of his just right 'was as foolish as it was tyrannical'?"

* * * I will give my reply to these questions distinctly and without hesitation. * * * Suppose A. to have lent B. a thousand pounds, as a capital to commence trade, and that, when he purchased his stock to this amount, and lodged it in his warehouse, a fire were to break out in the next dwelling, and, extending itself to 'his' warehouse, were to consume the whole of his property, and reduce him to a state of utter ruin. If A., my client, were to ask my opinion as to his right to recover from B., I should tell him that this his right would exist should B. ever be in a condition to repay the sum borrowed; * * * but that to attempt to recover a thousand pounds from a man thus reduced by accident to utter ruin, and who had not a s.h.i.+lling left in the world, would be 'as foolish as it was tyrannical'.

But this is rank sophistry. The question is:--Does a thief (and a fraudulent debtor is no better) acquire a claim to impunity by not possessing the power of restoring the goods? Every moral act derives its character (says a Schoolman with an unusual combination of profundity with quaintness) 'aut voluntate originis aut origine voluntatis'. Now the very essence of guilt, its dire and incommunicable character, consists in its tendency to destroy the free will;--but when thus destroyed, are the habits of vice thenceforward innocent? Does the law excuse the murder because the perpetrator was drunk? Dr. Hawker put his objection laxly and weakly enough; but a manly opponent would have been ashamed to seize an hour's victory from what a move of the pen would render impregnable.

Ib. p. 102, 3.

When at this solemn tribunal the sinner shall be called upon to answer for the transgression of those 'moral' laws, on obedience to which salvation was made to depend, will it be sufficient that he declares himself to have been taught to believe that the Gospel 'had neither terms nor conditions', and that his salvation was secured by a covenant which procured him pardon and peace, 'from all eternity': a covenant, the effects of which no folly or 'after-act whatever' could possibly destroy?--Who could antic.i.p.ate the sentence of condemnation, and not weep in agony over the deluded victim of ignorance and misfortune who was thus taught a doctrine so fatally false?

What then! G.o.d is represented as a tyrant when he claims the penalty of disobedience from the servant, who has wilfully incapacitated himself for obeying,--and yet just and merciful in condemning to indefinite misery a poor "deluded victim of ignorance and imposture," even though the Barrister, spite of his antipathy to Methodists, would "weep in agony" over him! But before the Barrister draws bills of imagination on his tender feelings, would it not have been as well to adduce some last dying speech and confession, in which the culprit attributed his crimes--not to Sabbath-breaking and loose company,--but to sermon-hearing on the 'modus operandi' of the divine goodness in the work of redemption? How the Ebenezerites would stare to find the Socinians and themselves in one flock on the sheep-side of the judgment-seat,--and their cousins, and fellow Methodists, the Tabernaclers, all caprifled--goats every man:--and why? They held, that repentance is in the power of every man, with the aid of grace; while the goats held that without grace no man is able even to repent. A.

makes grace the cause, and B. makes it only a necessary auxiliary. And does the Socinian extricate himself a whit more clearly? Without a due concurrence of circ.u.mstances no mind can improve itself into a state susceptible of spiritual happiness: and is not the disposition and pre-arrangement of circ.u.mstances as dependent on the divine will as those spiritual influences which the Methodist holds to be meant by the word grace? Will not the Socinian find it as difficult to reconcile with mercy and justice the condemnation to h.e.l.l-fire of poor wretches born and bred in the thieves' nests of St. Giles, as the Methodists the condemnation of those who have been less favoured by grace? I have one other question to ask, though it should have been asked before. Suppose Christ taught nothing more than a future state of retribution and the necessity and sufficiency of good morals, how are we to explain his forbidding these truths to be taught to any but Jews till after his resurrection? Did the Jews reject those doctrines? Except perhaps a handful of rich men, called Sadducees, they all believed them, and would have died a thousand deaths rather than have renounced their faith.

Besides, what is there in doctrines common to the creed of all religions, and enforced by all the schools of philosophy, except the Epicurean, which should have prevented their being taught to all at the same time? I perceive, that this difficulty does not press on Socinians exclusively: but yet it presses on them with far greater force than on others. For they make Christianity a mere philosophy, the same in substance with the Stoical, only purer from errors and accompanied with clearer evidence:--while others think of it as part of a covenant made up with Abraham, the fulfilment of which was in good faith to be first offered to his posterity. I ask this only because the Barrister professes to find every thing in the four Gospels so plain and easy.

Ib. p. 106.

The Reformers by whom those articles were framed were educated in the Church of Rome, and opposed themselves rather to the perversion of its power than the errors of its doctrine.

An outrageous blunder.

Ib. p. 107.

Lord Bacon was the first who dedicated his profound and penetrating genius to the cultivation of sound philosophy, &c.

This very same Lord Bacon has given us his 'Confessio Fidei' at great length, with full particularity. Now I will answer for the Methodists'

unhesitating a.s.sent and consent to it; but would the Barrister subscribe it?

Ib. p. 108.

We look back to that era of our history when superst.i.tion threw her victim on the pile, and bigotry tied the martyr to his stake:--but we take our eyes from the retrospect and turn them in thankful admiration to that Being who has opened the minds of many, and is daily opening the minds of more amongst us to the reception of these most important of all truths, that there is no true faith but in practical goodness, and that the worst of errors is the error of the 'life'.

Such is the conviction of the most enlightened of our Clergy: the conviction, I trust, of the far greater part * * *. They deem it better to inculcate the moral duties of Christianity in the pure simplicity and clearness with which they are revealed, than to go aside in search of 'doctrinal mysteries'. For as mysteries cannot be made manifest, they, of course, cannot be understood; and that which cannot be understood cannot be believed, and can, consequently, make no part of any system of faith: since no one, till he understands a doctrine, can tell whether it be true or false; till then, therefore, he can have no faith in it, for no one can rationally affirm that he believes that doctrine to be true which he does not know to be so; and he cannot know it to be true if he does not understand it. In the religion of a true Christian, therefore, there can be nothing unintelligible; and if the preachers of that religion do not make mysteries, they will never find any.

Who? the Bishops, or the dignified Clergy? Have they at length exploded all "doctrinal mysteries?" Was Horsley "the one red leaf, the last of its clan," that held the doctrines of the Trinity, the corruption of the human Will, and the Redemption by the Cross of Christ? Verily, this is the most impudent attempt to impose a naked Socinianism on the public, as the general religion of the nation, admitted by all but a dunghill of mushroom fanatics, that ever insulted common sense or common modesty!

And will "the far greater part" of the English Clergy remain silent under so atrocious a libel as is contained in this page? Do they indeed solemnly pray to their Maker weekly, before G.o.d and man, in the words of a Liturgy, which, they know, "cannot be believed?" For heaven's sake, my dear Southey, do quote this page and compare it with the introduction to and pet.i.tions of the Liturgy, and with the Collects on the Advent, &c.

Ib. p. 110.

We shall discover upon an attentive examination of the subject, that all those laws which lay the basis of our const.i.tutional liberties, are no other than the rules of religion transcribed into the judicial system, and enforced by the sanction of civil authority.

What! Compare these laws, first, with Tacitus's account of the const.i.tutional laws of our German ancestors, Pagans; and then with the Pandects and 'Novellae' of the most Christian Justinian, aided by all his Bishops. Observe, the Barrister is a.s.serting a fact of the historical origination of our laws,--and not what no man would deny, that as far as they are humane and just, they coincide with the precepts of the Gospel.

No, they were "transcribed."