The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 3

Ib. p. 6.

If the sequel of the paragraph, comparing God to David in one of his worst actions, be not blasphemy, the reason is that the good man meant it not as such. In facto est, sed non in agents.

Ib. ss. xvi. xvii. pp. 8, 9.

For the further explication of which it is observable that the word 'sinner' and 'sin' in Scripture is used for any person, that hath a fault or a legal impurky, a debt, a vitiosity, defect, or imposition, &c.

These facts, instead of explaining away Original Sin, are unintelligible, nay, absurd and immoral, except as shadows, types, and symbols of it, and of the Redemption from it. Observe, too, that Taylor never dares explain what he means by "Adam was mortal of himself and we are mortal from him:" he did not dare affirm that soul and body are alike material and perishable, even as the lute and the potentiality of music in the lute. And yet if he believed the contrary, then, in his construction of the doctrine of Original Sin, what has Christ done? St. John died in the same sense as Abel died: and in the sense of the Church of England neither died, but only slept in the Lord.

This same system forced Taylor into the same error which Warburton afterwards dressed up with such trappings and trammels of erudition, in direct contempt of the plain meaning of the Church's article; and he takes it for granted, in many places, that the Jews under Moses knew only of temporal life and the death of the body. Lastly, he greatly degrades the mind of man by causelessly representing death as an evil in itself, which, if it be considered as a crisis, or phenomenal change, incident to a progressive being, ought as little to be thought so, as the casting of the caterpillar's skin to make room for the wings of the butterfly. It is the unveiling of the Psyche.

I do not affirm this as an article of Christian faith; but I say that no candid writer ought to hide himself in double meanings. Either he should have used the term 'death' (ex Adamo) as loss of body, or as change of mode of being and of its circumstances; and again this latter as either evil for all, or as evil or good according to the moral habits of each individual.

Observe, however, once for all, that I do not pretend to account for Original Sin. I declare it to be an unaccountable fact. How can we explain a species, when we are wholly in the dark as to the genus? Now guilt itself, as well as all other immediate facts of free will, is absolutely inexplicable; of course original guilt. If we will perversely confound the intelligible with the sensible world, misapply the logic appropriate to phænomena and the categories, or forms, which are empty except as substantialized in facts of experience, in order to use them as the Procrustes' bed of faith respecting noumena: if in short, we will strive to understand that of which we can only know

we may and must make as wild work with reason, will, conscience, guilt, and virtue, as with Original Sin and Redemption. On every subject first ask, Is it among the

or the

?

Ib. s. xxiii. p. 12.

It could not make us heirs of damnation. This I shall the less need to insist upon, because, of itself, it seems so horrid to impute to the goodness and justice of God to be author of so great calamity to innocents, &c.

Never was there a more hazardous way of reasoning, or rather of placing human ignorance in the judgment seat over God's wisdom. The whole might be closely parodied in support of Atheism: rather, this is but a paraphrase of the old atheistic arguments. Either God could not, or would not, prevent the moral and physical evils of the universe, including the everlasting anguish of myriads of millions: therefore he is either not all-powerful or not all-good: but a being deficient in power or goodness is not God: – Ergo, &c.

Ib. s. xxv. p. 13.

I deny not but all persons naturally are so, that they cannot arrive at heaven; but unless some other principle be put into them, or some great grace done for them, must for ever stand separate from seeing the face of God.

But this is but accidentally occasioned by the sin of Adam. Just so might I say, that without the great grace of air done for them no living beings could live. If it mean more, pray where was the grace in creating a being, who without an especial grace must pass into utter misery? If Taylor reply; but the grace was added in Christ: why so say the Calvinists. According to Taylor there is no fall of man; but only an act and punishment of a man, which punishment consisted in his living in the kitchen garden, instead of the flower garden and orchard: and Cain was as likely to have murdered Abel before, as after, the eating of the forbidden fruit. But the very name of the fruit confutes Taylor. Adam altered his nature by it. Cain did not. What Adam did, I doubt not, we all do. Time is not with things of spirit.

Ib. s. xxvii. p. 14.

Is hell so easy a pain, or are the souls of children of so cheap, so contemptible a price, that God should so easily throw them into hell?

This is an argument against the sine qua non of Baptism, not against Original Sin.

Ib. s. lxvii. p. 49.

Origen said enough to be mistaken in the question.

'Adam's curse is common to all. And there is not a woman on earth, to whom may not be said those things which were spoken to this woman.'

Origen's words ought to have prevented all mistake, for he plainly enough overthrows the phantom of hereditary guilt; and as to guilt from a corruption of nature, it is just such guilt as the carnivorous appetites of a weaned lion, or the instinct of a brood of ducklings to run to water. What then is it? It is an evil, and therefore seated in the will; common to all men, the beginning of which no man can determine in himself or in others. How comes this? It is a mystery, as the will itself. Deeds are in time and space, therefore have a beginning. Pure action, that is, the will, is a noumenon, and irreferable to time. Thus Origen calls it neither hereditary nor original, but universal sin. The curse of Adam is common to all men, because what Adam did, we all do: and thus of Eve. You may substitute any woman in her place, and the same words apply. This is the true solution of this unfortunate question. The

is in the dividing the will from the acts of the will. The will is ego-agens.

Ib. s. lxxxii. p. 52.

This paragraph, though very characteristic of the Author, is fitter for a comedy than for a grave discourse. It puts one in mind of the play – "More sacks in the mill! Heap, boys, heap!"

Ib. s. lxxxiv. p. 56.

Præposterum est (said Paulus the lawyer) ante nos locupletes dici quam acquisiverimus. We cannot be said to lose what we never had; and our fathers' goods were not to descend upon us, unless they were his at his death.

Take away from me the knowledge that he was my father, dear Bishop, and this will be true. But as it stands, the whole is, "says Paulus the Lawyer;" and, "Well said, Lawyer!" say I.

Ib. p. 57.

Which though it was natural, yet from Adam it began to be a curse; just as the motion of a serpent upon his belly, which was concreated with him, yet upon this story was changed into a malediction and an evil adjunct.

How? I should really like to understand this.

Ib. ch. vii. p. 73 in initio.

In this most eloquent treatise we may detect sundry logical lapses, sometimes in the statement, sometimes in the instances, and once or twice in the conclusions. But the main and pervading error lies in the treatment of the subject in genere by the forms and rules of conceptual logic; which deriving all its material from the senses, and borrowing its forms from the sense

or intuitive faculty, is necessarily inapplicable to spiritual mysteries, the very definition or contra-distinguishing character of which is that they transcend the sense, and therefore the understanding, the faculty, as Archbishop Leighton and Immanuel Kant excellently define it, which judges according to sense. In the Aids to Reflection,67 I have shewn that the proper function of the understanding or mediate faculty is to collect individual or sensible concretes into kinds and sorts (genera et species) by means of their common characters (notæ communes); and to fix and distinguish these conceptions (that is, generalized perceptions) by words. Words are the only immediate objects of the understanding. Spiritual verities, or truths of reason respective ad realia, and herein distinguished from the merely formal, or so called universal truths, are differenced from the conceptions of the understanding by the immediatcy of the knowledge, and from the immediate truths of sense, – that is, from both pure and mixed intuitions, – by not being sensible, that is, not representable by figure, measurement or weight; nor connected with any affection of our sensibility, such as color, taste, odors, and the like. And such knowledges we, when we speak correctly, name ideas.

Now Original Sin, that is, sin that has its origin in itself, or in the will of the sinner, but yet in a state or condition of the will not peculiar to the individual agent, but common to the human race, is an idea: and one diagnostic or contra-distinguishing mark appertaining to all ideas, is, that they are not adequately expressible by words. An idea can only be expressed (more correctly suggested) by two contradictory positions; as for example; the soul is all in every part; – nature is a sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, and its circumference no where, and the like.

Hence many of Bishop Taylor's objections, grounded on his expositions of the doctrine, prove nothing more than that the doctrine concerns an idea. But besides this, Taylor everywhere assumes the consequences of Original Sin as superinduced on a pre-existing nature, in no essential respect differing from our present nature; – for instance, on a material body, with its inherent appetites and its passivity to material agents; – in short, on an animal nature in man. But this very nature, as the antagonist of the spirit or supernatural principle in man, is in fact the Original Sin, – the product of the will indivisible from the act producing it; just as in pure geometry the mental construction is indivisible from the constructive act of the intuitive faculty. Original Sin, as the product, is a fact concerning which we know by the light of the idea itself, that it must originate in a self-determination of a will. That which we do not know is how it originates, and this we cannot explain; first, from the necessity of the subject, namely, the will; and secondly, because it is an idea, and all ideas are inconceivable. It is an idea, because it is not a conception.

Ib. s. ii. p. 74, 75.

And they are injurious to Christ, who think that from Adam we might have inherited immortality. Christ was the giver and preacher of it; he brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. It is a singular benefit given by God to mankind through Jesus Christ.

And none inherit it but those who are born of Christ; ergo, bad men and infidels are not immortal. Immortality is one thing, a happy immortality another. St. Paul meant the latter: Taylor either the former, or his words have no meaning at all; for no man ever thought or dreamed that we inherited heaven from Adam, but that as sons of Adam, that is, as men, we have souls that do not perish with the body. I often suspect that Taylor, in abditis fidei

inclined to the belief that there is no other immortality but heaven, and that hell is a pæna damni negativa, haud privativa. I own myself strongly inclined to it; – but so many texts against it! I am confident that the doctrine would be a far stronger motive than the present; for no man will believe eternal misery of himself, but millions would admit, that if they did not amend their lives they would be undeserving of living for ever.

Ib. s. vi. p. 77.

"Lest the tumultuous crowd throw the reason within us over bridge into the gulf of sin." What a vivid figure! It is enough to make any man set to work to read Chrysostom.

Ib.

– – peccantes mente sub una.

Note Prudentius's use of mente sub una for 'in one person.'

Ib. p. 78.

For even now we see, by a sad experience, that the afflicted and the miserable are not only apt to anger and envy, but have many more desires and more weaknesses, and consequently more aptnesses to sin in many instances than those who are less troubled. And this is that which was said by Arnobius; proni ad culpas, et ad libidinis varios appetitos vitio sumus infirmitatis ingenitæ.

No. Arnobius never said so good and wise a thing in his lifetime. His quoted words have no such profound meaning.

Ib. s. vii. p. 78.

That which remained was a reasonable soul, fitted for the actions of life and reason, but not of anything that was supernatural.

What Taylor calls reason I call understanding, and give the name reason to that which Taylor would have called spirit.

Ib. s. xii. p. 84.

And all that evil which is upon us, being not by any positive infliction, but by privative, or the taking away gifts, and blessings, and graces from us, which God, not having promised to give, was neither naturally, nor by covenant, obliged to give, – it is certain he could not be obliged to continue that to the sons of a sinning father, which to an innocent father he was not obliged to give.

Oh! certainly not, if hell were not attached to acts and omissions, which without these very graces it is morally impossible for men to avoid. Why will not Taylor speak out?

Ib. s. xiv. p. 85.

The doctrine of the ancient Fathers was that free will remained in us after the Fall.

Yea! as the locomotive faculty in a man in a strait waistcoat. Neither St. Augustine nor Calvin denied the remanence of the will in the fallen spirit; but they, and Luther as well as they, objected to the flattering epithet 'free' will. In the only Scriptural sense, as concerning the unregenerate, it is implied in the word will, and in this sense, therefore, it is superfluous and tautologic; and, in any other sense, it is the fruit and final end of Redemption, – the glorious liberty of the Gospel.

Ib. s. xvi. p. 92.

For my part I believe this only as certain, that nature alone cannot bring them to heaven, and that Adam left us in a state in which we could not hope for it.

This is likewise my belief, and that man must have had a Christ, even if Adam had continued in Paradise – if indeed the history of Adam be not a mythos; as, but for passages in St. Paul, we should most of us believe; the serpent speaking, the names of the trees, and so on; and the whole account of the creation in the first chapter of Genesis seems to me clearly to say: – "The literal fact you could not comprehend if it were related to you; but you may conceive of it as if it had taken place thus and thus."

Ib. s. 1. p. 166.

That in some things our nature is cross to the divine commandment, is not always imputable to us, because our natures were before the commandment.

This is what I most complain of in Jeremy Taylor's ethics; namely, that he constantly refers us to the deeds or phenomena in time, the effluents from the source, or like the species of Epicurus; while the corrupt nature is declared guiltless and irresponsible; and this too on the pretext that it was prior in time to the commandment, and therefore not against it. But time is no more predicable of eternal reason than of will; but not of will; for if a will be at all, it must be ens spirituale; and this is the first negative definition of spiritual – whatever having true being is not contemplable in the forms of time and space. Now the necessary consequence of Taylor's scheme is a conscience-worrying, casuistical, monkish work-holiness. Deeply do I feel the difficulty and danger that besets the opposite scheme; and never would I preach it, except under such provisos as would render it perfectly compatible with the positions previously established by Taylor in this chapter, s. xliv. p. 158. 'Lastly; the regenerate not only hath received the Spirit of God, but is wholly led by him,' &c.

Ib.

If this Treatise of Repentance contain Bishop Taylor's habitual and final convictions, I am persuaded that in some form or other he believed in a Purgatory. In fact, dreams and apparitions may have been the pretexts, and the immense addition of power and wealth which the belief entailed on the priesthood, may have been their motives for patronizing it; but the efficient cause of its reception by the churches is to be found in the preceding Judaic legality and monk-moral of the Church, according to which the fewer only could hope for the peace of heaven as their next immediate state. The holiness that sufficed for this would evince itself (it was believed) by the power of working miracles.

Ib. s. lii. p. 208.

It shall not be pardoned in this world nor in the world to come; that is, neither to the Jews nor to the Gentiles. For sæculum hoc, this world, in Scripture, is the period of the Jews' synagogue, and

the world to come, is taken for the Gospel, or the age of the Messias, frequently among the Jews.

This is, I think, a great and grievous mistake. The Rabbis of best name divide into two or three periods, the difference being wholly in the words; for the dividers by three meant the same as those by two.

The first was the dies expectationis, or hoc sæculum,

: the second dies Messiæ, the time of the Messiah, that is, the millenium: the third the sæculum futurum, or future state, which last was absolutely spiritual and celestial.

But many Rabbis made the dies Messiæ part, that is, the consummation of this world, the conclusive Sabbath of the great week, in which they supposed the duration of the earth or world of the senses to be comprised; but all agreed that the dies, or thousand years, of the Messiah was a transitional state, during which the elect were gradually defecated of body, and ripened for the final or spiritual state.

During the millenium the will of God will be done on earth, no less, though in a lower glory, than it will be done hereafter in heaven.

Now it is to be carefully observed that the Jewish doctors or Rabbis (all such at least as remained unconverted) had no conception or belief of a suffering Messiah, or of a period after the birth of the Messiah, previous to the kingdom, and of course included in the time of expectation.

The appearance of the Messiah and his assumption of the throne of David were to be contemporaneous. The Christian doctrine of a suffering Messiah, or of Christ as the high priest and intercessor, has of course introduced a modification of the Jewish scheme.

But though there is a seeming discrepance in different texts in the first three Gospels, yet the Lord's Prayer appears to determine the question in favour of the elder and present Rabbinical belief; that is, it does not date the dies Messiae, or kingdom of the Lord, from his Incarnation, but from a second coming in power and glory, and hence we are taught to pray for it as an event yet future.

Nay, our Lord himself repeatedly speaks of the Son of Man in the third person, as yet to come. Assuredly our Lord ascended the throne and became a King on his final departure from his disciples. But it was the throne of his Father, and he an invisible King, the sovereign Providence to whom all power was committed.

And this celestial kingdom cannot be identified with that under which the divine will will be done on earth as it is in heaven; that is, when on this earth the Church militant shall be one in holiness with the triumphant Church.

The difficulties, I confess, are great; and for those who believe the first Gospel (and this in its present state) to have been composed by the Apostle Matthew, or at worst to be a literal and faithful translation from a Hebrew (Syro-Chaldaic) Gospel written by him, and who furthermore contend for its having been word by word dictated by an infallible Spirit, the necessary duty of reconciling the different passages in the first Gospel with each other, and with others in St. Luke's, is, me saltern judice, a most Herculean one.

The most consistent and rational scheme is, I am persuaded, that which is adopted in the Apocalypse. The new creation, commencing with our Lord's resurrection, and measured as the creation of this world (hujus sæculi,

) was by the doctors of the Jewish church – namely, as a week – divided into two principal epochs, – the six sevenths or working days, during which the Gospel was gradually to be preached in all the world, and the number of the elect filled up, – and the seventh, the Sabbath of the Messiah, or the kingdom of Christ on earth in a new Jerusalem.

But as the Jewish doctors made the day (or one thousand years) of Messiah, a part, because the consummation, of this world,

so the first Christians reversely made the kingdom commence on the first (symbolical) day of the sacred week, the last or seventh day of which was to be the complete and glorious manifestation of this kingdom. If any one contends that the kingdom of the Son of Man, and the re-descent of our Lord with his angels in the clouds, are to be interpreted spiritually,

I have no objection; only you cannot pretend that this was the interpretation of the disciples. It may be the right, but it was not the Apostolic belief.

Ib. s. 1. p. 257.

For this was giving them pardon, by virtue of those words of Christ, Whose sins ye remit, they are remitted; that is, if ye, who are the stewards of my family, shall admit any one to the kingdom of Christ on earth, they shall be admitted to the participation of Christ's kingdom in heaven; and what ye bind here shall be bound there; that is, if they be unworthy to partake of Christ here, they shall be accounted unworthy to partake of Christ hereafter.

Then without such a gift of reading the hearts of men, as priests do not now pretend to, this text means almost nothing. A wicked shall not, but a good man shall, be admitted to heaven; for if you have with good reason rejected any one here, I will reject him hereafter, amounts to no more than the rejection or admission of men according to their moral fitness or unfitness, the truth or unsoundness of their faith and repentance. I rather think that the promise, like the miraculous insight which it implies, was given to the Apostles and first disciples exclusively, and that it referred almost wholly to the admission of professed converts to the Church of Christ.