The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. 3, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This just and acute remark is, in fact, no less applicable to Scripture in all doctrinal points, and if infidelity is not to overspread England as well as France, the same criterion (that is, the internal evidence) must be extended to all points, to the narratives no less than to the precept. The written words must be tried by the Word from the beginning, in which is life, and that life the light of men.

it to the noetic pentad, or universal form of contemplation, except where all the terms are absolute, and consequently there is no

punctum indifferens, — in divinis tetras, in omnibus aliis pentas,

and the form stands thus

This is a sophism which so evident a truth did not need. Apply the reasoning to an act of Parliament previously to the royal sanction. Will it hold good to say, if it was law after the sanction, it was law before? The assertion of the Papal theologians is, that the divine providence may possibly permit even the majority of a legally convened Council to err; but by force of a divine promise cannot permit both a majority and the Pope to err on the same point. The flaw in this is, that the Romish divines rely on a conditional promise unconditionally. To Taylor's next argument the Romish respondent would say, that an exception, grounded on a specific evident necessity, does not invalidate the rule in the absence of any equally evident necessity.

Taylor's argument is a

Greek: metábasis eis allo génos

It is not the truth, but the sign or mark, by which the Church at large may know that it is truth, which is here provided for; that is, not the truth simply, but the obligation of receiving it as such. Ten thousand may apprehend the latter, only ten of whom might be capable of determining the former.

It is the mark of a faction that it never hesitates to sacrifice a greater good common to them and to their opponents to a lesser advantage obtained over those opponents. Never was there a stranger instance of imprudence, at least, than the act of the Athanasian party in condemning so roundly the great Council of Ariminum as heretical, and for little more than the charitable wish of the many hundred Bishops there assembled to avoid a word that had set all Christendom by the ears. They declared that

Greek: ho agénnaetos patàer, kaì ho achron_os gennaetòs uhiòs, kaì tò pneuma ekporeuómenon

Greek: (hypostatik_os)

distinct, but nevertheless, one God; and though there might be some incautious phrases used by them, the good Bishops declared that if their decree was indeed Arian, or introduced aught to the derogation of the Son's absolute divinity, it was against their knowledge and intention, and that they renounced it.

Here I think Taylor wrong and Gratian right; for not a hundred years ago the very same decree was passed by the Lutheran clergy in Prussia, determining that left-hand marriages were to be discouraged, but did not exclude from communion. These marriages were invented for the sake of poor nobles: they could have but that one wife, and the children followed the rank and title of the mother, not of the father.

I have ever thought that the derivation of the Papal monarchy from the thrice repeated command,

, the most brazen of all the Pope's bulls. It was because Peter had given too good proof that he was more disposed to draw the sword for Christ than to perform the humble duties of a shepherd, that our Lord here strongly, though tenderly, reminds him of his besetting temptation. The words are most manifestly a reproof and a warning, not a commission. In like manner the very letter of the famous paronomastic text proves that Peter's confession, not Peter himself, was the rock. His name was, perhaps, not so much stone as stoner; not so much rock as rockman; and Jesus hearing this unexpected confession of his mysterious Sonship (for this is one of the very few cases in which the internal evidence decides for the superior fidelity of the first Gospel), and recognizing in it an immediate revelation from heaven, exclaims, "Well, art thou the man of the rock;

and upon this rock will I build my church,

" not on this man. Add too, that the law revealed to Moses and the confession of the divine attributes, are named the rock, both in the Pentateuch and in the Psalms.

Thou art the Christ

; but that Jesus was the Messiah had long been known by the Apostles, at all events conjectured. Had not John so declared him at the baptism? Besides, it was included among the opinions concerning our Lord which led to his question, the aim of which was not simply as to the Messiahship, but that the Messiah, instead of a mere descendant of David, destined to reestablish and possess David's throne, was the Jehovah himself,

the Son of the living God; God manifested in the flesh

I wonder that Taylor should have introduced so very strong an argument merely

. If St. Peter ever was at Rome, it must have been for the Jewish converts or

exclusively, and on what do the earliest Fathers rest the fact of Peter's being at Rome? Do they appeal to any document?

; but to their own arbitrary and most improbable interpretation of the word Babylon in St. Peter's first epistle

. I am too deeply impressed with the general difficulty arising out of the strange eclipse of all historic documents, of all particular events, from the arrival of St. Paul at Rome as related by St. Luke and the time when Justin Martyr begins to shed a scanty light, to press any particular instance of it. Yet, if Peter really did arrive at Rome, and was among those destroyed by Nero, it is strange that the Bishop and Church of Rome should have preserved no record of the particulars.

, or at least any state of mind and feeling that does not exclude moral attachment, I, as a Protestant, abominate this decree of Gregory III; for I place the moral, social, and spiritual helps and comforts as the proper and essential ends of Christian marriage, and regard the begetting of children as a contingent consequence. But on the contrary tenet of the Romish Church, I do not see how Gregory could consistently decree otherwise.

And yet there can be no doubt that Taylor himself held with Origen on this point. But,

non licebat dogmatizare oppositum, quia determinatum fuerat.

It may be well to remember, whenever Taylor speaks of the Apostles' Creed, that Pearson's work on that Creed was not then published. Nothing is more suspicious than copies of creeds in the early Fathers; it was so notoriously the custom of the transcribers to make them square with those in use in their own time.

The vision of the mitre dawned on Taylor; and his recollection of Laud came to the assistance of the Fathers; of many of whom in his heart Taylor, I think, entertained a very mean opinion. How could such a man do otherwise? I could forgive them their nonsense and even their economical falsehoods; but their insatiable appetite for making heresies, and thus occasioning the neglect or destruction of so many valuable works, Origen's for instance, this I cannot forgive or forget.

Now here begin my serious differences with Jeremy Taylor, which may be characterized in one sentence; ideas

conceptions and images. I contend that the Church in the Christian sense is an idea; — not therefore a chimera, or a fancy, but a real being and a most powerful reality. Suppose the present state of science in this country, with this only difference that the Royal and other scientific societies were not founded: might I not speak of a scientific public, and its influence on the community at large? Or should I be talking of a chimera, a shadow, or a non-entity? Or when we speak with honest pride of the public spirit of this country as the power which supported the nation through the gigantic conflict with France, do we speak of nothing, because we cannot say, — "It is in this place or in that catalogue of names?" At the same time I most readily admit that no rule can be grounded formally on the supposed assent of this ideal Church, the members of which are recorded only in the book of life at any one moment. In Taylor's use and application of the term, Church, the visible Christendom, and in reply to the Romish divines, his arguments are irrefragable.

Alas, if Protestant and Papist were named by individuals answering or not answering to this description, what a vast accession would not the Pope's muster-roll receive! In the instance of the Council of Trent, the iniquity of the Emperor and the Kings of France and Spain consisted in their knowledge that the assembly at Trent had no pretence to be a general Council, that is, a body representative of the Catholic or even of the Latin Church. It may be, and in fact it is, very questionable whether any Council, however large and fairly chosen, is not an absurdity except under the universal faith that the Holy Ghost miraculously dictates all the decrees: and this is irrational, where the same superseding Spirit does not afford evidence of its presence by producing unanimity. I know nothing, if I may so say, more ludicrous than the supposition of the Holy Ghost contenting himself with a majority, in questions respecting faith, or decrees binding men to inward belief, which again binds a Christian to outward profession. Matters of discipline and ceremony, having peace and temporal order for their objects, are proper enough for a Council; but these do not need any miraculous interference. Still if any Council is admitted in matters of doctrine, those who have appealed to it must abide by the determination of the majority, however they might prefer the opinion of the minority, just as in acts of Parliament.

It is a lamentable misuse of the term, reason, — thus to call by that name the mere faculty of guessing and babbling. The making reason a faculty, instead of a light, and using the term as a mere synonyme of the understanding, and the consequent ignorance of the true nature of ideas, and that none but ideas are objects of faith — are the grounds of all Jeremy Taylor's important errors.

If this sentence had occurred in Hume or Voltaire!

Here and in many other passages of his other works Jeremy Taylor very unfairly states this argument of the anti-prelatic party. It was not that the Church of England was afflicted (the Puritans themselves had been much more afflicted by the prelates); but that having appealed to the decision of the sword, the cause was determined against it. But in fact it is false that the Puritans ever did argue as Taylor represents them. Laud and his confederates had begun by incarcerating, scourging, and inhumanly mutilating their fellow Christians for not acceding to their fancies, and proceeded to goad and drive the King to levy or at least maintain war against his Parliament: and the Parliamentary party very naturally cited their defeat and the overthrow of the prelacy as a judgment on their blood-thirstiness, not as a proof of their error in questions of theology.

An admirable paragraph. Taylor is never more himself, never appears greater, or wiser, than when he enters on this topic, namely, the many and various causes beside truth which occasion men to hold an opinion for truth.

Such charity is indeed notable policy: salvation made easy for the benefit of obedient dupes.

In the Jewish theocracy, I admit; because the fact of idolatry was a crime, namely,

crimen læsæ majestatis

, an overt act subversive of the fundamental law of the state, and breaking asunder the

vinculum et copulam unitatis et cohæsionis

. But in making the position general, Taylor commits the

sophisma omissi essentialis

; he omits the essential of the predicate, namely, criminal; — not its being a fact rendering it punishable, but its being a criminal fact.

Oh that this great and good man, who saw and has expressed so large a portion of the truth, — (if by the Creed I might understand the true Apostles', that is, the Baptismal Creed, free from the additions of the first five centuries, I might indeed say the whole truth), — had but brought it back to the great original end and purpose of historical Christianity, and of the Church visible, as its exponent, not as a

of past revelations, — but an ever enlarging inclosed

of the opportunity of individual conversion to, and reception of, the spirit of truth! Then, instead of using this one truth to inspire a despair of all truth, a reckless scepticism within, and a boundless compliance without, he would have directed the believer to seek for light where there was a certainty of finding it, as far as it was profitable for him, that is, as far as it actually was light for him. The visible Church would be a walled Academy, a pleasure garden, in which the intrants having presented their

, or admission-contract, walk at large, each seeking private audience of the invisible teacher, — alone now, now in groups, — meditating or conversing, — gladly listening to some elder disciple, through whom (as ascertained by his intelligibility to me) I feel that the common Master is speaking to me, — or lovingly communing with a class-fellow, who, I have discovered, has received the same lesson from the inward teaching with myself, — while the only public concerns in which all, as a common weal, exercised control and vigilance over each, are order, peace, mutual courtesy and reverence, kindness, charity, love, and the fealty and devotion of all and each to the common Master and Benefactor!

It is characteristic of the man and the age, Taylor's high-strained reverential epithets to the names of the Fathers, and as rare and naked mention of Luther, Melancthon, Calvin — the least of whom was not inferior to St. Augustin, and worth a brigade of the Cyprians, Firmilians, and the like. And observe, always

Gibbon's enumeration of the causes, not miraculous, of the spread of Christianity during the first three centuries is far from complete. This, however, is not the greatest defect of this celebrated chapter. The proportions of importance are not truly assigned; nay, the most effective causes are only not omitted — mentioned, indeed, but

, not developed or distinctly brought out: for example, the zealous despotism of the Cæsars, with the consequent exclusion of men of all ranks from the great interests of the public weal, otherwise than as servile instruments; in short, the direct contrary of that state and character of men's minds, feelings, hopes and fancies, which elections, Parliaments, Parliamentary reports, and newspapers produce in England; and this extinction of patriotism aided by the melting down of states and nations in the one vast yet heterogeneous Empire; — the number and variety of the parts acting only to make each insignificant in its own eyes, and yet sufficient to preclude all living interest in the peculiar institutions and religious forms of Rome; which beginning in a petty district, had, no less than the Greek republics, its mythology and

intimately connected with localities and local events. The mere habit of staring or laughing at nine religions must necessarily end in laughing at the tenth, that is, the religion of the man's own birth-place. The first of these causes, that is, the detachment of all love and hope from the things of the visible world, and from temporal objects not merely selfish, must have produced in thousands a tendency to, and a craving after, an internal religion, while the latter occasioned an absolute necessity of a mundane as opposed to a national or local religion. I am far from denying or doubting the influence of the excellence of the Christian faith in the propagation of the Christian Church or the power of its evidences; but still I am persuaded that the necessity of some religion, and the untenable nature and obsolete superannuated character of all the others, occasioned the conversion of the largest though not the worthiest part of the new-made Christians. Here, though exploded in physics, we have recourse to the

as an efficient cause. This view of the subject can offend or startle those only who, in their passion for wonderment, virtually exclude the agency of Providence from any share in the realizing of its own benignant scheme; as if the disposition of events by which the whole world of human history, from north and south, east and west, directed their march to one central point, the establishment of Christendom, were not the most stupendous of miracles! It is a yet sadder consideration, that the same men who can find God's presence and agency only in sensuous miracles, wholly misconceive the characteristic purpose and proper objects of historic Christianity and of the outward and visible Church, of which historic Christianity is the ground and the indispensable condition; but this is a subject delicate and dangerous, at all events requiring a less scanty space than the margins of these honestly printed pages.

One great difficulty respecting, not the historic truth (of which there can be no rational doubt), but the miraculous nature, of the sudden deaths of Ananias and Sapphira is derived from the measure which gave occasion to it, namely, the sale of their property by the new converts of Palestine, in order to establish that community of goods, which, according to a Rabbinical tradition, existed before the Deluge, and was to be restored by the children of Seth (one of the names which the Jewish Christians assumed) before the coming of the Son of Man. Now this was a very gross and carnal, not to say fanatical, misunderstanding of our Lord's words, and had the effect of reducing the Churches of the Circumcision to beggary, and of making them an unnecessary burthen on the new Churches in Greece and elsewhere. See Rhenferd as to this.

The fact of Elymas, however, concludes the miraculous nature of the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, which, taken of themselves, would indeed have always been supposed, but could scarcely have been proved, the result of a miraculous or superhuman power. There are for me, I confess, great difficulties in this incident, especially when it is compared with our Lord's reply to the Apostles' proposal of calling down fire from heaven.

The Son of Man is not come to destroy

, &c. At all events it is a subject that demands and deserves deep consideration.

I cannot refrain from again expressing my surprise at the frequency and the undoubting positiveness of this assertion in so great a scholar, so profound a Patrician, as Jeremy Taylor was. He appears

to have believed the absurd fable of this Creed having been a pic-nic to which each of the twelve Apostles contributed his

. Had Jeremy Taylor taken it for granted so completely and at so early an age, that he read without attending to the various passages in the Fathers and ecclesiastical historians, which shew the gradual formation of this Creed? It is certainly possible, and I see no other solution of the problem.

Judge not, that ye be not judged

. The dread of these words is, I fear, more influential on my spirit than either the duty of charity or my sense of Taylor's high merits, in enabling me to struggle against the strong inclination to pass the sentence of dishonesty on the reasoning in this paragraph. Had I met the passage in Richard Baxter or in Bishop Hall, it would have made no such unfavourable impression. But Taylor was so acute a logician, and had made himself so completely master of the subject, that it is hard to conceive him blind to sophistry so glaring. I am myself friendly to Infant Baptism, but for that reason feel more impatience of any unfairness in its defenders.

Ad. iii. and xiii. p. 178.

This is mere sophistry; and I doubt whether Taylor himself believed it a sufficient reply to his own argument. There is no doubt that the primary purpose of Circumcision was to peculiarize the Jews by an indelible visible sign; and it was as necessary that Jewish infants should be known to be Jews as Jewish men. Then humanity and mere safety determined that the bloody rite should be performed in earliest infancy, as soon as the babe might be supposed to have gotten over the fever of his birth. This is clear; for women had no correspondent rite, but the same result was obtained by the various severe laws concerning their marriage with aliens and other actions.

Yes, but by no command of God, but only their own fancies.

Is it not evident that Christ here converted negatives into positives? As a babe is without malice negatively, so you must be positively and by actuation, that is, full of love and meekness; as the babe is unresisting, so must you be docile, and so on.

And yet, notwithstanding this terrible paragraph, Taylor believed that infants were not a whit the worse off for not being baptized. Strange contradiction! They are born in sin, and Baptism is the only way of deliverance; and yet it is not. For the infant is

of the kingdom of heaven. Christ blessed them, not in order to make them so, but because they already were so. So that this argument seems more than all others demonstrative for the Anabaptist, and to prove that Baptism derives all its force if it be celestial magic, or all its meaning if it be only a sacrament and symbol, from the presumption of actual sin in the person baptized.

so our Lord commanded all men to repent, did he therefore include babes of a month old

? Yes, when they became capable of repentance. And even so babes are included in the general command of Baptism, that is, as soon as they are baptizable. But Baptism supposed both repentance and a promise; babes are not capable of either, and therefore not of Baptism. For the physical element was surely only the sign and seal of a promise by a counter promise and covenant. The rite of Circumcision is wholly inapplicable; for there a covenant was between Abraham and God, not between God and the infant. "Do so and so to all your male children, and I will favor them. Mark them before the world as a peculiar and separate race, and I will then consider them as my chosen people." But Baptism is personal, and the baptized a subject not an object; not a thing, but a person; that is, having reason, or actually and not merely potentially. Besides, Jeremy Taylor was too sound a student of Erasmus and Grotius not to know the danger of screwing up St. Paul's accommodations of Jewish rites, meant doubtless as inducements of rhetoric and innocent compliances with innocent and invincible prejudices, into articles of faith. The conclusions are always true; but all the arguments are not and were never intended to be reducible into syllogisms demonstrative.