Chapter LII: Letter 168: To ----96

(--1816?) My dear sir,

Accept my thanks for your kind remembrance of me, and for the proof of it in the present of your tribute of friendship, I have read it with uninterrupted interest, and with satisfaction scarcely less continuous. In adding the three last words, I am taking the word satisfaction in its strictest sense: for had I written pleasure, there would have been no ground for the limitation. Indeed as it was, it is a being scrupulous over much. For at the two only passages at which I made a moment's _halt_ (viz. § p. 3, and p. 53, last line but five,) "she had seldom"----"oppressive awe," my not _objection_ but _stoppage_ at the latter amounted only to a doubt, a _quære_, whether the trait of character here given should not have been followed by some little comment, as for instance, that such a state of feeling, though not desirable in a regenerate person, in whom belief had wrought love, and love obedience, must yet be ranked amongst those constitutional differences that may exist between the best and wisest Christians, without any corresponding difference in their spiritual progress. One saint fixes his eyes on the _palm_, another saint thinks of the previous _conflict_, and closes them in prayer. Both are waters of the same fountain--_this_ the basin, _that_ the salient column, both equally dear to God, and both may be used as examples for men, the one to invite the thoughtless sceptic, the other to alarm the reckless believer. You will see, therefore, that I do not object to the sentence itself; but as a matter of _feeling_, it met me too singly and suddenly. I had not anticipated such a trait, and the surprise counterfeited the sensation of perplexity for a moment or two. On as little objection to anything you have said, did the _desiderium_ the sense of not being quite satisfied, proceed in regard to the § p. 3. In the particular instance in the application of the sentiment, I found nothing to question or qualify. It was the rule or principle which a certain class of your readers might be inclined to deduce from it, it was the possible generalization of the particular instance that made me pause. I am jealous of the disposition to turn Christianity or Religion into a particular _business_ or line. "Well, Miss, how does your pencil go on, I was delighted with your last landscape." "Oh, sir, I have quite given _up_ that, I have got into the religious line." Now, my dear sir, the rule which I have deduced from the writings of St. Paul and St. John, and (permit me also to add) of Luther, would be this. Form and endeavour to strengthen into an habitual and instinct-like feeling, the sense of the utter incompatibility of Christianity with every thing wrong or unseemly, with whatever betrays or fosters the mind of flesh, the predominance of the _animal_ within us, by having habitually present to the mind, the full and lively conviction of its perfect compatibility with whatever is innocent of its harmony, with whatever contra-distinguishes the HUMAN from the animal; of its sympathy and coalescence with the cultivation of the faculties, affections, and fruitions, which God hath made _peculiar_ to _man_, either wholly or in their ordained _combination_ with what is peculiar to humanity, the blurred, but not obliterated signatures of our original title deed, (and God said, man will we make in our own image.) What?--shall Christianity exclude or alienate us from those powers, acquisitions, and attainments, which Christianity is so preeminently calculated to elevate and enliven and sanctify?

Far, very far, am I from suspecting in you, my dear sir, any participation in these prejudices of a shrivelled proselyting and censorious religionist. But a numerous and stirring faction there is, in the so-called Religious Public, whose actual and actuating principles, with whatever vehemence they may disclaim it in words, is, that redemption is a something not yet effected--that there is neither sense nor force in our baptism--and that instead of the Apostolic command, _Rejoice, and again I say unto you, rejoice_; baptized Christians are to put on sackcloth and ashes, and try, by torturing themselves and others, to procure a rescue from the devil. Again, let me thank you for your remembrance of me, and believe me from the hour we first met at Bristol, with esteem and regard,

Your sincere friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.

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In 1816 an attempt was made to revive _Remorse_ at Drury Lane, and Coleridge had some intercourse with Byron regarding it and another tragedy he was proposing to write for the theatre (_Westminster Review_, 94 (1874), p. 2). He wrote the following fragment on Byron probably about this time: