The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Iv Part 49

Was ever blindness like unto this blindness? I can imagine but one way of making it seem possible, namely, that this round square or rectilineal curve--this honest Jesuit, I mean--had confined his conception of idolatry to the wors.h.i.+p of false G.o.ds;--whereas his saints are genuine G.o.dlings, and his 'Magna Mater' a G.o.ddess in her own right;--and that thus he overlooked the meaning of the word.

Ib. p. 254.

The entire text of the Apostle is as follows:--'Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind', &c. (2 Thess.

ii. 1-10.)

O Edward Irving! Edward Irving! by what fascination could your spirit be drawn away from pa.s.sages like this, to guess and dream over the rhapsodies of the Apocalypse? For rhapsody, according to your interpretation, the Poem undeniably is;--though, rightly expounded, it is a well knit and highly poetical evolution of a part of this and our Lord's more comprehensive prediction, 'Luke' xvii.

Ib. p. 297.

On the ordinary ideas of the coming of Christ in glory and majesty, it will doubtless appear an extravagance to name the Jews, or to take them into consideration; for, according to those ideas, they should hardly have the least particle of our attention.

In comparing this with the preceding chapter I could not help exclaiming; What an excellent book would this Jesuit have written, if Daniel and the Apocalypse had not existed, or had been unknown to, or rejected by, him!

You may divide Lacunza's points of belief into two parallel columns;--the first would be found to contain much that is demanded by, much that is consonant to, and nothing that is not compatible with, reason, the harmony of Holy Writ, and the idea of Christian faith. The second would consist of puerilities and anilities, some impossible, most incredible; and all so silly, so sensual, as to befit a dreaming Talmudist, not a Scriptural Christian. And this latter column would be found grounded on Daniel and the Apocalypse!

[Footnote 1: The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty. By Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra, a converted Jew. Translated from the Spanish, with a preliminary Discourse. By the Rev. Edward Irving, A.M. London, 1827.]

[Footnote 2: See 'supra', vol. iii. p. 93.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: P. 157, 4th edit.--Ed.]

NOTES ON n.o.bLE'S APPEAL. 1827. [1]

How natural it is to mistake the weakness of an adversary's arguments for the strength of our own cause! This is especially applicable to Mr.

n.o.ble's Appeal. a.s.suredly as far as Mr. Beaumont's Notes are concerned, his victory is complete.

Sect. IV. p. 210.

The intellectual spirit is moving upon the chaos of minds, which ignorance and necessity have thrown into collision and confusion; and the result will be a new creation. "Nature" (to use the nervous language of an-old writer,) "will be melted down and recoined; and all will be bright and beautiful."

Alas! if this be possible now, or at any time henceforward, whence came the dross? If nature be bullion that can be melted and thus purified by the conjoint action of heat and elective attraction, I pray Mr. n.o.ble to tell me to what name or 'genus' he refers the dross? Will he tell me, to the Devil? Whence came the Devil? And how was the pure bullion so thoughtlessly made as to have an elective affinity for this Devil?

Sect. V. p. 286.

The next anecdote that I shall adduce is similar in its nature to the last * * *. The relater is Dr. Stilling, Counsellor at the Court of the Duke of Baden, in a work ent.i.tled 'Die Theorie der Geister-Kunde', printed in 1808.

Mr. n.o.ble is a man of too much English good sense to have relied on Sung's ('alias' Dr. Stilling's) testimony, had he ever read the work in which this pa.s.sage is found. I happen to possess the work; and a more anile, credulous, solemn fop never existed since the days of old Audley.

It is strange that Mr. n.o.ble should not have heard, that these three anecdotes were first related by Immanuel Kant, and still exist in his miscellaneous writings.

Ib. p. 315.

"Can he be a sane man who records the subsequent reverie as matter of fact? The Baron informs us, that on a certain night a man appeared to him in the midst of a strong s.h.i.+ning light, and said, 'I am G.o.d the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer; I have chosen thee to explain to men the interior and spiritual sense of the Sacred Writings: I will dictate to thee what thou oughtest to write?' From this period, the Baron relates he was so illumined, as to behold, in the clearest manner, what pa.s.sed in the spiritual world, and that he could converse with angels and spirits as with men," &c.

I remember no such pa.s.sage as this in Swedenborg's works. Indeed it is virtually contradicted by their whole tenor. Swedenborg a.s.serts himself to relate 'visa et audita',--his own experience, as a traveller and visitor of the spiritual world,--not the words of another as a mere 'amanuensis'. But altogether this Gulielmus must be a silly Billy.

Ib. p. 321.

The Apostolic canon in such cases is, 'Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of G.o.d'. (1 John iv. 1.) And the touchstone to which they are to be brought is pointed out by the Prophet: 'To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no truth in them.' (Is. viii.

20.) But instead of this canon you offer another * * *. It is simply this: Whoever professes to be the bearer of divine communications, is insane. To bring Swedenborg within the operation of this rule, you quote, as if from his own works, a pa.s.sage which is nowhere to be found in them, but which you seem to have taken from some biographical dictionary or cyclopaedia; few or none of which give anything like a fair account of the matter.

Aye! my memory did not fail me, I find. As to insanity in the sense intended by Gulielmus, namely, as 'mania',--I should as little think of charging Swedenborg with it, as of calling a friend mad who laboured under an 'acyan.o.blepsia'.

Ib. p. 323.

Did you never read of one who says, in words very like your version of the Baron's reverie: 'It came to pa.s.s, that, as I took my journey, and was come nigh unto Damascus, about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me: and I fell on the ground, and heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?'

In the short s.p.a.ce of four years the newspapers contained three several cases, two of which I cut out, and still have among my ocean of papers, and which, as stated, were as nearly parallel, in external accompaniments, to St. Paul's as cases can well be:--struck with lightning,--heard the thunder as an articulate voice,--blind for a few days, and suddenly recovered their sight. But then there was no Ananias, no confirming revelation to another. This it was that justified St. Paul as a wise man in regarding the incident as supernatural, or as more than a providential omen. N. B. Not every revelation requires a sensible miracle as the credential; but every revelation of a new series of 'credenda'. The prophets appealed to records of acknowledged authority, and to their obvious sense literally interpreted. The Baptist needed no miracle to attest his right of calling sinners to repentance. See 'Exodus' iv. 10.

Ib. pp. 346, 7.

This sentiment, that miracles are not the proper evidences of doctrinal truth, is, a.s.suredly, the decision of the Truth itself; as is obvious from many pa.s.sages in Scripture. We have seen that the design of the miracles of Moses, as external performances, was not to instruct the Israelites in spiritual subjects, but to make them obedient subjects of a peculiar species of political state. And though the miracles of Jesus Christ collaterally served as testimonies to his character, he repeatedly intimates that this was not their main design. * * * At another time more plainly still, he says, that it is 'a wicked and adulterous generation' (that) 'seeketh after a sign'; on which occasion, according to Mark, 'he sighed deeply in his spirit'.

How characteristic is that touch of the Apostle, 'The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom!' (where by wisdom he means the elegance and refinement of Grecian literature.)

Agreeing, as in the main I do, with the sentiments here expressed by this eloquent writer, I must notice that he has, however, mistaken the sense of the [Greek: saemeion], which the Jews would have tempted our Saviour to shew,--namely, the signal for revolt by openly declaring himself their king, and leading them against the Romans. The foreknowledge that this superst.i.tion would shortly hurry them into utter ruin caused the deep sigh,--as on another occasion, the bitter tears.

Again, by the [Greek: sophia] of the Greeks their disputatious [Greek: sophistikae] is meant. The sophists pretended to teach wisdom as an art: and 'sophistae' may be literally rendered, wisdom-mongers, as we say, iron-mongers.

Ib. p. 350.

Some probably will say, "What argument can induce us to believe a man in a concern of this nature who gives no visible credentials to his authority?" * * * But let us ask in return, "Is it worthy of a being wearing the figure of a man to require such proofs as these to determine his judgment?" * * * "The beasts act from the impulse of their bodily senses, but are utterly incapable of seeing from reason why they should so act: and it might easily be shewn, that while a man thinks and acts under the influence of a miracle, he is as much incapable of perceiving from any rational ground why he should thus think and act, as a beast is." "What!" our opponents will perhaps reply, * * * "Was it not by miracles that the prophets (some of them) testified their authority? Do you not believe these facts?" Yes, my friends, I do most entirely believe them, &c.

There is so much of truth in all this reasoning on miracles, that I feel pain in the thought that the result is false,--because it was not the whole truth. But this is the grounding, and at the same time pervading, error of the Swedenborgians;--that they overlook the distinction between congruity with reason, truth of consistency, or internal possibility of this or that being objectively real, and the objective reality as fact.

Miracles, 'quoad' miracles, can never supply the place of subjective evidence, that is, of insight. But neither can subjective insight supply the place of objective sight. The certainty of the truth of a mathematical arch can never prove the fact of its existence. I antic.i.p.ate the answers; but know that they likewise proceed from the want of distinguis.h.i.+ng between ideas, such as G.o.d, Eternity, the responsible Will, the Good, and the like,--the actuality of which is absolutely subjective, and includes both the relatively subjective and the relatively objective as higher or transcendant realities, which alone are the proper objects of faith, the great postulates of reason in order to its own admission of its own being,--the not distinguis.h.i.+ng, I say, between these, and those positions which must be either matters of fact or fictions. For such latter positions it is that miracles are required in lieu of experience. A.'s testimony of experience supplies the want of the same experience for B. C. D., &c. For example, how many thousands believe the existence of red snow on the testimony of Captain Parry! But who can expect more than hints in a marginal note?

Sect. VI. pp. 378, 9; 380, 1.