MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS.
38. …all teachers of Moral Truth, who aim to prepare for its reception by calling the attention of men to the law in their own hearts, may, without presumption consider themselves to be Apostles …namely Ambassadors for the Greatest of Kings..and the great Treaty of Peace and reconcilement betwixt him and Mankind.
39. On the feelings natural to ingenuous minds towards those who have first led them to reflect: Though divine truths are to be received equally from every Minister alike, yet it must be acknowledged that there is something (we know not what to call it) of a more acceptable reception of those which at first were the means of bringing men to God, than of others; like the opinion some have of physicians whom they love. The truths of the Gospel are applicable to all; but as remedies produce not always equal effects, so to different individuals different portions of the Word appear peculiarly applicable…And as it is with Scriptural truths so it is with those who preach them, some progress in one direction, and some in another; Labourers do not all work in the same spot, though they reap the same harvest.
40. The worth and value of Knowledge is in proportion to the worth and value of its object. What then is the best knowledge? The exactest knowledge of things, is to know them in their causes; it is then an excellent thing, and worthy of their endeavours who are most desirous of knowledge, to know the best things in their highest causes; and the happiest way of attaining to this knowledge, is to possess those things, and to know them in experience. [what things does Coleridge mean? The love and salvation of God? The love and commitment between a man and his wife? being present at the safe birth of your own child?The extraordinary beauty of creation ..the sea in the morning air? snow on the highest mountains? the South Gippsland hills? birdsong in the morning? The singing garden of C J Dennis at Toolangi? Simpson’s Gap at dawn? a Spring garden on the Bell’s Line of Road in the Blue Mountains? Tuscany in late summer? being lost in Venice? sitting quietly overlooking the view from the oracle at Delphi? fireflies on a summer’s evening in Champagne Illinois: the power of Niagara Falls? Giraffe grazing in the Akagera Game Park in Rwanda? Gazing for an hour at a huge Constable landscape in London or Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal in St Petersburgh? standing still at the overgrown graves of William and Jane Morris at Kelmscott or the view of the Thames near their house? Stourhead Garden in late afternoon in Autumn,? standing in the middle of Sherbrooke Forest at daybreak? reading Tolstoy, D H Lawrence, Milton, Wordsworth, Hopkins, Eliot or Alex Miller? pondering the immensity and deep beauty and wonder of the universe with modern photography? a faithful and loving dog? listening to Bach’s St John Passion? Lying in the middle of the Eyre Highway on the Nullabor Plain at midnight? watching the moon rise over Mont St Michel in Summer? assimilating the view beside St Biago in Montepulciano in Summer? walking quietly in a temple garden in Kyoto? sitting quietly in a boat on the Gordon River surrounded by 3000 year old rainforest in Tasmania? standing quietly in Bourges Cathedral (or Chartres, or Durham, or St David’s in Wales, or the Hagia Sophia or a mountain peak in Switzerland or on top of the Great Wall of China? a true and lasting friendship? sitting in a library of personally selected books and thinking? being still and knowing that God is God? singing hymns of faith with a huge crowd at Belgrave Heights Keswick Convention? the privilege of being alive? the joy of teaching receptive students?]
41. It is one main point of happiness that he that is happy doth know and judge himself to be so. This being the peculiar good of a reasonable creature, it is to be enjoyed in a reasonable way. It is not as the dull resting of a stone, or any other natural body in its natural place; but the knowledge and consideration of it is the fruition of it, the very relishing and tasting of its sweetness. [Coleridge appends a “Remark” after this aphorism, defending the Doctrines of Revealed Religion from prejudices widely spread, in part through the abuse, but far more from ignorance, of the true meaning of doctrinal Terms, which, however they may have been perverted to the purposes of Fanaticism, are not only scriptural, but of too frequent occurrence in Scripture to be overlooked or passed by in silence. He goes on to refer, in particular, to comments by Archbishop Leighton regarding the doctrine of Salvation, in connexion with the divine Foreknowledge [election], which he entitles effectual calling, the morality of which was being called into question in his day.]
42. Two Links of the Chain (viz. Election and Salvation) are up in heaven in God’s own hand; but this middle one (i.e. Effectual Calling) is let down to earth, into the hearts of his children, and they laying hold on it have sure hold on the other two: for no power can sever them. If, therefore, they can read the character of God’s image in their own souls, those are the counterpart of the golden characters of His love, in which their names are written in the book of life….So that finding the stream of grace in their hearts, though they may not see the fountain whence it flows, nor the ocean to which it returns, yet they know that it hath its source in their eternal election, and shall empty itself into the ocean of their eternal salvation…Therefore make your calling sure, and by that, your election….We are not to pry immediately into the decree, but to read it in the performance. Though the mariner sees not the pole-star, yet the needle of the compass which points to it, tells him which way he sails; thus the heart that is touched with the loadstone of divine love, trembling with godly fear, and yet still looking towards God by fixed believing, interprets the fear by the love in the fear, and tells the soul that its course is heavenward, towards the haven of eternal rest. He that loves may be sure that he was loved first…..although from present unsanctification, a man cannot infer that he is not elected; for the decree may, for part of a man’s life, run (as it were) underground… a man hath no portion amongst the children of God, nor can read one word of comfort in all the promises that belong to them, while he remains unholy. Note: Coleridge adds to this aphorism a note again quoting Archbishop Leighton against the sneers of the Sciolists [superficial pretenders to knowledge] on the one hand and Fanatics on the other in which Leighton states: In Scripture the term Spirit, as a power or property seated in the human soul, never stands singly, but is always specified by a genitive case following ; this being a Hebraism instead of an adjective which the Writer would have used if he had thought, as well as written in Greek. It is “the Spirit of Meekness” (a meek Spirit), or “the Spirit of Chastity”, and the like. The moral Result, the specific Form and Character in which the Spirit manifests its presence, is the only sure pledge and token of its presence; which is to be, and which safely may be, inferred from its practical effects, but of which an immediate knowledge or consciousness is impossible; and every pretence to such knowledge is either hypocrisy or fanatical delusion.
43. If any pretend that they have the Spirit, and so turn away from the straight rule of the Holy Scriptures, they have a spirit indeed, but it is a fanatical spirit, the spirit of delusion and giddiness; but the Spirit of God, that leads his children in the way of truth, and is for that purpose sent them from Heaven to guide them thither, squares their thoughts and ways to that rule whereof it is author, and that word which was inspired by it, and sanctifies them to obedience. He that saith I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. (1 John 2:4)
[Coleridge appends to this aphorism a lengthy essay with 19 paragraphs in which he attacks both atheism and those who build their lives on some sort of spiritual experience alone without reference to the clear Word of God in Scripture; in addition he responds to his critics especially Jonathan Swift and Joseph Butler who accuse him of “enthusiasm” or pretending to have spiritual gifts; in addition he argues that Deism is effectively Atheism.]
(i)..serious and sincere Christians ..can be helped when reading theology if they will accustom themselves to translate the theological terms into moral equivalents; saying to themselves—this may not be all that is meant, but this is meant, and it is that portion of the meaning, which belongs to me in the present stage of my progress. For example: render the words, sanctification of the Spirit…by Purity in Life and Action from a Pure Principle.
(ii)[A man] needs only to reflect on his own experience to be convinced that the Man makes the motive, and not the motive the man. What is a strong motive to one man, is no motive at all to another. If, then, the man deternines the motive, who determines the Man—to a good and worthy act, we will say, or a virtuous course of conduct? The intelligent Will, or the self-determining Power? True, in part, it is; and therefore the Will is pre-eminently the spiritual Constituent in our being. But will any reflecting man admit, that his own Will is the only sufficient determinant of all he is, and all he does? [Coleridge goes on to suggest that Agents, known and unknown act on a man’s will as well as the Air he breathes (environment) and his health.]
(iii)..in the World we see everywhere evidences of a Unity, which the component parts are so far from explaining, that they necessarily pre-suppose it as the cause and condition of their existing as those parts: or even of their existing at all…..it is highly reasonable to believe a Universal Power, as the cause and pre-condition of the harmony of all particular Wholes…and yet unreasonable and even superstitious or enthusiastic to entertain a similar Belief in relation to the System of intelligent and self-conscious Beings to the moral and personal World? But if in this, too, in the great community of Persons, it is rational to infer One universal Presence, a One present to all and in all, is it not most irrational to suppose that a finite Will can exclude it?
(iv)Whenever, therefore, the Man is determined (that is, impelled and directed) to act in harmony of intercommunion, must not something be attributed to this all-present power as acting in the Will? and by what fitter names can we call this than THE LAW, as empowering; THE WORD as informing; and THE SPIRIT as actuating?
(v)What has been said here amounts (I am aware) only to a negative Conception; but this is all that is required for a Mind at that period of its growth which we are now supposing, and as longs as Religion is contemplated under the form of Morality. A positive insight belongs to a more advanced stage; for spiritual truths can only be spiritually discerned. This we know from Revelation, and the existence of spiritual truths being granted) Philosophy is compelled to draw the same conclusion. But though merely negative, it is sufficient to render the union of Religion and Morality conceivable; sufficient to satisfy an unprejudiced Inquirer that the spiritual Doctrines of the Christian religion are not at war with the Reasoning Faculty, and that if they do not run on the same Line (or Radius) with the Understanding, Yet neither do they cut or cross it. It is sufficient, in short, to prove, that some distinct and consistent meaning may be attached to the assertion of the learned and philosophic apostle that “the Spirit beareth witness with our spirit” [Rom.8:16], that is, with the Will, as the supernatural in Man and the Principle of our Personality—of that, I mean, by which we are responsible Agents: Persons, and not merely living Things. [Coleridge attaches a philosophic addendum to point 5 in which he defends Free-will from being natural to man because man is originated with Free-will. Coleridge therefore argues that throughout the New Testament, Spiritual and Supernatural are synonymous.
(vi)It will suffice to satisfy a reflecting mind, that even at the porch and threshold of Revealed Truth there is a great and worthy sense in which we believe the Apostle’s assurance, that not only doth “the Spirit aid our infirmities” (Rom.8:20); that is, act on the Will by a predisposing influence from without, as it were, though in a spiritual manner, and without suspending or destroying its freedom (the possibility of which is proved to us in the influences of Education, or providential Occurrences, and above all of Example), but that in regenerate souls it may act in will and spirit, it may “make intercession for us” (Rom.8:26) “with groanings that cannot be uttered” (Rom.8:26). Nor is there any danger of Fanaticism or Enthusiasm as the consequence of such a belief, if only the attention be carefully and earnestly drawn to the concluding words of the sentence; if only due force and full import be given to the term unutterable or Incommunicable, in St Paul’s use of it. In this….it signifies that the subject…is something which cannot, which from the nature of the thing is impossible that I should, communicate to any human mind…It cannot be the object of my own direct and immediate Consciousness; it must be inferred….[Coleridge attaches to this note some references on the subject of consciousness, its general phenomena, and to psychological researches. He notes Sir William Hamilton: Lectures on Metaphysics; Locke’s Essay..where consciousness is considered as connected with personality; and Butler: On Personal Identity, for some critical remarks on Locke’s views. A madman is frequently not conscious of his own identity and that identity must be referred to the consciousness of others. But since sane self-consciousness is the most reliable testimony to the mind in which it inheres, so the same evidence is here appealed to, to establish a spiritual truth which enthusiasm or fanaticism is apt to distort.]
(vii)If any reflecting mind be surprised that the aids of the Divine Spirit should be deeper than our Consciousness can reach, it must arise from the not having attended sufficiently to the nature and necessary limits of human Consciousness. For the same impossibility exists as to the first acts and movements of our own will —the farthest back our recollection can follow the traces, never leads us to the first footmark —the lowest depth that the light of our Consciousness can visit even with a doubtful Glimmering, is still at an unknown distance from the Ground: and so, indeed, must it be with all Truths, and all modes of Being that can neither be counted, coloured or delineated. Before and After, when applied to such Subjects, are but allegories, which the Sense or Imagination supplies to the Understanding. The position of the Aristotelians, Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu [“there is nothing in mind which was not previously in the senses] on which Mr. Locke’s Essay is grounded, is irrefragable; Locke erred only in taking half the Truth for a whole Truth. Conception is consequent on Perception. What we cannot imagine, we cannot, in the proper sense, conceive. [ so also, I think, Anselm: God is that than which no greater thing can be conceived.]
(viii)..whatever is representable in the forms of Time and Space, is Nature. But whatever is comprehended in Time and space, is included in the mechanism of Cause and Effect. And conversely, whatever, by whatever means, has its principle in itself so far as to originate its actions, cannot be contemplated in any of the forms of Space and Time —it must, therefore, be considered as Spirit or Spiritual by a mind in that stage of its Development which is here supposed, and which we have agreed to understand under the name of Morality, or the Moral State: for in this stage we are concerned only with the forming of negative conceptions, negative convictions; and by spiritual I do not pretend to determine what the Will is, but what it is not — namely, that it is not Nature. And as no man who admits a Will at all (for we may safely assume that no man not meaning to speak figurately would call the shifting current of a stream the WILL of the River [cf “The River windeth at his own sweet will” — Wordsworth’s exquisite “Sonnet on Westminster-bridge at Sunrise,] will suppose it below Nature, we may safely add, that it is supernatural; and this without the least pretence to any Notion or Insight.
(ix)Now Morality accompanied with Convictions like these, I have ventured to call Religious. Morality. Of the importance I attach to the state of mind implied in these convictions, for its own sake, and as the natural preparation for a yet higher state and a more substantive knowledge, proof more than sufficient, perhaps, has been given in the length and minuteness of this introductory Discussion, and in the foreseen risk which I run of exposing the volume at large to the censure which every work, or rather which every writer, must be prepared to undergo, who, treating of subjects that cannot be seen, touched, or in any other way made matters of outward sense, is yet anxious both to attach to, and to convey a distinct meaning by, the words he makes use of —the censure of being dry, abstract, and (of all qualities most scaring and opprobrious to the ears of the present generation) metaphysical; though how is it possible that a work not physical , that is, employed on Objects known or believed on the evidence of the senses, should be other than metaphysical, that is: treating of Subjects, the evidence of which is not derived from the Senses, is a problem which Critics of this order find it convenient to leave unsolved.
(x)The author of the present Volume, will, indeed, have reason to think himself fortunate, if this be all the Charge! How many smart quotations, which (duly cemented by personal allusions to the Author’s supposed Pursuits, Attachments, and Infirmities) would of themselves make up “a review” of the volume, might be supplied from the works of Butler, Swift, and [William] Warburton [literary critic and Bishop of Gloucester]. For instance, [now quoting Dean Swift] “ It may not be amiss to inform the Public, that the compiler of the aids to Reflection, and Commenter on a Scotch Bishop’s platonico-calvinistic commentary on St Peter, belongs to the sect of the Aeolists [pretenders to inspiration], whose fruitful imaginations lead them into certain notions, which although in appearance very unaccountable, are not without their mysteries and their meanings; furnishing plenty of Matter for such, whose converting Imaginations dispose them to reduce all things into TYPES: who can make SHADOWS, no thanks to the Sun; and then mould them into SUBSTANCES, no thanks to Philosophy: whose peculiar Talent lies in fixing TROPES and ALLEGORIES to the LETTER. and refining what is LITERAL into FIGURE and MYSTERY” . —Tale of the Tub, Section xi [Swift].
(xi)And would it were my lot to meet with a Critic, who in the might of his own Convictions, and with arms of equal Point and Efficiency, from his own Forge, would come forth as my Assailant; or who, as a friend to my purpose, would set forth the objections to the matter and pervading Spirit of these Aphorisms, and the accompanying elucications. Were it my task to form the mind of a young man of Talent, desirous to establish his opinions and beliefs on solid principles, and in the light of distinct understanding,— I would commence his theological studies, or, at least, that most important part of them respecting the aids which Religion promises in our attempts to realise the idea of Morality, by bringing together all the passages scattered throughout the writings of Swift and Butler, that bear on Enthusiasm, Spiritual Operations, and pretences to the Gifts of the Spirit, with the whole train of New Lights, Raptures, Experiences, and the like. For all that the richest wit, in intimate union with profound Sense and steady Observation, can supply on these topics, is to be found in the works of these Satirists; though unhappily alloyed with much that can only tend to pollute the imagination.
(xii)Without stopping to estimate the degree of caricature in the Portraits sketched by these bold Masters….I would direct my Pupil’s attention to one feature common to the whole Group —the pretence, namely, of possessing or a Belief and expectation of possessing, an immediate Consciousness, a sensible Experience, of the Spirit in and during its operation on the soul. It is not enough that you grant them a consciousness of the Gifts and Graces infused, or an assurance of the Spiritual Origin of the same, grounded on their correspondence with the Scripture Promises, and their conformity with the Idea of the Divine Giver. No! They all alike, it will be found, lay claim (or at least look forward) to an inward perception of the Spirit itself and of its operation. [At first glance Coleridge seems in this aphorism to deny the possibility of any Christian’s sense of “knowing” or ‘having” the Spirit of God in their lives, along the lines of typical C18th deistic Enlightenment disapproval of “enthusiasm”. But in paragraph vi in this extended essay Coleridge makes it clear from Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit is “infused” into our lives and indeed takes possession of us when our own thoughts and Spirit cannot speak or pray. What Coleridge opposes here is the human claim that a person can take control of God’s Spirit at will and use the power of God at will. Whereas the opposite is the case. We cannot control God and we cannot always rely on our feelings about God’s love and power. Sometimes God “feels” very far away indeed, even in the life of the most devout and “spiritual” disciple. Sometimes also Satan can masquerade as an angel of light and deceive “even the elect”. We need to rest on the assurances of God’s love and protection in his Word and not trust in our own resources for we are frail and weak without the strength and power of God infusing us. Indeed as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:10..for when I am weak then I am strong and we have this power in earthen vessels to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. 2 Cor.4:7]]
(xiii)Whatever must be misrepresented in order to be ridiculed, is in fact not ridiculed; but the thing substituted for it. It is a Satire on something else, coupled with a Lie on the part of the Satirist, who knowing, or having the means of knowing the truth, chooses to call one thing by the name of another. The Pretensions to the Supernatural, pilloried by Butler, sent to Bedlam by Swift, and (on their re-appearance in public) gibbeted by Warburton, and anatomised by Bishop Lavington, one and all have this for their character, that the Spirit is made the immediate object of Sense or Sensation….[Coleridge’s complaint against the superficially clever but false satire of Jonathan Swift etc in this paragraph stands up well today (in the C21st) as a description of the cheap comedy/“satire” routines of the vast majority of stand up comics and political comedy tv shows of the loony left. With their single minded unaccountable and unelected journalists and pundits they ply their well worn trade knowing that they will always get a laugh by bagging anything that challenges whatever is the trendy “spirit” of the popular secular culture/zeitgeist today. Woe betide any clear Christian thinker such as Jordan Peterson who dares to challenge the shallow all pervading tide of acceptable left thinking today. Of course they will never oppose any other religious point of view because it is trendy to accept the ideas of any faith other than the Christian heritage of Western culture. Often they forgo such criticism of other faiths for fear of their own lives and safety which is understandable, but their inconsistency is not commendable and demonstrates their lack of conviction. Nothing much has changed it would seem in the last 300 years since Coleridge. At least Jonathan Swift was aware that his views would not land him a good position in the church and yet pursued his satire which was, as satire goes, brilliant ..unlike the cowardly media faff we have today whose soul aim it would appear is to get a cheap laugh.]
(iv)Well then! —for let me be allowed still to suppose the Reader present to me, and that I am addressing him in the character of Companion and Guide —the positions recommended for your examination not only do not involve, but they exclude, this inconsistency. And for aught that hitherto appears, we may see with complacency the Arrows of Satire feathered with Wit, weighted with sense, and discharged by a strong Arm, fly home to their mark. Our conceptions of a possible Spiritual Communion, though they are but negative, and only preparatory to a faith in its actual existence, stand neither in the Level or in the Direction of the Shafts.
(xv)If it be objected, that Swift and Warburton did not choose openly to set up interpretations of later and more rational Divines against the decisions of their own Church, and from prudential considerations did not attack the doctrine in toto altogether, that is their concern ( I would answer), and it is more charitable to think otherwise. But we are in the silent school of Thought. Should we ‘lie for God,’ and that to our own Thoughts? They indeed, who dare do the one, will soon be able to do the other. So did the Comforters of Job: and to the Divines, who resemble Job’s Comforters, we will leave both attempts.
(xvi)But (it may be said) a possible Conception is not necessarily a true one; nor even a probable one, where the facts can be otherwise explained. In the name of the supposed Pupil I would reply —that is the very question I am preparing myself to examine; and am now seeking the Vantage-ground where I may best command the Facts. In my own person, I would ask this Objector, whether he counted the Declarations of Scripture among the Facts to be explained. But both for myself and my Pupil, and in behalf of all rational Inquiry, I would demand that the Decision should not be such, in itself or in its effects, as would prevent one becoming acquainted with the most important of these Facts; nay, such as would, for the mind of the Decider, preclude their very existence. Unless ye believe, says the Prophet, ye cannot understand. Suppose (what is at least possible) that the facts should be consequent on belief, it is clear that without the belief the materials, on which the understanding is to exert itself, would be wanting.
(xvii)The reflections that naturally arise out of this last remark, are those that best suit the stage at which we last halted (section viii), and from which we now recommence our progress — the state of a Moral Man, who has already welcomed certain truths of Religion, and who is enquiring after other and more special Doctrines; still however as a Moralist, and desirous indeed to receive them into combination with Morality, but to receive them as its Aid, not as its Substitute. Now, to such a man I say, Before you reject the Opinions and Doctrines asserted and enforced in the following Extracts from Leighton [Archbishop], and before you give way to the Emotions of Distaste or Ridicule, which the prejudices of the Circle in which you move, or your own familiarity with the mad perversions of the doctrine by the Fanatics in all ages, have connected with the very words, Spirit, Grace, Gifts, Operations &c., re-examine the arguments advanced in the first pages of this Introductory Comment (sections iii-xviii), and the simple and sober View of the Doctrine, contemplated in the first instance as a mere idea of Reason, flowing naturally from the admission an infinite omnipresent Mind as the Ground of the Universe. Reflect again and again, and be sure that you understand the doctrine before you determine on rejecting it. That no false judgments, no extravagant conceits,no practical ill-consequences need arise out of the right Belief of the Spirit, and its possible communion with the Spiritual Principle in Man , can arise out of the right Belief, or are compatible with the Doctrine, truly and scripturally explained.
(xviii). On the other hand, reflect on the consequences of rejecting it. For surely it is not the act of a reflecting mind, nor the part of a Man of Sense to disown and cast out one Tenet, and yet persevere in admitting and clinging to another that has neither sense nor purpose, that does not suppose and rest on the truth and reality of the former! If you have resolved that all belief of a divine Comforter present to our inmost Being and aiding our infirmities, is fond and fanatical — if the Scriptures promising and asserting such communion are to be explained away to the actions of circumstances, and the necessary movements of the vast machine, in one of the circulating chains of which the human Will is a petty Link — in what light can Prayer appear to you, than the groans of a wounded Lion in his solitary Den, or the howl of a Dog with his eyes on the moon? At the best, you can regard it only as a transient bewilderment of the Social Instinct, as a social Habit misapplied. Unless indeed you should adopt the theory which I remember to have read in the writings of the late Dr Jebb, and, for some supposed beneficial re-action of Praying on the Prayer’s own Mind, should practice it as a species of Animal-magnetism to be brought about by a wilful eclipse of the Reason, and a temporary make-believe on the part of the Self-magnetizer!
(xix)At all events, do not pre-judge a Doctrine, the utter rejection of which must oppose a formidable obstacle to your acceptance of Christianity itself, when the Books, from which alone we can learn what Christianity is and what it teaches, are so strangely written, that in a series of the most concerning points, including (historical facts excepted) all the peculiar Tenets of Religion, the plain and obvious meaning of the words, that in which they were understood by Learned and Simple for at least sixteen centuries, during the far larger part of which the language was a living language, is no sufficient guide to their actual sense to to the Writer’s own meaning! And this too, where the literal and received Sense involves nothing impossible or immoral, or contrary to reason. With such a persuasion, Deism would be a more consistent Creed. But, alas, even this will fail you. The utter rejection of all present and living communion with the Universal Spirit impoverishes Deism itself, and renders it as cheerless as Atheism, from which it would differ only by an obscure impersonation of what the Atheist receives unpersonified, under the name of Fate or Nature.
44. The proper and natural Effect, and in the absence of all disturbing or intercepting forces, the certain and sensible accompaniment of Peace, (or Reconcilement) with God, is our own inward Peace, a quiet and calm temper of mind. And where there is a consciousness of earnestly desiring, and of having sincerely striven after the former, the latter may be considered as a Sense of its presence. In this case, I say, and for a soul watchful, and under the discipline of the Gospel, the Peace with a man’s self may be the medium or organ through which the assurance of his Peace with God is conveyed. We will not therefore condemn this mode of speaking, though we dare not greatly recommend it. Be it, that there is, truly and in sobriety of speech, enough of just Analogy in the subjects meant, to make use of the words, if less than proper, yet something more than metaphorical; still we must be cautious not to transfer to the Object the defects or the deficiency of the Organ, which must needs partake of the imperfections of the imperfect Beings to whom it belongs….but with yet greater caution, ought we to think respecting a tranquil habit of inward life, considered as a spiritual Sense, as the Medial Organ in and by which our Peace with God, and the lively Working of his Grace on our Spirit, are perceived by us.
This Peace which we have with God in Christ, is inviolable; but because the sense and persuasion of it may be interrupted, the soul that is truly at peace with God may for a time be disquieted itself, through weakness of faith, or the strength of temptation, or the darkness of desertion, losing sight of that grace, that love and light of God’s countenance, on which its tranquillity and joy depend. Thou didst hide thy face, saith David, and I was troubled. (Psalm 30:7). But when these eclipses are over, the soul is revived with new consolation, as the the face of the earth is renewed and made to smile with the return of the sun in spring; and this ought always to uphold Christians in the saddest times, viz., that the grace and love of God towards them depends not on their sense, nor upon anything in them, but is still in itself, incapable of the smallest alteration.
A holy heart that gladly entertains grace, shall find that it and peace cannot dwell asunder; while an ungodly man may sleep to death in the lethargy of carnal presumption and impenitency! but a true, lively, solid peace he cannot have. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. (Isaiah 42:21)
45. Worldly hopes. Worldly hopes are not living, but lying hopes; they die often before us, and we live to bury them, and see our own folly and infelicity in trusting to them; but at the utmost, they die with us when we die, and can accompany us no further. But the lively Hope, which is the Christian’s Portion, answers expectation to the full, and much beyond it, and deceives no way but in that happy way of far exceeding it. A living hope, living in death itself! The world dares say no more for its device, than Dum spiro spero [while I breathe I hope]; but the children of God can add, by virtue of this living hope, Dum expiro spero [while I die I hope].
46. The Worldling’s Fear. It is a fearful thing when a man and all his hopes die together. Thus saith Solomon of the wicked, Proverbs 11:7 [When the wicked dies, his hope perishes, and the expectation of the godless comes to nought.] When he dieth, then die his hopes (many of them before, but at the utmost then, all of them. but the righteous man hath hope in his death, Proverbs 14:32. [ Coleridge appends a note here: One of the numerous proofs against those who, with a strange inconsistency, hold the Old Testament to have been inspired throughout, and yet deny that the doctrine of a future state is not taught.]
47. Worldly Mirth. As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is the that singeth songs to a heavy heart, Proverbs 25:20. Worldly mirth is so far from curing spiritual grief, that even worldly grief, where it is great and takes deep root, is not allayed but increased by it. A man who is full of inward heaviness, the more he is encompassed about with mirth, it exasperates and enrages his grief the more; like ineffectual weak physic, which removes not the humour, but stirs it and makes it more unquiet. The spiritually benighted may partake largely of worldly pleasures in vain, for the light of divine comfort alone can disperse the Egyptian darkness of the soul.
But spiritual joy is seasonable for all estates; in prosperity, it is pertinent to crown and sanctify all other enjoyments, with this which so far surpasses them; and in distress, it is the only Nepenthe [Egyptian herbal drink that banishes sorrow], the cordial of fainting spirits; so, Psalm 4:7 He hath put joy into my heart. This mirth makes way for itself, which other mirth cannot do. These songs are the sweetest in the night of distress.
48. Plotinus thanked God that his Soul was not tied to an immortal Body. The wonderfully imaginative Hellenic writers clothed much of their acute philosophy in fable, the mythic with them symbolises the real. So, Tithonus is represented as possessed of immortality, which, inhering in a body that sinks into decrepitude, at last becomes burdensome, a perpetual weariness, because too strongly contrasting his decay with the perpetual beauty of his bride. Tennyson, his readers will remember, has this as the subject of one of his poems.
Tithonus
BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair’d shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.
Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man—
So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,
Who madest him thy chosen, that he seem’d
To his great heart none other than a God!
I ask’d thee, ‘Give me immortality.’
Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile,
Like wealthy men, who care not how they give.
But thy strong Hours indignant work’d their wills,
And beat me down and marr’d and wasted me,
And tho’ they could not end me, left me maim’d
To dwell in presence of immortal youth,
Immortal age beside immortal youth,
And all I was, in ashes. Can thy love,
Thy beauty, make amends, tho’ even now,
Close over us, the silver star, thy guide,
Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears
To hear me? Let me go: take back thy gift:
Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?
A soft air fans the cloud apart; there comes
A glimpse of that dark world where I was born.
Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals
From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,
And bosom beating with a heart renew’d.
Thy cheek begins to redden thro’ the gloom,
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,
Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise,
And shake the darkness from their loosen’d manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.
Lo! ever thus thou growest beautiful
In silence, then before thine answer given
Departest, and thy tears are on my cheek.
Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?
‘The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.’
Ay me! ay me! with what another heart
In days far-off, and with what other eyes
I used to watch—if I be he that watch’d—
The lucid outline forming round thee; saw
The dim curls kindle into sunny rings;
Changed with thy mystic change, and felt my blood
Glow with the glow that slowly crimson’d all
Thy presence and thy portals, while I lay,
Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-warm
With kisses balmier than half-opening buds
Of April, and could hear the lips that kiss’d
Whispering I knew not what of wild and sweet,
Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing,
While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.
Yet hold me not for ever in thine East:
How can my nature longer mix with thine?
Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die,
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
Release me, and restore me to the ground;
Thou seëst all things, thou wilt see my grave:
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;
I earth in earth forget these empty courts,
And thee returning on thy silver wheels.
49. What a full Confession do we make of our dissatisfaction with the Objects of our bodily senses, that in our attempts to express what we conceive the Best of Beings, and the Greatest of all Felicities to be, we describe by the exact Contraries of all, that we experience here —the one as Infinite, Incomprehensible, Immutable, &c., the other as incorruptible, undefiled, and that passeth not away. At all events, this Coincidence, say rather, Identity of Attributes, is sufficient to apprize us, that to be the inheritors of bliss we must become the children of God.
The remark of Leighton’s is ingenious and startling. Another, and more fruitful, perhaps more solid inference from the fact would be, that there is something in the human mind which makes it know (as soon as it is sufficiently awakened to reflect on its own thoughts and notices), that in all finite Quantity there is an Infinite, in all measures of Time and Eternal; that the latter are the basis, the substance, the true and abiding reality of the former; and that as we truly are. only as far as God is with us, so neither can we truly possess (i.e. enjoy) our Being or any other real Good, but by living in the sense of his holy presence. A Life of wickednesss is a Life of lies; and an Evil Being or the Being of Evil, the last and darkest mystery.
50. The Wisest Use of the Imagination. It is not altogether unprofitable; yet it is great wisdom in Christians to be arming themselves against such temptations as may befall them hereafter, though they have not as yet met with them; to labour to overcome them beforehand, to suppose the hardest things that may be incident to them, and to put on the strongest resolutions they can attain unto. Yet all that is but an imaginary effort; and therefore there is no assurance that the victory is more than imaginary too, till it come to action, and then, may prove but (as one said of the Athenians) fortes in tabula, patient and courageous in picture or fancy: notwithstanding all their arms, and dexterity in handling them by way of exercise, may be foully defeated when they are t fight in earnest.
51. The Language of Scripture. [In this long “aphorism” Coleridge particularly engages with Biblical commentators who seek to evade scriptural passages whose literal meaning is difficult e.g. the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. He believes the literal interpretation is usually the most honest and should not be evaded if possible reasonably]
The Word of God speaks to men, and therefore it speaks in the language of the Children of Men. This just and pregnant thought was suggested to [Archbishop] Leighton by Genesis 22:12 [{God] said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me”.] …On moral subjects, the Scriptures speak in the language of the Affections which they excite in us: on sensible objects, neither metaphysically, as they are known by superior intelligences; nor theoretically, as they would be seen by us were we placed in the Sun; but as they are presented by our human senses in our present relative position. Lastly, from no vain, or worse than vain, Ambition of seeming “to walk on the Sea” of Mystery in my way to Truth, but in the hope of removing a difficulty that presses heavily on the minds of many who in Heart and Desire are Believers, and which long pressed on my mind, I venture to add : that on spiritual things, and allusively, to the mysterious union or conspiration of the Divine with the Human in the Spirits of the Just, spoken of in Romans 7:27 [ “And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God], the Word of God attributes the language of the Spirit sanctified to the Holy One, the Sanctifier.
Now the Spirit in Man (that is, the Will) knows its own State in and by its Acts alone. [Coleridge adds a complex mathematical analogy here which I omit]. Let the Reader join these two positions: first, that as one with the Will so filled and actuated: secondly, that our actions are the means by which alone the Will becomes assured of its own state: and he will understand, though he may not perhaps adopt my suggestion, that the Verse, in which God speaking of himself, says to Abraham, Now I know that thou dearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld they Son, they only Son, from me — may be more than merely figurative. An accommodation I grant; but in the thing expressed, and not altogether in the Expressions. In arguing with infidels, or with the weak in faith, it is part of religious Prudence, no less than of religious Morality, to avoid whatever looks like an evasion. The retain the literal sense, wherever the harmony of Scripture permits, and reason does not forbid, is ever the honester, and nine times in ten, the more rational and pregnant interpretation. The contrary plan is an easy and approved way of getting rid of a difficulty; but nine times in ten a bad way of solving it. But alas! there have been too many Commentators who are content not to understand a text themselves, if only they can make the reader believe that they do.
Of the Figures of Speech in the Sacred Volume, that are only Figures of Speech, the one of most frequent occurrence is that which describes an effect by the name of its most usual and best known cause: the passage, for instance, in which Grief, Fury, Repentance, &., are attributed to the Deity. But these are far enough from justifying the (I had almost said dishonest) fashion of metaphorical Glosses, in as well as out of the Church; and which our fashionable Divines have carried to such an extent as, in the doctrinal part of their Creed, to leave little else but Metaphors. [Coleridge concludes with some further references to other works to help folk look at this matter further].
52. The Christian no Stoic. Seek not altogether to dry up the stream of Sorrow, but to bound it, and keep it within its banks. Religion doth not destroy the life of nature, but adds to it a life more excellent; yea, it doth not only permit, but requires some feeling of afflictions. Instead of patience, there is in some men an affected spirit of pride suitable only to the doctrine of the Stoics as it is unusually taken. They strive not to feel at all the afflictions that are on them; but where there is no feeling at all, there can be no patience.
Of the sects of ancient philosophy the Stoic is, perhaps, the nearest to Christianity. Yet even to this sect Christianity is fundamentally opposite. For the Stoic attaches the highest honour (or rather, attaches honour solely) to the person that acts virtuously in spite of feelings, or who has raised himself above the conflict by their extinction; while Christianity instructs us to place small reliance on a Virtue that does not begin by bringing the Feelings to a conformity with the Commands of the Conscience. Its especial aim, its characteristic operation, is to moralise the affections. The feelings that oppose a right act must be wrong feelings. The act, indeed, whatever the Agent’s feelings might be, Christianity would command: and under certain circumstances would both command and commend it— as a healthful symptom in a sick Patient; and command it, as one of the ways and means of changing the feelings, or displacing them by calling up the opposite.
Corollaries to 52c. (1) The more consciousness in our Thoughts and Words, and the less in our Impulses and general Actions, the better and more healthful the state of both head and heart. As the Flowers from an Orange Tree in its time of blossoming, that burgeon forth, expand, fall, and are momently replaced, such is the sequence of hourly and momently Charities in a pure and gracious soul. The modern Fiction which depictures the son of Cytherea with a bandage around his eyes, is not without a spiritual meaning. There is a sweet and holy Blindness in Christian LOVE, even as there is a blindness of Life, yea, and of Genius too, in the moment of productive energy. *Cytherea is another name for Aphrodite who was said to have come from the island of Cythera and later Cyprus. The son of Cytheria/Aphrodite is Aeneas by Anchises. Bandages around his eyes represents the saying that “love is blind”.
(2) [NB. in this passage Coleridge demonstrates how clearly the general theory of the related evolutionary growth of living things leading to homo sapiens was known and understood at least fifty years before Darwin wrote the The Origin of Species, which partially shows why the response of the general community was not as great as might have been thought from the American Fundamentalist debate today.]
Motives are symptoms of weakness, and supplements for the deficient Energy of the living PRINCIPLE, the LAW within us. Let them be reserved for those momentous Acts and Duties in which the strongest and best balanced natures must feel themselves deficient, and where Humility, no less than Prudence, proscribes Deliberation. The lowest class of Animals or Protozoa, the Polypi for instance, have neither brain nor nerves. Their motive powers are all from without. The Sun, the Light, the Warmth, the Air, are their Nerves and Brain. As life ascends, nerves appear; but still only as the conductors of an external Influence; next are seen the knots or Ganglions, as so many Foci of instinctive Agency, that imperfectly imitate the yet wanting Centre. And now the Promise and Token of a true Individuality are disclosed; both the Reservoir of Sensibility and the imitative power that actuates the Organs of Motion (the Muscles) with the net-work of conductors, are all taken inward and appropriated; the Spontaneous rises into the Voluntary, and finally, after various steps and a long Ascent, the Material and Animal Means and Conditions are prepared for the manifestation of a Free Will, having its Law within itself and its motive in the Law—and thus bound to originate its own Acts, not only without, but even against alien stimulants. That in our present state we have only the Dawning of this inward Sun (the perfect Law of Liberty) will sufficiently limit and qualify the preceding Position if only it have been allowed to produce its twofold consequencw—the excitement of Hope and the repression of Vanity.
53. An excessive eating or drinking both makes the body sickly and lazy, fit for nothing but sleep, and besots the mind, as it clogs up with crudities the way through which the spirits should pass, besmirching them, and making them move heavily, as a coach in a deep way; thus doth all immoderate use of the world and its delights wrong the soul in its spiritual condition, makes it sickly and feeble, full of spiritual distempers and inactivity, benumbs the graces of the Spirit, and fills the soul with sleepy vapours, makes it grow secure with and heavy in spiritual exercises, and obstructs the way and motion of the Spirit of God in the soul. Therefore, if you would be spiritual, healthful, and vigorous, and enjoy much of the consolations of Heaven, be sparing and sober in those of the earth, and what you abate of the one, shall be certainly made up in the other.
54.Inconsistency. It is a most unseemly and unpleasant thing to see a man’s life full of ups and downs, one step like a Christian, and another like a worldling; it cannot choose but both pain himself and the edification of others.
The same sentiment, only with a special application to the maxims and measures of our Cabinet and Statesmen, had bee fully expressed by a sage Poet of the preceding Generation, in lines which no Generation will find inapplicable or superannuated:
God and the world we worship both together,
Draw not our laws to Him, but His to ours;
Untrue to both, so prosperous in neither,
The imperfect Will brings forth but barren Flowers.
Unwise as all distracted Interests be,
Strangers to God, Fools in Humanity:
Too good for great things, and too great for good,
While still “I dare not” waits upon “I will”. [Faulke Greville, Lord Brooke]
55. continued: The Ordinary Motive to Inconsistency. What though the polite man count thy fashion a little odd and too precise, it is because he knows nothing above that model of goodness which he hath set himself, and therefore approves of nothing beyond it; he knows not God, and therefore doth not discern and esteem what is most like Him. When couriers come down into the country, the common home-bred people possibly think their habit strange; but they care not for that: it is the fashion at Court. What need, then, that Christians should be so tender-hearted, as to be put out of countenance because the world looks on holiness as a singularity? It is the only fashion in the highest Court, of the King of Kings himself.
56. Superficial Reconciliations, and the Self-Deceit in Forgiving. When, after variances, men are brought to an agreement, they are much subject to this, rather to cover their remaining malices with superficial verbal forgiveness, than to dislodge them, and free the heart of them. This is a poor self-deceit. As the philosopher said to him, who, being being ashamed that he was espied by him in a tavern in the outer room, withdrew himself to the inner, when he called after him, “That is not the way, you will be further in!” So when hatreds are upon admonition not thrown out, but retire inward to hide themselves, they grow deeper and stronger than before; and those constrained semblances of reconcilement are but a false healing, do but skin the wound over, and therefore it usually breaks forth worse again
57. Of the Worth and Duties of the Preacher. The stream of custom and our profession brings us to the preaching of the Word, and we sit out our hour under the sound; but how few consider and prize it as the great ordinance of God for the salvation of souls, the beginner and the sustainer of the Divine life of Grace within us! And certainly, until we have these thoughts of it and seek to feel it thus ourselves, although we hear it most frequently, and let slip no occasion, yea, hear it with attention and some present delight, yet still we miss the right use of it, and turn it from its true end, while we take it not as that ingrafted word which is able to save our souls (James 1:21).
Thus ought they to preach the word; to endeavour their utmost to accommodate it to this end, that sinners may be converted, begotten again, and believers nourished and strengthened in their spiritual life; to regard no lower end, but aim steadily at that mark. Their hearts and tongues ought to be set on fire with holy zeal for God and love to souls, kindled by the Holy Ghost, that came down on the apostles in the shape of fiery tongues.
And those that hear, should remember this as the end of their hearing, that they may receive spiritual healing, life and strength by the word.* For though it seems a poor despicable business, that a frail and sinful man like yourselves should speak a few words in your hearing, yet, look upon it as the way wherein God communicates happiness to those who believe, and works that believing unto happiness, alters the whole frame of the soul, and makes a new creation, as it begets it again to the inheritance of glory. Consider it thus, which is its true notion; and then, what can be so precious?
[* The believer familiar with the word and doctrine of Scripture is, by means of preaching, kept in remembrance of those spiritual truths which he already knows (1 Peter1:12, 13 …”it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things which have now been announced to you by those who preached the good news to you through the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look) , but which without such preaching he is apt to forget. So the Holy Communion is repeated, not for its novelty, but as a remembrance of that death which gave eternal life to man. Yet too many hearers view preaching as a means of intellectual entertainment alone; and commendable only in proportion to its rhetorical results. The sinfulness of man and the love of God are complained of as too familiar topics! Such hearers should pause to consider for a moment that they are the stumbling blocks and hindrances of the young, the delight of the infidel, and are impediment to the Gospel. To speak slightingly of means before the young believer is a grievous evil, not easily atoned for or remedied in after years. Self-examination is more befitting. (Psalm 19:13 Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins, let them not have dominion over me!)
58. The difference is great in our natural life, in some persons especially; that they who in infancy were so feeble, and wrapped up as others in swaddling clothes, yet afterwards come to excel in wisdom and in the knowledge of the sciences, or to be commanders of great armies, or to be kings: but the distance is far greater and more admirable, betwixt the small beginnings of grace, and our after perfection, that fulness of knowledge that we look for, and that crown of immortality which all they are born to, who are born of God.
But as in the faces or actions of some children, characters and presages of their after-greatness have appeared (as a singular beauty in Moses’s face, as they write of him, and as Cyrus was made king among the shepherd’s children with whom he was brought up, &c.), so also, certainly in these children of God, there be some characters and evidences that they are born for Heaven by their new birth. That holiness and meekness, that patience and faith which shine in the actions and sufferings of the saints, are characters of their Father’s image, and show their high original, and foretell their glory to come; such a glory as doth not only surpass the world’s thoughts, but the thoughts of the children of God themselves. (Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 1John 3:2).
58c. This Aphorism would, it may seem, have been placed more fitly in the Chapter following. In placing it here, I have been determined by the following Convictions: 1. Every State, and consequently that which we have described as the State of Religious Morality, which is not progressive, is dead or retrograde. 2. As a pledge of this progression, or, at least, as the form in which the propulsive tendency shows itself, there are certain Hopes, Aspirations, Yearnings, that, with more or less consciousness, rise and stir the in the Heart of true Morality as naturally as the Sap in the full-formed Stem of a Rose flows towards the Bud, within which the flower is maturing.3. No one, whose own experience authorises him to confirm the truth of this statement, can have been conversant with the Volumes of Religious Biography, can have pursued (for instance) the lives of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Wishhart [Scottish reformer who worked with John Knox], Sir Thomas More, Bernard Gilpin [“apostle of the North”, Bishop of Durham, fighter against church abuse and preferments], Bishop Bedel [translated the Bible into Gaelic], Egede [Hans Egede, Lutheran missionary form Norway to Greenland], Swartz, and the missionaries of the Frozen World, without an occasional conviction, that these men lived under extraordinary influences, which in each instance and in all ages of the Christian era bear the same characters, and both in the accompaniments and the results evidently refer to a common origin. And what can this be is the Question that must needs force itself on the mind in the first moment of reflection on a phenomenon so interesting and apparently so anomalous. The answer is as necessarily contained in one or the other of the two assumptions. Those influences are either the Product of Delusion (Insania Amabilis, and the Re-Action of disordered Nerves), or they argue the existence of a Relation to some real Agency, distinct from what is experienced or acknowledged by the world at large, for which as not merely natural on the one hand, and yet not assumed to be miraculous on the other, we have no apter name than spiritual. Now if neither analogy justifies nor the moral feelings permit the former assumption, and we decide therefore in favour of the Reality of a State other and higher than the mere Moral Man, whose Religion* consists in Morality attained under these Convictions, can the existence of a transitional state appear other than probable, or that these very Convictions, when accompanied by correspondent dispositions and stirrings of the Heart, are among the Marks and Indications of such a State. And thinking it not unlikely that among the Readers of this Volume, there may be found some individuals, whose inward State, though disquieted by Doubts and oftener still perhaps by blank Misgivings, may, nevertheless , betoken the commencement of a Transition from a not irreligious Morality to a Spirtual Religion, with a view to their interests I placed this Aphorism under the present Head.
- For let it not be forgotten, that Morality, as distinguished from Prudence, implying (it matters not under what name, whether of Honour, or Duty, or Conscience, still, I say, implying), and being grounded in an awe of the Invisible and a Confidence therein beyond (nay, occasionally in apparent contradiction to) the inductions of outward Experience, is essentially religious.
59. The most approved teachers of wisdom, in a human way, have required of their scholars, that to the end their minds might be capable of it, and they should be purified from vice and wickedness. And it was Socrates’s custom, when any one asked him a question, seeking to be informed by him, before he would answer them, he asked them concerning their own qualities and course of life.
60. Knowledge not the Ultimate End of Religious Pursuits. The Hearing and Reading of the Word, under which I comprize theological studies generally, are alike defective when pursued without increase of Knowledge, and when pursued chiefly for increase of Knowledge. To seek no more than a present delight , that evanisheth with the sound of the words that die in the air, is not to desire the word as meat, but as music, as God tells the prophet Ezekiel of his people, Ezekiel 33:32. And lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hat a pleasant voice, and can play well upon an instrument; for they desire to hear thy words, and they do them not. To desire the word for the increase of knowledge, although this is necessary and commendable, and, being rightly qualified, is a part of spiritual accretion, yet, take it as going no further, it is not the true end of the word. Nor is the venting of that knowledge in speech and frequent discourse of the word and divine truths that are in it; which, where it is governed with Christian prudence, is not to be despised, but commended; yet, certainly, the highest knowledge, and the most frequent and skilful speaking of the word, severed from the growth here mentioned, misses the true end of the word. It any one’s head or tongue should grow apace, and all the rest stand at a stay, it would certainly make him a monster; and they are no other, who are knowing and discoursing Christians, and grow daily in that respect, but not in holiness of heart and life, which is the proper growth of the children of God. Apposite to their case is Epictetus’s comparison of the sheep; they return not what they eat in grass, but in wool.
61. The Sum of Church History. In times of peace, the Church may dilate more; and build as it were into breadth, but in times of trouble, it arises more in height; it is then built upwards; as in cities where men are straitened, they build usually higher than in the country.
62. Worthy to be Framed and Hung up in the Library of every Theological Student. When there is a great deal of smoke, and no clear flame, it argues much moisture in the matter, yet it witnesseth certainly that there is fire there; and therefore dubious questioning is a much better evidence, than that senseless deadness which most take for believing. Men that know nothing in the sciences, have no doubts. He never truly believed, who was not made first sensible and convinced of unbelief.
Never be afraid to doubt, if only you have the disposition to believe, and doubt in order that you may end in believing the Truth. I will venture to add in my own name and from my own conviction the following:
63. He, who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.
64. The Absence of Disputes, and a General Aversion to Religious Controversies, no Proof of True Unanimity. The boasted Peaceableness about questions of Faith too often proceeds from a superficial Temper, and not seldom from a supercilious Disdain of whatever has no marketable use or value, and from indifference to Religion itself. Toleration is a herb of spontaneous growth in the soil of Indifference; but the Weed has none of the virtues of the medicinal Plant, reared by Humility in the Garden of Zeal. Those who regard Religions as matters of Taste, may consistently include all religious differences in the old Adage, De gustibus non best disputandum [There is no disputing about tastes]. And many there be among those of Gallio’s temper, who care for none of these things, and who account all questions in religion, as he did, but matter of words and names. And by this all religions grow together. But that were not a natural union produced by the active heat of the spirit, not a knitting together, but a freezing together….
Much of our common union of minds, I fear, proceeds from no other than the afore-mentioned causes, want of knowledge, and want of affection to religion. You that boast you live conformably to the appointments of the Church, and that no one hears of your noise, we may thank the ignorance of your minds for that kind of quietness.
The preceding extract is particularly entitled to our serious reflections, as in a tenfold degree more applicable to the present times than to the age in which it was written. We all know, that Lovers are apt to take offence and wrangle on occasions that perhaps are but trifles, and which assuredly would appear such to those who regard Love itself as a Folly. These Quarrels may, indeed, be no proof of Wisdom; but still, in the imperfect state or our Nature, the entire absence of the same, and this too on far more serious provocations, would excite a strong suspicion of a comparative indifference in the Parties who can love so coolly where they profess to love so well. I shall believe our present religious Tolerance to proceed from the abundance of our charity and good sense, when I see proofs we are equally cool and forbearing as Litigants and Political Partizans.
65. The influence of Worldly Views (or what are called a Man’s Prospects in Life), the Bane of Christian Ministry. It is a base, poor thing for a man to seek himself; far below that royal dignity that is here put upon Christians, and that priesthood joined with it. Under the Law, those who were squint-eyed were incapable of the priesthood; truly this squinting toward our own interest, the looking aside to that, in God’s affairs especially, so deforms the face of the soul, that it makes altogether unworthy the honour of the spiritual priesthood. Oh! this is a large task, an infinite task. The several creatures bear their part int this; the sun says somewhat, and moon and stars, yea, the lowest have some share in it; the very plants and herbs of the field speak of God; and yet, the very highest and best, yea of all of them together, the whole concert of Heaven, and earth, cannot show forth all His praise to the full. No, it is but a part, the smallest part of that glory, which they can match.
66. Despise None: Despair of None. The Jews would not willingly tread upon the smallest piece of paper in their way, but took it up; for possibly, said they, the name of God may be on it. Though there was a little superstition in this, yet truly there is nothing but good religion in it, if we apply it to men. Trample not on any; there may be some work of grace there, that thou knowest not of. The name of God way be written upon that soul thou treadest on; it may be a soul that Christ thought so much of, as to give His precious blood for it; therefore despise it not.
67. Men of Least Merit most Apt to be Contemptuous, because most Ignorant and most Overweening of Themselves. Too many take the ready course to deceive themselves; for they look with both eyes on the failings and defects of others, and scarcely give their good qualities half an eye, while on the contrary, in themselves, they study to the full their own advantages, and their weaknesses and defects (as one says) they skip over, as children do their hard words in their lesson, that are troublesome to read; and making this uneven parallel, what wonder if the result be a gross mistake of themselves.
68. Vanity may Strut in Rags, and Humility be Arrayed in Purple and Fine Linen. It is not impossible that there may be in some an affected pride in the meanness of apparel, and in others, under either neat or rich attire, a very humble unaffected mind; using it upon some of the afore mentioned engagements, or such like, and yet, the heart not at all upon it. Magnus qui fictilibus utitur tanquam argento, nec ille minor qui argento tanquam fictilibus, says Seneca: Great is he who enjoys his earthenware as if it were plate, and not less great is the man to whom all his plate is no more than earthenware.
69. Of the Detraction among Religious Professors. They who have attained to a self-pleasing pitch of civility or formal religion, have usually that point of presumption with it, that they make their own size the model and rule to examine all by. What is below it, they condemn indeed as profane; but what is beyond it, they account needless and affected preciseness; and therefore are as ready as others to let fly invectives or bitter taunts against it, which are the keen and poisoned shafts of the tongue, and a persecution that shall be called to strict account.
The slanders, perchance, may not be altogether forged or untrue; they may be the implements, not the inventions, of Malice. But they do not on this account escape the guilt of Detraction. Rather, it is characteristic of the evil spirit in question, to work by the advantage of real faults, but those stretched and aggravated to the utmost; IT IS NOT EXPRESSIBLE HOW DEEP A WOUND A TONGUE SHARPENED TO THIS WORK WILL GIVE, WITH NO NOISE AND A VERY LITTLE WORD. This is the true white gunpowder, which the dreaming Projectors of silent Mischiefs and insensible Poisons sought for in the Laboratories of Art and Nature, in a World of Good; but which was to be found, in its most destructive form, in “ the World of Evil, the Tongue” [James 3:6]
[So what to do when faced with a point of view theologically one does not agree with? better to say nothing perhaps? but does silence demonstrate agreement? In a one to one discussion you can disagree politely and carefully or perhaps ask a clarificatory question. In a seminar you can ask a polite question. In a discussion with a larger group it is tricky…whatever is said needs to be said without malice or desire to hurt; one can affirm part of the argument and add to the conversation with a question which extends or turns a point in the direction you feel led to go…like a philosothon! In a proud pontificating or aggressive group where all are of like mind silence is probably better (not casting pearls before swine). Better to seek a one on one conversation in quietness. Coleridge’s advice is very pertinent when going into print or in a sermon where there is no immediate right of reply…the written word also needs to be polite and without intent to hurt and the preached word should simply stick to clear proclamation, not confusing a congregation with theological disputations..]
70. The Remedy. All true remedy must begin at the heart; otherwise it will be but a mountebank cure, a false imagined conquest. The weights and wheels are there, and the clock strikes according to their motion. Even he that speaks contrary to what is within him, guilefully contrary to his inward conviction and knowledge, yet speaks conformably to what is within him in the temper and frame of his heart, which is double, a heart and a heart, as the Psalmist hath it. Psalm 12:2. [Every one utters lies to his neighbour;
with flattering lips and a double heart they speak] (RSV)
71. It is an argument of a candid ingenious mind, to delight in the good name and commendation of others; to pass by their defects, and take notice of their virtues; and to speak and hear of those willingly, and not endure either to speak of or hear the other; for in this indeed you may be little less than guilty than the evil speaker, in taking pleasure in it, though you speak it not. He that willingly drinks in tales and calumnies, will from the delight he hath in evil hearing, slide insensibly into the humour of evil speaking. It is strange how most persons dispense with themselves in this point, and that in scarcely any societies shall we find hatred of this ill, but rather some tokens of taking pleasure in it; and until a Christian sets himself to an inward watchfulness over his heart, not suffering in it any thought that is uncharitable, or vain self-esteem upon the sight of others’ frailties, he will still be subject to somewhat of this, in the tongue or ear at least. So, then, as for the evil of guile in the tongue, a sincere heart, truth in the inward parts, powerfully redresses it; therefore it is expressed, Psalm 15:2, That speaketh the truth from his heart. O sweet truth! excellent but rare sincerity! he that loves the truth within, and who is himself at once THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE, He alone can work it there! Seek it of him.
It is characteristic of the Roman Dignity and Sobriety, that, in the Latin , to favour with the tongue (favere lingua) means to be silent. We say, Hold your tongue! as if it were an injunction, that could not be carried into effect but by manual force, or the pincers of the Forefinger and Thumb! And verily—I blush to say it—it is not Women and Frenchmen only that would rather have their tongues bitten than bitted, and feel their souls in a strait-waistcoat, when they are obliged to remain silent.
72. On the Passion for New and Striking Thoughts. In conversation seek not so much either to vent thy knowledge, or to increase it, as to know more spiritually and effectually what thou dost know. And in this way those mean despised truths, that every one thinks he is sufficiently seen in, will have a new sweetness and use in them, which thou didst not so well perceive before (for these flowers cannot be sucked dry), and in this humble sincere way thou shalt grow in grace and in knowledge too.
73. The Radical Difference between the Good Man and the Vicious Man. The godly man hates the evil he possibly by temptation hath been drawn to do, and loves the good he is frustrated of, and, having intended, hath not attained to do. The sinner, who hath his denomination from sin as his course, hates the good he is sometimes forced to, and loves that sin which many times he does not, either wanting occasion and means, so that he cannot do it, or through the check of an enlightened conscience possibly dares not do; and though so bound up from the act, as a dog in a chain, yet the habit, the natural inclination and desire in him, is still the same the strength of his affection, is carried to sin. So in the weakest sincere Christian, there is that predominant sincerity and desire of holy walking, according to which he is called a righteous person, the Lord is pleased to give that name, and account him so, being upright in heart, though often falling.
*[Coleridge here adds an extended excursion on the doctrine of imputed righteousness, that “controverted Doctrine, so warmly asserted and so bitterly decried”, held by Archbishop Leighton, “and on this account principally, that by many of our leading Churchmen his Orthodoxy has been more than questioned, and his name put in the list of proscribed Divines, as a Calvinist.”. Coleridge agrees that Leighton holds this view and Coleridge defends it on the grounds that “the general Spirit of his Writings leads me to presume that it was compatible with the eternal distinction between Things and Persons, and therefore opposed to modern Calvinism. But what it was, I have not (I own) been able to discover. The sense, however, in which I think he might have received this doctrine, and in which I avow myself a believer in it, I shall have an opportunity of showing in another place.” Coleridge proceeds at this stage of his argument to attack the “taking for granted, that the peculiar Tenets of the Christian Faith asserted in the Articles and Homilies of our National Church are in contradiction to the Common Sense of Mankind.”
Coleridge then proceeds to a defence of at least of the doctrine in so far as it is neither irrational or immoral on the grounds that it provides a basis of common human morality. “I here avow my conviction, that the doctrine of IMPUTED Righteousness, rightly and scripturally interpreted, is so far from being either irrational or immoral, that Reason itself prescribes the idea in order to give a meaning and an ultimate Object to Morality; and that the Moral Law in the Conscience demands its reception in order to give reality and substantive existence to the idea presented by Reason. ] I think he means that there is an imputed righteousness in the sense that God has planted a desire and thirst for Himself in every human heart (the “moral law in the heart”) which each person either admits to and seeks out or deliberately quells or ignores and pretends is not there.
My own view is as follows:
- “righteousness” (δικαιοσυνη) in the context of Romans 3, 4 and 8 is best translated “acquittal” or “covenant justice” or a “declaration of being in the right”. The term “righteousness” is also used elsewhere in the New Testament including by Paul, to describe a holy or God-centred way of living. The ideas are linked ..the “righteous life” commended in the New and Old Testament is indeed the “covenant justice” God has called us to.
- This declaration of aquittal in Romans 3, 4 and 8 is made by God to folk ‘while we were yet sinners”. i.e. God in Christ “justified/acquitted “the ungodly”. This is the “good news” (the Gospel).
- This acquittal is based on the faithfulness of Christ in becoming the “sin offering” (῾ιλαστηριον) for the sins of the world (including ours) on the Cross and defeating evil and death by his resurrection in the power of God. nb it is not our faith in Christ that brings about our acquittal, it is the faithfulness of Jesus in his death and resurrection.
- Those who have been called and chosen by God to live a new life in the Holy Spirit will be lead increasingly to “holiness” (῾αγισομος ) of living as they are, bit by bit, “sanctified” or brought to live more fully in the power of the Holy Spirit day by day.
- In spite of this deep experience of Christ’s love and forgiveness they still commit sinful acts but regularly and in sad and true remorse seek the continuing forgiveness and acceptance of God and renew their faithfulness through repentance, sacrament, prayer, fellowship, worship and carefully reflecting on God’s Word in the Scriptures.
(vi) Such folk have a huge, deep and pressing responsibility to be “little Christs” [Bonhoeffer] to everyone they meet and deal with. Those called and chosen by God to be his witnesses in the world share this heavy burden of completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. They need not be anxious about who is or is not “going to heaven when they die”…Salvation is God’s work. Their task is simple ..to proclaim joyfully and with passion the love and power of God for every person, in season and out of season and to work ceaselessly for the care and redemption of God’s good created order.
74.Your blessedness is not,—no, believe it, it is not where most of you seek it, in things below you. How can that be? It must be a higher good to make you happy.
74c Comment. Every rank of Creatures, as it ascends in the scale of Creation, leaves Death behind or under it. The Metal at its height of Being seems a mute prophecy of coming Vegetation, into a mimic semblance of which it crystallizes. The Blossom and Flower, the acme of Vegetable Life, divides into correspondent Organs with reciprocal functions, and by instinctive motions and approximations seems impatient of that fixture, by which it is differenced in kind from the water-shaped Psyche, that flutters with free wing above it. And wonderfully in the insect realm doth the Irritability, the proper seat of Instinct, while yet the nascent Sensibility is subordinated thereto—most wonderfully, I say, doth the the muscular Life in the Insect, and the musculo-arterial in the Bird, imitate and typically rehearse the adaptive Understanding, yea, and the moral affections and chartities of man. Let us carry ourselves back, in spirit, to the mysterious Week, the teeming Word-days of the Creator; as they rose in vision before the eye of the inspired Historian “of the generations of the Heaven and the Earth, in the days the Lord God made the Earth and the Heavens” [Gen.2:4]. And who that hath watched their ways with an understanding heart, could, as the vision evolving, still advanced towards him, contemplate the filial and loyal Bee; the home-building, wedded and divorceless Swallow; and above all the manifoldly intelligent Ant tribes, with their Commonwealths and Confederacies, their Warriors and Miners, the Husbandfolk, that fold in their tiny flocks on the honeyed Leaf, and the Virgin Sisters, with the holy Instincts of Maternal Love, detached and in selfless parity—and not say to himself, Behold the Shadow of approaching Humanity, the Sun rising from behind, in the kindling Morn of Creation! Thus all lower Natures find their highest Good in semblances and seekings of that which is higher and better. All things strive to ascend, and ascend in their striving. And shall Man alone stoop? Shall his pursuits and desires, the reflections of his inward life, be like the reflected Image of a Tree on the edge of a Pool, that grows downwards, and seeks a mock heaven in the unstable element beneath it, in neighbourhood with the slim water-weeds and oozy bottom-grass that are yet better than itself and more noble, in as far as Substances that appear as Shadows are preferable to Shadows mistaken for Substance! No! While you labour for any thing below your proper Humanity, you seek a happy Life in the region of Death. Well saith the Poet
Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how mean a thing is man! [Samuel Daniel: To the Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland ]
75. There is an imitation of men that is impious and wicked, which consists in taking a copy of their sins. Again, there is an imitation which though not so grossly evil, yet is poor and servile, being in mean things, yea, sometimes descending to imitate the very imperfections of others, as fancying some comeliness in them; as some of Basil’s scholars, who imitated his slow speaking, which he had a little in extreme, and could not help. But this is always laudable, and worthy of the best minds, to be imitators of that which is good, wheresoever they find it; for that stays not in any man’s person, as the ultimate pattern, but rises to the highest grace, being man’s nearest likeness to God, His image and resemblance, bearing his stamp and superscription, and belonging peculiarly to Him, in what hand soever it be found, as carrying the mark of no other owner than him.
76. Those who think themselves high-spirited, and will bear least, as they speak, are often, even by that, forced to bow most, or to burst under it; while humility and meekness escape many a burden, and many a blow, always keeping peace within, and often without too.
77. Our condition is universally exposed to fears and troubles, and no man is so stupid but he studies and projects for some fence against them, some bulwark to break the incursion of evils, and so to bring his mind to some ease, ridding it of the fear of them. Thus men seek safety in the greatness or multitude, or supposed faithfulness of friends; they seek by any means to be strongly underset this way; to have many, and powerful and trustworthy friends. But wiser men, perceiving the unsafety and vanity of these and all external things, have cast about for some higher course. They see a necessity of withdrawing a man from externals, which do nothing but mock and deceive those most who trust most to them; but they cannot tell whither to direct him. The best of them bring him into himself, and think to quiet him so; but the truth is, he finds as little to support him there; there is nothing really strong enough within him, to hold out against the many sorrows and fears which still from without do assault him. So then, though it is well done, to call off a man from outward things, as moving sands, that he build not on them, yet, this is not enough. for his own spirit is as unsettled a piece as is in all the world, and must have some higher strength than its own, to fortify and fix it. This is the way that is here taught [Isaiah 8:12,13 ..Do not call conspiracy all that this people call conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as holy; let him be your fear, and let him be your dread; 1 Peter 3:14,15…But even if you do suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord.] Fear not their fear, but sanctify the Lord your God in your hearts; and if you can attain this latter, the former will follow of itself. [ie don’t get too excited or downhearted by the idiocy and apparent triumph and victory of politicians, media pundits, comedians, philosophers, popular writers . No matter how bad the world seems God is greater and our calm trust in and faithfulness in Him is what is needed. Focus on the things that matter ..on His Word, on our faithfulness, on our relationships, on our work, on our walk with Christ and in His Spirit. on beauty, on good writing and thinking, on teachers of wisdom. Let the world and its fretfulness have its day…world leaders and media hacks come and go. God is forever and before and after. ]
78. Worldly troubles, idols. The too ardent Love or self-willed Desire of Power, or Wealth, or Credit in the World, is (an Apostle has assured us) Idolatry. Now among the words or synonyms for idols, in the Hebrew Language, [there are many words] that signify Troubles and Terrors. And so it is certainly. All our idols prove so to us. They fill us with nothing but anguished Troubles, with cares and fears, that are good for nothing but to be fit punishments of the Folly, out of which they arise.
79. On the Right Treatment of Infidels. A regardless contempt of infidel writings is usually the fittest answer; Speta vilescerent. (What is despicable should become vile). But where the holy profession of Christians is likely to receive either the main or the indirect blow, and a word of defence may do anything to ward it off, there we ought not to spare to do it.
Christian prudence goes a great way in the regulating of this. Some are not capable of receiving rational answers, especially in Divine things; they were not only lost upon them, but religion dishonoured by the contest.
Of this sort are the vulgar Railers at Religion [eg Richard Dawkins], the foul-mouthed Beliers of the Christian Faith and History. Impudently false and slanderous Assertions can be met only by Assertions of their impudent and slanderous falsehood; and Christians will not, must not condescend to this. How can mere Railing be answered by them who are forbidden to return a railing answer? Whether or on what provocations such offenders may be punished or coerced on the score of Incivility, and Ill-neighbourhood, and for abatement of a Nuisance, as is in the case of other Scolds and Endangers of the public Peace, must be trusted to the Discretion of the civil Magistrate. Even then, there is danger of giving them importance, and flattering their vanity, by attracting attention to their works, if the punishment be slight; and if severe, of spreading far and wide their reputation as Martyrs, as the smell of a dead dotage at a distance is said to change into that of Musk. Experience hitherto seems to favour the plan of treating these Betes puantes and Enfants de Diable, as their fourfooted brethren, the Skink [lizard] and Squash [racoon] are treated by the American Woodmen, who turn their backs upon the fetid Intruder, and make appear not to see him, even at the cost of suffering him to regale on the favourite viand of these animals, the brains of a stray goose or crested Thraso of the Dunghill. At all events it is degrading to the Majesty, and injurious to the character of Religion, to make its safety the plea for their punishment, or at all to connect the name of Christianity with the castigation of indecencies that properly belong to the Beadle, and the perpetrators of which would have equally deserved his Lash, though the religion of their fellow-citizens, thus assailed by them, had been that of Fo and Juggernaut.
On the other hand, we are to answer every one that inquires a reason, or an account; which supposes something receptive of it. We ought to judge ourselves engaged to give it, be it an enemy, if he will hear; if it gain him not, it may in part convince and cool him; much more, should it be one who ingenuously inquires for satisfaction, and possibly inclines to receive the truth, but has been prejudiced by false misrepresentation of it.
80. Passion no Friend to Truth. Truth needs not the service of passion; yea, nothing so disserves it, as passion when set to serve it. The Spirit of truth is withal the Spirit of meekness. The Dove that rested on the great Champion of truth, who is the Truth itself, is from Him derived to the lovers of truth, and they ought to seek the participation of it. Imprudence makes some kind of Christians lose much of their labour, in speaking for religion, and drive those further off, whom they would draw into it. “I have often thought it wisdom to decline disputes in religion when the cause of truth might suffer in the weakness of my patronage. Every man is not a proper champion for truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of verity.” [Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici]
The confidence that attends a Christian’s belief makes the believer not fear men, to whom he answers, but still he fears his God, for whom he answers, and whose interest is chief in those things he speaks of. The soul that hath the deepest sense of spiritual things, and the truest knowledge of God, is most afraid to miscarry in speaking of Him, most tender and wary how to acquit himself when engaged to speak of and for God. [Coleridge here appends a footnote: ] To the same purpose are the two following sentences from Hilary: Etiam quæ pro Religione dicimus, cum grandi metu et disciplina dicere debemus . (“What we say on behalf of Religion, we ought to say with great awe and skill)”—Hilarius, De Trinitate, lib.7
Non relictus est hominum eloquiss de Dei rebus alius quam Dei sermo. (“No account has been left by the eloquence of men concerning the truths of God other than of God himself.”)—idem. The latter, however, must be taken with certain Qualifications and Exceptions; as when two or more Texts are in apparent contradiction, and it is required to state a Truth that comprehends and reconciles both, and which, of course, cannot be expressed in the words of either. Eg. the filial subordination (My Father is greater than I), in the equal Deity, (My Father and I are one).
81. On the Conscience: It is a fruitless verbal Debate, whether Conscience be a Faculty or a Habit. When all is examined, Conscience will be found to be no other than the mind of a man, under the notion of a particular reference to himself and his own actions.
Comment—81c. What Conscience is, and that it is the ground and antecedent of human or (self-)consciousness, and not any modification of the latter, I have shown at large in a Work announced for the Press, and described in the Chapter following. I have selected the preceding Extract aa an Exercise for Reflection; and because I think that in too closely following Thomas à Kempis, the Archbishop [Leighton] has strayed from his own judgment. The Definition, for instance, seems to say all, and in fact says nothing; for if I asked, How do you define the human mind? the answer must at least contain, if not consist of, the words, “a mind capable of Conscience”. For Conscience is no synonym of Consciousness, nor any mere expression of the same as modified by the particular Object. On the contrary, a Consciousness properly human (i.e. Self-consciousness), with the sense of moral responsibility, presupposes the Conscience, as its antecedent Condition and Ground. Lastly, the sentence , “It is a fruitless verbal Debate “ , is an assertion of the same complexion with the contemptuous Sneers at Verbal Criticism by the contemporaries of Bentley. In questions of Philosophy or Divinity, that have occupied the Learned and been the subject of many successive Controversies, for one instance of mere Logomachy [an argument about words] I could bring ten instances of Logodœdaly, or verbal Legerdemain, which have previously confirmed Prejudices, and withstood the advancement of Truth in consequence of the neglect of verbal debate, i.e. strict discussion of terms. In whatever sense, however, the term Conscience may be used, the following Aphorism is equally true and important. It is worth noticing , likewise, that Leighton himself in a following page (vol ii.p.97) tells us that A good Conscience is the Root of a good Conversation; and then quotes from St Paul a text. Titus 1:15, in which the Mind and the Conscience are expressly distinguished. [To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure, their very minds and consciences are corrupted. ]
82. The Light of Knowledge a necessary Accompaniment of a Good Conscience. If you would have a good conscience, You must by all means have so much light, so much knowledge of the will of God, as may regulate you, and show you your way, may teach you how to do, and speak, and think as in His presence.
83. Yet the knowledge of the Rule, though accompanied by an Endeavour to accommodate our conduct to this Rule, will not of itself form a good Conscience. To set the outward actions right, though with an honest intention, and not so to regard and find out the inward disorder of the heart, whence that in the action flows, is but to be still putting the index of a clock right with your finger, while it is foul, or out of order within, which is a continual business, and does no good. Oh! but a purified conscience, a soul renewed and refined in its temper and affections, will make things go right without, in all the duties and acts of our calling.
84. The Depth of the Conscience. How deeply seated the conscience is in the human Soul is seen in the effect which sudden Calamities produce on guilty men, even when unaided by any determinate notion or fears of punishment after death. t/he wretched Criminal, as one rudely awakened from a long sleep, bewildered with a new light, and half recollecting, half striving to recollect, a fearful something, he knows not what, but which he will recognize as soon as he hears the name, already interprets the calamities into judgments, Executions of a Sentence passed by an invisible Judge; as if the Pyre of the Last Judgment were already kindled in an unknown Distance, and some Flashes of it, darting forth at intervals beyond the rest, were flying and lighting upon the fact of his Soul. The calamity may consist in loss of Fortune, or Character, or Reputation; but you hear no regrets from him. Remorse extinguishes all Regret; and Remorse is the implicit Creed of the Guilty.
85. [In this very long aphorism Coleridge demonstrates his commitment to the ancient classical notion of the ‘great chain of being’ which ties all things on earth into a deep seated ordained relationship. This idea began to run out of steam in the C18th and is no longer held in any organic sense although it has tended to reappear in C20th evolutionary theories of progress. See Michael Ruse:Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology. Nevertheless Coleridge’s idea that every person is capable of communion with God and capable of being indwelt by God’s Spirit is indeed a Biblical truth…Jeremiah 29:12-14 : You will seek me and you will find me if you seek me with all your heart… and Augustine: Confessions ..You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until we find ourselves in You] .
God hath suited every creature He hath made with a convenient good to which it tends, and in the obtainment of which it rests and is satisfied. Natural bodies have all their own place, whether, if not hindered, they move incessantly till they be in it; and they declare, by resting there, they they are (as I may say) where they would be. Sensitive creatures are carried to seek a sensitive good, as agreeable to their rank in being, and attaining that, and no further. Now, in this is the excellency of Man, that he is made capable of a communion with his Maker, and, because capable of it, is unsatisfied without it: the soul, being cut out (so to speak) to that largeness, cannot be filled with less. Though he is fallen from his right to that good, and from all right desire of it, yet, not from a capacity of it, no, nor from a necessity of it, for the answering and filling of his capacity.
Though the heart once gone from God turns continually further away from Him, and moves not towards Him till it be renewed, yet, even in that wandering, it retains the natural relation to God, as its centre, that it hath no true rest elsewhere, nor can by any means find it. It is made for Him, and is therefore still restless till it meet with Him.
It is true, the natural man takes much pain to quiet his heart by other things and digests many vexations with hopes of contentment in the end and accomplishment of some design he hath; but still the heart misgives. Many times he attains not the thing he seeks; but if he do, yet he never attains the satisfaction he seeks and expects in it, but only learns from that to desire something further, and still hunts on under a fancy, drives his own shadow before him, and never overtakes it; and if he did, yet it is but a shadow. [cf Psalm 39:6 Surely every man stands as a mere shadow.] And so, in running from God, besides the sad end, he carries an interwoven punishment with his sin, the natural disquiet and vexation of his spirit, fluttering to and fro, and finding no rest for the sole of his foot; the waters of inconstancy and vanity covering the whole face of the earth.
These things are too gross and heavy. The soul, the immortal soul, descended from heaven, must either be more happy, or remain miserable. The Highest, the Increated Spirit, is the proper good, the Father of Spirits, that pure and full good which raises the soul above itself; whereas all other things draw it down below itself. So, then, it is never well with the soul but when it is near unto God, yea, in its union with Him, married to Him; mismatching itself elsewhere, it hath never anything but shame and sorrow. All that forsake Thee shall be ashamed, says the Prophet, Jeremiah 17:13; and the Psalmist, They that are far off from thee shall perish. Psalm 73:27. And this is indeed our natural miserable condition, and it is often expressed this way, by strangeness and distance from God.
The same sentiments are found in the works of the Pagan philosophers and Moralists. Well then may they be made a Subject of Reflection in our days. And well may the pious Deist, is such a character now exists, reflect that Christianity alone both teaches the way, and provides the means, of fulfilling the obscure promises of this great instinct for all men, which the Philosophy of boldest Pretensions confined to the sacred few.
86. A Contracted Sphere, or what is called Retiring from the business of the World, no security from the Spirit of the World. The heart may be engaged in a little business, as much, if thou watch it not, as in many and great affairs. A may drown in a little brook or pool, as well as in a great river, if he be down and plunge himself into it,and put his head under the water. Some care thou must have, that thou mayst not care. Those things that are thorns indeed, thou must make a hedge of them, to keep out those temptations that accompany sloth, and extreme want that waits on it; but let them be the hedge; suffer them not to grow in the garden.
87. On Church-going, as a part of Religious Morality, when not in reference to a Spiritual Religion. It is a strange folly in multitudes of us, to set ourselves no mark, to propound no end in the hearing of the Gospel. The merchant sails not merely that he may sail, but for traffic and traffics that he may be rich. The husbandman plows not merely to keep himself busy, with no further end, but plows that he may reap with advantage. And shall we do the most excellent and fruitful work fruitlessly—hear only to hear, and look no further? This is indeed a great vanity, and a great misery, to lose that labour, and gain nothing by it, which, duly used, would be of all others, most advantageous and gainful: and yet all meetings are full of this. *Coleridge adds a footnote to this aphorism quoting the Puritan Richard Baxter: Baxter censures carelessness in this respect also, on the part of the hearers, and adds, “How then are those ministers that are serious in their work? Do we, as Paul, tell them weeping of their fleshly and earthly disposition, and teach them publicly from house to house at all seasons and with many tears: do we entreat them as for their soul’s salvation? Or rather do we not study to gain the approbation of critical hearers, as if a minister’s business were of no more weight than to tell a smooth tale for an hour, and look no more after the people till the next sermon? In a word, our want of seriousness about the things of heaven charms the souls of men into formality, and brings them to this customary careless hearing, which undoes them. May the Lord pardon the great sin of the ministry in this thing, and in particular my own.” Saints Rest chapter 7.
88. On the Hopes and Self-satisfaction of a Religious Moralist, Independent of a Spiritual Faith—On what are they grounded? There have been great disputes one way or another, about the merit of good works; but I truly think they who have laboriously engaged in them have been very idly, though very eagerly, employed about nothing, since the more sober of the schoolmen themselves acknowledge there can be no such thing as meriting from the blessed God, in the human, or, to speak more accurately, in any created nature whatsoever: nay, so far from any possibility of merit, there can be no room for reward any otherwise than of sovereign pleasure and gracious kindness of God. [Luke 17:10 So you also, when you have done all that is commanded you say, ‘We are unworthy servants, we have only done what was our duty.’ Matthew 25:30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness, there men will weep and gnash their teeth]; and the more ancient writers, when they use the word merit, mean nothing by it but a certain correlate to that reward which God both promises and bestows of mere grace and benignity. Otherwise, in order to constitute what is called merit, many things must concur, which no man in his senses will presume to attribute to human works, though ever so excellent; particularly, that the thing donfmuc not previously be a matter of debt, and that it be entire, or our own act, unassisted by foreign aid; it must also be perfectly good, and it must bear an adequate proportion to the reward claimed in consequence of it. If all these things do not concur, the act cannot possibly amount to merit. Whereas I think no one will venture to assert, that any one of these can take place in any human action whatever.
But why should I enlarge here, when one single circumstance overthrows all those titles; the most righteous of mankind would not be able to stand, if his works were weighed in the balance of strict justice; [Psalm 130:3 If Thou O LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? Psalm 143:2 Enter not into judgment with thy servant; for no man living is righteous before thee. 1 John 1:8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us]; how much less then could they deserve that immense glory which is now in question! Nor is this to be denied only concerning the unbeliever and the sinner, but concerning the righteous and pious believer, who is not only free from all the guilt of his former impenitence and rebellion, but endowed with the gift of the Spirit. “For the time is come that judgment must begin ad the house of God; and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?—(1 Peter 4:17,18 For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? And “if the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the impious and sinner appear). The Apostle’s interrogation expresses the most vehement negation, and signifies that no mortal, in whatever degree he is placed, if he be called to strict examination of Divine Justice, without daily and repeated forgiveness, could be able to keep his standing, and much less could he arise to that glorious height. That merit, says Bernard, ‘on which my hope relies, consists in these three things: the love of adoption, the truth of the promise, and the power of its performance’. This is the threefold cord which cannot be broken. [Ecclesiastes 4:12b A threefold cord is not easily broken.]
88c. Often have I heard it said by advocates for the Socinian scheme [ Italian Reformation era ideas that challenged trinitarian theology and moved towards the later Unitarian view of the abiding goodness of human nature.] —True! we are all sinners; but even in the Old Testament God has promised Forgiveness on Repentance. One of the Fathers ( I forget which) supplies the Retort—True! God has promised pardon on Penitence: but has he promised Penitence on Sin? —He that repenteth shall be forgiven: but where is it said, He that sinneth shall repent? [2 Timothy 2:b God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth. Hebrews 12:16,17 that no one be immoral or irreligious like Esau, who sold his birthright for a meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.] But Repentance, perhaps the Repentance required in Scripture, the Passing into a new mind, into a new and contrary Principle of Action, this METANOIA [μετανοια, The New Testament word which we render by Repentance, compounded of μετα, τρανς and νους, mens [the mind], the Spirit, or Practical Reason,] is in the Sinner’s own power? at his own liking? He has but to open his eyes to the sin, and the Tears are close at hand to wash it away!—Verily, the exploded tenet of Transubstantiation, is scarcely at greater variance with the common Sense of and Experience of Mankind, or borders more closely on on a contradiction in terms, than this volunteer transmentation, this Self-change, as the easy* means of Self-salvation! But the reflections of our evangelical Author on this subject will appropriately commence the Aphorisms relating to Spiritual Religion.
* May I, without offence, be permitted to record the very appropriate title, with which a stern Humorist lettered a collection of Unitarian tracts? Salvation made easy; or, Every man his own Redeemer.
Why do we have to go to New Zealand? It’s so comfortable here on Phillip Island!
We moved on to the small town of Otaki. Why I hear you ask? Because in Otaki is J R Mowbrays Collectables Ltd, NZ’s and one of the world’s largest philatelic dealers. I have been bidding online in their auctions for many years and it was a delight to meet John Mowbray himself and his staff and see the whole very large set up in action.
A terrible sight but nothing compared with the trauma of the death of 185 people and the complete destruction and disruption of the business and transport centre of the city! Cathedrals can be rebuilt but the impact of seismic savagery will last for genderations in this city.
It is a city which seems to breathe the beauty and grandeur of New Zealand alongside its vulnerabilty and the warnings inside the various motel rooms we occupied were salutary. We arrived back in our motel room in time to catch the exceptionally tense last quarter of the AFL Grand Final between Collilngwood and West Coast and had to commiserate with the many Magpie supporters in our extended family. I have to say for Aussies one of the amazing things about NZ newspapers is the complete absence of any reference at all to AFL issues.
This is my third attempt to read and feel positive about the poetry of Sylvia Plath. Ariel contains many accessible poems as well as a good collection of quite difficult material. As a young person Plath’s pre-occupations with death, horror, illness, Nazism and hurt overwhelmed me and made me angry. Now in later life I still see these themes but they are interspersed with intense beauty and thoughtfulness..the power of moonlight, the brightness of a little child, the uncertainty about whether the bees should be kept or let freed, golden apples, I am so stupidly happy and much more
Walt Whitman
Samuel Butler was the son and grandson of Anglican clerics and this semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of Earnest Pontifex, child of a strict clerical father and grandfather who rebels against this family tradition at some cost to himself. After graduating impressively from Cambridge Butler broke completely with his family and left England for New Zealand successfully running a sheep station for five years. Surprisingly successful Butler returned to England independently wealthy and spent his life alternating between painting, extensive travelling in Europe with various close male friends and writing novels, literary and artistic criticism, criticism of traditional Anglican theology and works critical of Darwinian evolution.
Translator John Butt tells us that French philosopher and wit Voltaire wrote Candide at the peak of his career whilst living in Ferney in eastern France near the border with Switzerland , having been twice imprisoned and found unwelcome in Paris. In Ferney, he also wrote his dialogues, various short tales and his Philosophic Dictionary. Voltaire eventually returned in triumph to Paris in 1788 not long before his death.
Theological, Cultural and Educational Reflections 