The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 3. Coleridge Samuel Taylor
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
But see the language of the Council of Trent:
Si quis dixerit justitiam acceptam non conservari
… Si quis dixerit hominis justificati
Rom. ii. 12. – Ed.
Matt. xix. 8. – Ed.