The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 3

B. iii. c. iii. 1. p. 447.

The mixture of those things by speech, which by nature are divided, is the mother of all error.

'The division in thought of those things which in nature are distinct, yet one, that is, distinguished without breach of unity, is the mother,' – so I should have framed the position. Will, reason, life, – ideas in relation to the mind, are instances; entiæ indivise interdistinctæ; and the main arguments of the atheists, materialists, deniers of our Lord's divinity and the like, all rest on the asserting of division as a necessary consequence of distinction.

B. v. c. xix. 3. vol. ii. p. 87.

Of both translations the better I willingly acknowledge that which cometh nearer to the very letter of the original verity; yet so that the other may likewise safely enough be read, without any peril at all of gainsaying as much as the least jot or syllable of God's most sacred and precious truth.

Hooker had far better have rested on the impossibility and the uselessness, if possible, of a faultless translation; and admitting certain mistakes, and oversights, have recommended them for notice at the next revision; and then asked, what objection such harmless trifles could be to a Church that never pretended to infallibility! But in fact the age was not ripe enough even for a Hooker to feel, much less with safety to expose, the Protestants' idol, that is, their Bibliolatry.

Ib. c. xxii. 10. p. 125.

Their only proper and direct proof of the thing in question had been to shew, in what sort and how far man's salvation doth necessarily depend upon the knowledge of the word of God; what conditions, properties, and qualities there are, whereby sermons are distinguished from other kinds of administering the word unto that purpose; and what special property or quality that is, which being no where found but in sermons, maketh them effectual to save souls, and leaveth all other doctrinal means besides destitute of vital efficacy.

Doubtless, Hooker was a theological Talus, with a club of iron against, opponents with pasteboard helmets, and armed only with crabsticks! But yet, I too, too often find occasion to complain of him as abusing his superior strength. For in a good man it is an abuse of his intellectual superiority, not to use a portion of it in stating his Christian opponents' cause, his brethren's (though dissentient, and perhaps erring, yet still brethren's,) side of the question, not as they had stated and argued it, but as he himself with his higher gifts of logic and foresight could have set it forth. But Hooker flies off to the general, in which he is unassailable; and does not, as in candour he should have done, inquire whether the question would not admit of, nay, demand, a different answer, when applied solely or principally to the circumstances, the condition and the needs of the English parishes, and the population at large, at the particular time when the Puritan divines wrote, and he, Hooker, replied to them. Now let the cause be tried in this way, and I should not be afraid to attempt the proof of the paramount efficacy of preaching on the scheme, and in the line of argument laid down by himself in this section. In short, Hooker frequently finds it convenient to forget the homely proverb; 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating.' Whose parishes were the best disciplined, whose flocks the best fed, the soberest livers, and the most awakened and best informed Christians, those of the zealous preaching divines, or those of the prelatic clergy with their readers? In whose churches and parishes were all the other pastoral duties, catechizing, visiting the poor and the like, most strictly practised?

Ib. 11.

The people which have no way to come to the knowledge of God, no prophesying, no teaching, perish. But that they should of necessity perish, where any one way of knowledge lacketh, is more than the words of Solomon import.

But what was the fact? Were those congregations that had those readers of whom the Puritans were speaking – were they, I say, equally well acquainted with, and practically impressed by, the saving truths of the Gospel? Were they not rather perishing for lack of knowledge? To reply, – It was their own fault; they ought to have been more regular in their attendance at church, and more attentive, when there, to what was there read, – is to my mind too shocking, nay, antichristian.

Ib. 16. p.137.

Now all these things being well considered, it shall be no intricate matter for any man to judge with indifferency, on which part the good of the church is most conveniently sought; whether on ours, whose opinion is such as hath been shewed, or else on theirs, who leaving no ordinary way of salvation for them unto whom the word of God is but only read, do seldom name them but with great disdain and contempt, who execute that service in the church of Christ.

If so, they were much to be blamed. But surely this was not the case with the better and wiser part of those who, clinging to the tenets and feelings of the first Reformers, and honouring Archbishop Grindal as much as they dreaded his Arminian successors, were denominated Puritans! They limited their censures to exclusive reading, – to reading as the substitute for, and too often for the purpose of doing away with, preaching.

Ib. lxv. 8. p. 415.

Thus was the memory of that sign which they had in baptism a kind of bar or prevention to keep them even from apostasy, whereinto the frailty of flesh and blood, overmuch fearing to endure shame, might peradventure the more easily otherwise have drawn them.

I begin to fear that Hooker is not suited to my nature. I cannot bear round-abouts for the purpose of evading the short cut straight before my eyes. Exempli gratia; I find myself tempted in this place to ejaculate Psha! somewhat abruptly, and ask, 'How many in twenty millions of Christian men and women ever reverted to the make-believe impression of the Cross on their forehead in unconscious infancy, by the wetted tip of the clergyman's finger as a preservative against anger and resentment? 'The whole church of God!' Was it not the same church which, neglecting and concealing the Scriptures of God, introduced the adoration of the Cross, the worshipping of relics, holy water, and all the other countless mummeries of Popery? Something might be pretended for the material images of the Cross worn at the bosom or hung up in the bed-chamber. These may, and doubtless often do, serve as silent monitors; but this eye-falsehood or pretence of making a mark that is not made, is a gratuitous superstition, that cannot be practised without serious danger of leading the vulgar to regard it as a charm. Hooker should have asked – Has it hitherto had this effect on Christians generally? Is it likely to produce this effect and this principally? In common honesty he must have answered, No! – Do I then blame the Church of England for retaining this ceremony? By no means. I justify it as a wise and pious condescension to the inveterate habits of a people newly dragged, rather than drawn, out of Papistry; and as a pledge that the founders and fathers of the Reformation in England regarded innovation as per se an evil, and therefore requiring for its justification not only a cause, but a weighty cause. They did well and piously in deferring the removal of minor spots and stains to the time when the good effects of the more important reforms had begun to shew themselves in the minds and hearts of the laity. – But they do not act either wisely or charitably who would eulogize these maculæ as beauty-spots and vindicate as good what their predecessors only tolerated as the lesser evil.

12th Aug. 1826.

Ib. 15. p. 424.

For in actions of this kind we are more to respect what the greatest part of men is commonly prone to conceive, than what some few men's wits may devise in construction of their own particular meanings. Plain it is, that a false opinion of some personal divine excellency to be in those things which either nature or art hath framed causeth always religious adoration.

How strongly might this most judicious remark be turned against Hooker's own mode of vindicating this ceremony!

Ib. lxvi. 2. p. 432.

The Church had received from Christ a promise that such as have believed in him these signs and tokens should follow them.

'To cast out devils, to speak with tongues, to drive away serpents, to be free from the harm which any deadly poison could work, and to cure diseases by imposition of hands.' Mark xvi.

The man who verily and sincerely believes the narrative in St. John's Gospel of the feeding of five thousand persons with a few loaves and small fishes, and of the raising of Lazarus, in the plain and literal sense, cannot be reasonably suspected of rejecting, or doubting, any narrative concerning Christ and his Apostles, simply as miraculous. I trust, therefore, that no disbelief of, or prejudice against, miraculous events and powers will be attributed to me, as the ground or cause of my strong persuasion that the latter verses of the last chapter of St. Mark's Gospel were an additament of a later age, for which St. Luke's Acts of the Apostles misunderstood supplied the hints.

Ib. lxxii. 15 & 16. p.539.

If Richard Hooker had written only these two precious paragraphs, I should hold myself bound to thank the Father of lights and Giver of all good gifts for his existence and the preservation of his writings.

B. viii. c. ix. 2. vol. iii. p. 537.

As there could be in natural bodies no motion of anything, unless there were some which moveth all things, and continueth immoveable; even so in politic societies, there must be some unpunishable, or else no man shall suffer punishment.

It is most painful to connect the venerable, almost sacred, name of Richard Hooker with such a specimen of puerile sophistry, scarcely worthy of a court bishop's trencher chaplain in the slavering times of our Scotch Solomon. It is, however, of some value, some interest at least, as a striking example of the confusion of an idea with a conception. Every conception has its sole reality in its being referable to a thing or class of things, of which, or of the common characters of which, it is a reflection. An idea is a power, which constitutes its own reality, and is in order of thought necessarily antecedent to the things in which it is more or less adequately realized, while a conception is as necessarily posterior.

Sermon of the Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect

Vol. iii. p. 583.

The following truly admirable discourse is, I think, the concluding sermon of a series unhappily not preserved.

Ib. p.584.

If it were so in matters of faith, then, as all men have equal certainty of this, so no believer should be more scrupulous and doubtful than another. But we find the contrary. The angels and spirits of the righteous in heaven have certainty most evident of things spiritual: but this they have by the light of glory. That which we see by the light of grace, though it be indeed more certain; yet it is not to us so evidently certain, as that which sense or the light of nature will not suffer a man to doubt of.

Hooker's meaning is right; but he falls into a sad confusion of words, blending the thing and the relation of the mind to the thing. The fourth moon of Jupiter is certain in itself; but evident only to the astronomer with his telescope.

Ib. p. 585-588.

The other, which we call the certainty of adherence, is when the heart doth cleave and stick unto that which it doth believe. This certainty is greater in us than the other … (down to) the fourth question resteth, and so an end of this point.

These paragraphs should be written in gold. O! may these precious words be written on my heart!

1. That we all need to be redeemed, and that therefore we are all in captivity to an evil:

2. That there is a Redeemer:

3. That the redemption relatively to each individual captive is, if not effected under certain conditions, yet manifestable as far as is fitting for the soul by certain signs and consequents: – and

4. That these signs are in myself; that the conditions under which the redemption offered to all men is promised to the individual, are fulfilled in myself;

these are the four great points of faith, in which the humble Christian finds and feels a gradation from trembling hope to full assurance; yet the will, the act of trust, is the same in all. Might I not almost say, that it rather increases with the decrease of the consciously discerned evidence? To assert that I have the same assurance of mind that I am saved as that I need a Saviour, would be a contradiction to my own feelings, and yet I may have an equal, that is, an equivalent assurance. How is it possible that a sick man should have the same certainty of his convalescence as of his sickness? Yet he may be assured of it. So again, my faith in the skill and integrity of my physician may be complete, but the application of it to my own case may be troubled by the sense of my own imperfect obedience to his prescriptions. The sort of our beliefs and assurances is necessarily modified by their different subjects. It argues no want of saving faith on the whole, that I cannot have the same trust in myself as I have in my God. That Christ's righteousness can save me, – that Christ's righteousness alone can save – these are simple positions, all the terms of which are steady and copresent to my mind. But that I shall be so saved, – that of the many called I have been one of the chosen, – this is no mere conclusion of mind on known or assured premisses. I can remember no other discourse that sinks into and draws up comfort from the depths of our being below our own distinct consciousness, with the clearness and godly loving-kindness of this truly evangelical God-to-be-thanked-for sermon. But how large, how important a part of our spiritual life goes on like the circulation, absorptions, and secretions of our bodily life, unrepresented by any specific sensation, and yet the ground and condition of our total sense of existence!

While I feel, acknowledge, and revere the almost measureless superiority of the sermons of the divines, who labored in the first, and even the first two centuries of the Reformation, from Luther to Leighton, over the prudential morals and apologizing theology that have characterized the unfanatical clergy since the Revolution in 1688, I cannot but regret, especially while I am listening to a Hooker, that they withheld all light from the truths contained in the words 'Satan', 'the Serpent', 'the Evil Spirit', and this last used plurally.

A Discourse of Justification, Works, and How the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown

Ib. s. 31. p. 659-661.

But we say, our salvation is by Christ alone; therefore howsoever, or whatsoever, we add unto Christ in the matter of salvation, we overthrow Christ. Our case were very hard, if this argument, so universally meant as it is proposed, were sound and good. We ourselves do not teach Christ alone, excluding our own faith, unto justification; Christ alone, excluding our own work, unto sanctification; Christ alone, excluding the one or the other as unnecessary unto salvation. … As we have received, so we teach that besides the bare and naked work, wherein Christ, without any other associate, finished all the parts of our redemption and purchased salvation himself alone; for conveyance of this eminent blessing unto us, many things are required, as, to be known and chosen of God before the foundations of the world; in the world to be called, justified, sanctified; after we have left the world to be received into glory; Christ in every of these hath somewhat which he worketh alone. &c. &c.

No where out of the Holy Scripture have I found the root and pith of Christian faith so clearly and purely propounded as in this section. God, whose thoughts are eternal, beholdeth the end, and in the completed work seeth and accepteth every stage of the process. I dislike only the word 'purchased;' – not that it is not Scriptural, but because a metaphor well and wisely used in the enforcement and varied elucidation of a truth, is not therefore properly employed in its exact enunciation. I will illustrate, amplify and divide the word with Paul; but I will propound it collectively with John. If in this admirable passage aught else dare be wished otherwise, it is the division and yet confusion of time and eternity, by giving an anteriority to the latter.

I am persuaded, that the practice of the Romish church tendeth to make vain the doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ alone; but judging by her most eminent divines, I can find nothing dissonant from the truth in her express decisions on this article. Perhaps it would be safer to say: – Christ alone saves us, working in us by the faith which includes hope and love.

Ib. s. 34. p. 671.

If it were not a strong deluding spirit which hath possession of their hearts; were it possible but that they should see how plainly they do herein gainsay the very ground of apostolic faith?… The Apostle, as if he had foreseen how the Church of Rome would abuse the world in time by ambiguous terms, to declare in what sense the name of grace must be taken, when we make it the cause of our salvation, saith, He saved us according to his mercy, &c.

In all Christian communities there have been and ever will be too many Christians in name only; – too many in belief and notion only: but likewise, I trust, in every acknowledged Church, Eastern or Western, Greek, Roman, Protestant, many of those in belief, more or less erroneous, who are Christians in faith and in spirit. And I neither do nor can think, that any pious member of the Church of Rome did ever in his heart attribute any merit to any work as being his work.¹⁶ A grievous error and a mischievous error there was practically in mooting the question at all of the condignity of works and their rewards. In short, to attribute merit to any agent but God in Christ, our faith as Christians forbids us; and to dispute about the merit of works abstracted from the agent, common sense ought to forbid us.

A Supplication Made to the Council by Master Walter Travers

Ib. p. 698.

I said directly and plainly to all men's understanding, that it was not indeed to be doubted, but many of the Fathers were saved; but the means, said I, was not their ignorance, which excuseth no man with God, but their knowledge and faith of the truth, which, it appeareth, God vouchsafed them, by many notable monuments and records extant of it in all ages.

Not certainly, if the ignorance proceeded directly or indirectly from a defect or sinful propensity of the will; but where no such cause is imaginable, in such cases this position of Master Travers is little less than blasphemous to the divine goodness, and in direct contradiction to an assertion of St. Paul's¹⁷, and to an evident consequence from our Saviour's own words on the polygamy of the fathers.¹⁸

Answer to Travers

Ib. p. 719.

The next thing discovered, is an opinion about the assurance of men's persuasion in matters of faith. I have taught, he saith, 'That the assurance of things which we believe by the word, is not so certain as of that we perceive by sense.'

A useful instance to illustrate the importance of distinct, and the mischief of equivocal or multivocal, terms. Had Hooker said that the fundamental truths of religion, though perhaps even more certain, are less evident than the facts of sense, there could have been no misunderstanding. Thus the demonstrations of algebra possess equal certainty with those of geometry, but cannot lay claim to the same evidence. Certainty is positive, evidence relative; the former, strictly taken, insusceptible of more or less, the latter capable of existing in many different degrees.

Writing a year or more after the preceding note, I am sorry to say that Hooker's reasoning on this point seems to me sophistical throughout. That a man must see what he sees is no persuasion at all, nor bears the remotest analogy to any judgment of the mind. The question is, whether men have a clearer conception and a more stedfast conviction of the objective reality to which the image moving their eye appertains, than of the objective reality of the things and states spiritually discovered by faith. And this Travers had a right to question wherever a saving faith existed.

August, 1826.

Sermon IV a Remedy Against Sorrow and Fear

Ib. p. 801.

In spirit I am with you to the world's end.

O how grateful should I be to be made intuitive of the truth intended in the words – In spirit I am with you!

Ib. p. 808.

Touching the latter affection of fear, which respecteth evils to come, as the other which we have spoken of doth present evils; first, in the nature thereof it is plain that we are not every future evil afraid. Perceive we not how they, whose tenderness shrinketh at the least rase of a needle's point, do kiss the sword that pierceth their souls quite thorow?

In this and in sundry similar passages of this venerable writer there is a very plausible, but even therefore the more dangerous, sophism; but the due detection and exposure of which would exceed the scanty space of a marginal comment. Briefly, what does Hooker comprehend in the term 'pain?' Whatsoever the soul finds adverse to her well being, or incompatible with her free action? In this sense Hooker's position is a mere truism. But if pain be applied exclusively to the soul finding itself as life, then it is an error.

Ib. p. 811.

Fear then in itself being mere nature cannot in itself be sin, which sin is not nature, but therefore an accessary deprivation.

I suspect a misprint, and that it should be depravation. But if not nature, then it must be a super-induced and incidental depravation of nature. The principal, namely fear, is nature; but the sin, that is, that it is a sinful fear, is but an accessary