The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poems, Plays, Essays, Lectures, Autobiography & Personal Letters (Illustrated). Samuel Taylor Coleridge
a man,’ ‘made himself God!’ But, in the Christian, rather than in the ‘Socinian’, or ‘Pharisaic’ view, all these objections vanish, and harmony succeeds to inexplicable confusion. If Socinians hesitate in ascribing ‘unrighteousness’ to Christ, the inevitable result of their principles, they tremble, as well they might, at their avowed creed, and virtually renounce what they profess to uphold.
The Trinity, as Bishop Leighton has well remarked, is, ‘a doctrine of faith, not of demonstration,’ except in a ‘moral’ sense. If the New Testament declare it, not in an insulated passage, but through the whole breadth of its pages, rendering, with any other admission, the Book, which is the Christian’s anchor-hold of hope, dark and contradictory, then it is not to be rejected, but on a penalty that reduces to an atom, all the sufferings this earth can inflict.
Let the grand question be determined; Is, or is not the Bible ‘inspired?’ No one Book has ever been subjected to so rigid an investigation as the Bible, by minds the most capacious, and, in the result, which has so triumphantly repelled all the assaults of Infidels. In the extensive intercourse which I have had with this class of men, I have seen their prejudices surpassed only by their ignorance. This I found conspicuously the case in Dr. D. (Vol. i. p. 167) the prince of their fraternity. Without, therefore, stopping to contend on what all dispassionate men must deem, undebatable ground, I may assume inspiration as admitted; and, equally so, that it would be an insult to man’s understanding to suppose any other Revelation from God than the Christian Scriptures. If these Scriptures, impregnable in their strength; sustained in their pretensions by undeniable prophecies and miracles; and by the experience of the ‘inner man’, in all ages, as well as by a concatenation of arguments, all bearing upon one point, and extending, with miraculous consistency, through a series of fifteen hundred years; if all this combined proof does not establish their validity, nothing can be proved under the sun; but the world and man must be abandoned, with all its consequences to one universal scepticism! Under such sanctions, therefore, if these Scriptures, as a fundamental truth, ‘do’ inculcate the doctrine of the ‘Trinity;’ however surpassing human comprehension; then I say, we are bound to admit it on the strength of ‘moral demonstration’.
The supreme Governor of the world, and the Father of our spirits, has seen fit to disclose to us, much of his will, and the whole of his natural and moral perfections. In some instances he has given his ‘word’ only, and demanded our ‘faith’; while, on other momentous subjects, instead of bestowing a full revelation; like the ‘Via Lactea’, he has furnished a glimpse only, through either the medium of inspiration, or by the exercise of those rational faculties with which he has endowed us. I consider the Trinity as substantially resting on the first proposition, yet deriving support from the last.
I recollect when I stood on the summit of Etna, and darted my gaze down the crater; the immediate vicinity was discernible, till, lower down, obscurity gradually terminated in total darkness. Such figures exemplify many truths revealed in the Bible. We pursue them, until, from the imperfection of our faculties, we are lost in impenetrable night. All truths, however, that are essential to faith, ‘honestly’ interpreted; all that are important to human conduct, under every diversity of circumstance, are manifest as a blazing star. The promises also of felicity to the righteous, in the future world, though the precise nature of that felicity may not be defined, are illustrated by every image that can swell the imagination: while the misery of the ‘lost’, in its unutterable intensity, though the language that describes it is all necessarily figurative, is there exhibited as resulting chiefly, if not wholly, from the withdrawment of the ‘light of God’s countenance’, and a banishment from his ‘presence!’ — best comprehended in this world, by reflecting on the desolations which would instantly follow the loss of the sun’s vivifying and universally diffused ‘warmth’.
You, or rather ‘all’, should remember, that some truths, from their nature, surpass the scope of man’s limited powers, and stand as the criteria of ‘faith’, determining, by their rejection, or admission, who among the sons of men can confide in the veracity of heaven. Those more ethereal truths, of which the Trinity is conspicuously the chief, without being circumstantially explained, may be faintly illustrated by material objects. — The eye of man cannot discern the satellites of Jupiter, nor become sensible of the multitudinous stars, the rays of which have never reached our planet, and, consequently, garnish not the canopy of night; yet, are they the less ‘real’, because their existence lies beyond man’s unassisted gaze? The tube of the philosopher, and the ‘celestial telescope’, — the unclouded visions of heaven, will confirm the one class of truths, and irradiate the other.
The ‘Trinity’ is a subject on which analogical reasoning may advantageously be admitted, as furnishing, at least, a glimpse of light, and with this, for the present, we must be satisfied. Infinite Wisdom deemed clearer manifestations inexpedient; and is man to dictate to his Maker? I may further remark, that where we cannot behold a desirable object distinctly, we must take the best view we can; and I think you, and every candid and inquiring mind, may derive assistance from such reflections as the following.
Notwithstanding the arguments of Spinosa, and Descartes, and other advocates of the ‘Material system’, (or, in more appropriate language, the ‘Atheistical system!’) it is admitted by all men not prejudiced, not biassed by sceptical prepossessions, that ‘mind’ is distinct from ‘matter’. The mind of man, however, is involved in inscrutable darkness, (as the profoundest metaphysicians well know) and is to be estimated, (if at all) alone, by an inductive process; that is, by its ‘effects’. Without entering on the question, whether an extremely circumscribed portion of the mental process, surpassing instinct, may, or may not, be extended to quadrupeds, it is universally acknowledged, that the mind of man, alone, regulates all the voluntary actions of his corporeal frame. Mind, therefore, may be regarded as a distinct genus, in the scale ascending above brutes, and including the whole of intellectual existences; advancing from ‘thought’, (that mysterious thing!) in its lowest form, through all the gradations of sentient and rational beings, till it arrives at a Bacon, a Newton, and then, when unincumbered by matter, extending its illimitable sway through Seraph and Archangel, till we are lost in the GREAT INFINITE!
Is it not deserving of notice, as an especial subject of meditation, that our ‘limbs’, in all they do, or can accomplish, implicitly obey the dictation of the ‘mind’? that this operating power, whatever its name, under certain limitations, exercises a sovereign dominion, not only over our limbs, but over all our intellectual pursuits? The mind of every man is evidently the moving force, which alike regulates all his limbs and actions; and in which example, we find a strong illustration of the subordinate nature of mere ‘matter’. That alone which gives direction to the organic parts of our nature, is wholly ‘mind’; and one mind, if placed over a thousand limbs, could, with undiminished ease, control and regulate the whole.
This idea is advanced on the supposition, that ‘one mind’ could command an unlimited direction over any given number of ‘limbs’, provided they were all connected by ‘joint’ and ‘sinew’. But suppose, through some occult and inconceivable means, these limbs were dis-associated, as to all material connexion; suppose, for instance, one mind, with unlimited authority, governed the operations of ‘two’ separate persons, would not this, substantially, be only ‘one person’, seeing the directing principle was one? If the truth, here contended for, be admitted, that ‘two persons’, governed by ‘one mind’, is incontestably ‘one person’; the same conclusion would be arrived at, and the proposition equally be justified, which affirmed that, ‘three’, or, otherwise, ‘four’ persons, owning also necessary and essential subjection to ‘one mind’, would only be so many diversities, or modifications of that ‘one mind’, and therefore the component parts, virtually collapsing into ‘one whole’, the person would be ‘one’. Let any man ask himself, whose understanding can both reason, and become the depository of truth, whether, if ‘one mind’ thus regulated, with absolute authority, ‘three’, or, otherwise, ‘four’ persons, with all their congeries of material parts, would not these parts, inert in themselves, when subjected to one predominant mind, be, in the most logical sense, ‘one person’? Are ligament and exterior combination indispensable prerequisites to the sovereign influence of mind over mind? or mind over matter?