Chapter II: Preface (2)

This is indeed a subject that deserves a serious consideration: and it may be said in favour of Hooker's proposal, namely, that the use of ancient Councils be renewed, that a deep and universal sense of the abuse of Councils progressively from the Nicene to that of Trent, and our knowledge of the causes, occasions, and mode of such abuse, are so far presumptive for its non-recurrency as to render it less probable that honest men will pervert them from ignorance, and more difficult for unprincipled men to do so designedly. Something too must be allowed for an honourable ambition on the part of the persons so assembled, to disappoint the general expectation, and win for themselves the unique title of the honest Council. But still comes the argument, the blow of which I might more easily blunt than parry, that if Roman Catholic and Protestant, or even Protestant Episcopalian and Protestant Presbyterian divines were generally wise and charitable enough to form a Christian General Council, there would be no need of one.

N.B. The reasoning in this note, as far as it is in discouragement of a recurrence to general Councils, does not, 'me saltem judice', conclude against the suffering our Convocation to meet. The virtual abrogation of this branch of our constitution I have long regarded as one of three or four Whig patriotisms, that have succeeded in de-anglicizing the mind of England.

Ib. c. xi. 4. p. 323.

So that nature even in this life doth plainly claim and call for a
more divine perfection than either of these two that have been
mentioned.

Whenever I meet with an ambiguous or multivocal word, without its meaning being shown and fixed, I stand on my guard against a sophism. I dislike this term, 'nature,' in this place. If it mean the 'light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world', it is an inapt term; for reason is supernatural. Now that reason in man must have been first actuated by a direct revelation from God, I have myself proved, and do not therefore deny that faith as the means of salvation was first made known by revelation; but that reason is incapable of seeing into the fitness and superiority of these means, or that it is a mystery in any other sense than as all spiritual truths are mysterious, I do deny and deem it both a false and a dangerous doctrine.

15 Sept. 1826.

Ib. 6. p.327.

Concerning that faith, hope and charity, without which there can be no
salvation; was there ever any mention made saving only in that law
which God himself hath from heaven revealed? There is not in the world
a syllable muttered with certain truth concerning any of these three,
more than hath, been supernaturally received from the mouth of the
eternal God.

That reason could have discovered these divine truths is one thing; that when discovered by revelation, it is capable of apprehending the beauty and excellence of the things revealed is another. I may believe the latter, while I utterly reject the former. That all these cognitions, together with the fealty or faithfulness in the will whereby the mind of the flesh is brought under captivity to the mind of the spirit (the sensous understanding to the reason) are supernatural, I not only freely grant, but fervently contend. But why the very perfection of reason, namely, those ideas or truth-powers, in which both the spiritual light and the spiritual life are co-inherent and one, should be called super-rational, I do not see. For reason is practical as well as theoretical; or even though I should exclude the practical reason, and confine the term reason to the highest intellective power,--still I should think it more correct to describe the mysteries of faith as 'plusquam rationalia' than super-rational. But the assertions that provoke the remark arose for the greater part, and still arise, out of the confounding of the reason with the understanding. In Hooker, and the great divines of his age, it was merely an occasional carelessness in the use of the terms that reason is ever put where they meant the understanding; for, from other parts of their writings, it is evident that they knew and asserted the distinction, nay, the diversity of the things themselves; to wit, that there was in man another and higher light than that of the faculty judging according to sense, that is our understandings. But, alas! since the Revolution, it has ceased to be a mere error of language, and in too many it now amounts to a denial of reason!

B. ii. c. v.3. p.379.

To urge any thing as part of that supernatural and celestially
revealed truth which God hath taught, and not to shew it in Scripture;
this did the ancient Fathers evermore think unlawful, impious,
execrable.

Even this must be received 'cum grano salis.' To be sure, with the licences of interpretation, which the Fathers of the first three or four centuries allowed themselves, and with the 'arcana' of evolution by word, letter, allegory, yea, punning, which they applied to detached sentences or single phrases of Holy Writ, it would not be easy to imagine a position which they could not 'shew in Scripture.' Let this be elucidated by the texts even now cited by the Romish priests for the truth of purgatory, indulgence, image-worship, invocation of dead men, and the like. The assertion therefore must be thus qualified. The ancient Fathers anathematized any doctrine not consentaneous with Scripture and deducible from it, either 'pari ratione' or by consequence; as when Scripture clearly commands an end, but leaves the means to be determined according to the circumstances, as for example, the frequent assembly of Christians. The appointment of a Sunday or Lord's day is evidently the fittest and most effectual mean to this end; but yet it was not practicable, that is the mean did not exist till the Roman government became Christian. But as soon as this event took place, the duty of keeping the Sunday holy is truly, though implicitly, contained in the Apostolic text.

Ib. vi. 3. p. 392.

Again, with a negative argument, David is pressed concerning the
purpose he had to build a temple unto the Lord: 'Thus saith the
Lord, Thou shalt not build me a house to dwelt in. Wheresoever I have
walked with all Israel, spake I one word to any of the judges of
Israel, whom I commanded to feed my people, saying, Why have ye not
built me a house?'

The wisdom of the divine goodness both in the negative, the not having authorized any of the preceding Judges from Moses downwards to build a temple--and in the positive, in having commanded David to prepare for it, and Solomon to build it--I have not seen put in the full light in which it so well deserves to be. The former or negative, or the evils of a splendid temple-worship and its effects on the character of the priesthood,--evils, when not changed to good by becoming the antidote and preventive of far greater evils,--would require much thought both to set forth and to comprehend. But to give any reflecting reader a sense of the providential foresight evinced in the latter, and this foresight beyond the reach of any but the Omniscient, it will be only necessary to remind him of the separation of the ten tribes and the breaking up of the realm into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel in the very next reign. Without the continuity of succession provided for by this vast and splendid temple, built and arranged under the divine sanction attested by miracles--what criterion would there have existed for the purity of this law and worship? what security for the preservation and incorruption of the inspired writings?

Ib. vii. 3. p. 403.

That there is a city of Rome, that Pius Quintus and Gregory the
Thirteenth, and others, have been Popes of Rome, I suppose we are
certainly enough persuaded. The ground of our persuasion, who never
saw the place nor persons before named, can be nothing but man's
testimony. Will any man here notwithstanding allege those mentioned
human infirmities as reasons why these things should be mistrusted or
doubted of? Yea, that which is more, utterly to infringe the force and
strength of man's testimony, were to shake the very fortress of God's
truth.

In a note on a passage in Skelton's 'Deism Revealed', [11] I have detected the subtle sophism that lurks in this argument, as applied by later divines in vindication of proof by testimony, in relation to the miracles of the Old and New Testament. As thus applied, it is a [Greek: metábasis eis allo génos], though so unobvious, that a very acute and candid reasoner might use the argument without suspecting the paralogism. It is not testimony, as testimony, that necessitates us to conclude that there is such a city as Rome--but a reasoning, that forms a branch of mathematical science. So far is our conviction from being grounded on our confidence in human testimony that it proceeds on our knowledge of its fallible character, and therefore can find no sufficient reason for its coincidence on so vast a scale, but in the real existence of the object. That a thousand lies told by as many several and unconnected individuals should all be one and the same, is a possibility expressible only by a fraction that is already, to all intents and purposes, equal to nought.

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, [Greek: dúnamis noera], 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. [12] 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's, [13] and to an evident consequence from our Saviour's own words on the polygamy of the fathers. [14]

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 [Greek: h_os emoige dokei], 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.

[Footnote 1: The references are to Mr. Keble's edition (1836.)--Ed.]

[Footnote 2: But see Mr. Keble's statement (Pref. xxix.), and the argument founded on discoveries and collation of MSS. since the note in the text was written.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: See Mr. Coleridge's work 'On the constitution of the Church and State according to the idea of each.'--Ed.]

[Footnote 4: See E. P. I. ii. 3. p. 252.--Ed.]

[Footnote 5: See the 'Church and State,' in which the 'ecclesia' or Church in Christ, is distinguished from the 'enclesia', or national Church.--Ed.]

[Footnote 6: See the essays generally from the fourth to the ninth, both inclusively, in Vol. III. 3rd edition, more especially, the fifth essay.--Ed.]

[Footnote 7: Part I. c. i. vv. 151--6.--Ed.]

[Footnote 8: See the essay on the idea of the Prometheus of Æschylus. Literary Remains, Vol. II. p. 323.--Ed.]

[Footnote 9:

'Every man is born an Aristotelian, or a Platonist. I do not think it
possible that any one born an Aristotelian can become a Platonist; and
I am sure no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They
are the two classes of men, beside which it is next to impossible to
conceive a third. The one considers reason a quality, or attribute;
the other considers it a power. I believe that Aristotle never could
get to understand what Plato meant by an idea. ... Aristotle was, and
still is, the sovereign lord of the understanding; the faculty judging
by the senses. He was a conceptualist, and never could raise himself
into that higher state, which was natural to Plato, and has been so to
others, in which the understanding is distinctly contemplated, and, as
it were, looked down upon, from the throne of actual ideas, or living,
inborn, essential truths.'

'Table Talk', 2d Edit. p. 95.--Ed.]

[Footnote 10: See the 'Church and State,' c. i.--Ed.]

[Footnote 11: See 'post'.--Ed.]

[Footnote 12: But see the language of the Council of Trent:

Si quis dixerit justitiam acceptam non conservari 'atque etiam augeri
coram. Deo per bona opera'; sed opera ipsa fructus solummodo et signa
esse justificationis adeptæ,' non autem ipsius augendæ causam';
anathema sit.

'Sess'. VI. 'Can'. 24.

... Si quis dixerit hominis justificati 'bona opera' ita esse dona
Dei, 'ut non sint etiam bona ipsius justificati merita'; aut ipsum
justificatum 'bonis operibus', quæ ab eo per Dei gratiam, et Jesu
Christi meritum, cujus vivum membrum est, fiunt, 'non vere mereri
augmentum gratiæ, vitam æternam, et ipsius vitæ æternæ, si tamen in
gratia decesserit, conscecutionem atque etiam gloriæ augmentum',
anathema sit.

'Ib. Can.' 32.--Ed.]

[Footnote 13: Rom. ii. 12.--Ed.]

[Footnote 14: Matt. xix. 8.--Ed.]

NOTES ON FIELD ON THE CHURCH. [1]

'Fly-leaf.--Hannah Scollock, her book, February 10', 1787.

This, Hannah Scollock! may have been the case;
Your writing therefore I will not erase.
But now this book, once yours, belongs to me,
The Morning Post's and Courier's S. T. C.;--
Elsewhere in College, knowledge, wit and scholerage
To friends and public known, as S. T. Coleridge.
Witness hereto my hand, on Ashly Green,
One thousand, twice four hundred, and fourteen
Year of our Lord--and of the month November,
The fifteenth day, if right I do remember.

28 March, 1819. [2]

MY DEAR DERWENT,

This one volume, thoroughly understood and appropriated, will place you in the highest ranks of doctrinal Church of England divines (of such as now are), and in no mean rank as a true doctrinal Church historian.

Next to this I recommend Baxter's own Life, edited by Sylvester, with my marginal notes. Here, more than in any of the prelatical and Arminian divines from Laud to the death of Charles II, you will see the strength and beauty of the Church of England, that is, its liturgy, homilies, and articles. By contrasting, too, its present state with that which such excellent men as Baxter, Calamy, and the so called Presbyterian or Puritan divines, would have made it, you will bless it as the bulwark of toleration.

Thirdly, you must read Eichorn's Introduction to the Old and New Testament, and the Apocrypha, and his comment on the Apocalypse; to all which my notes and your own previous studies will supply whatever antidote is wanting;--these will suffice for your Biblical learning, and teach you to attach no more than the supportable weight to these and such like outward evidences of our holy and spiritual religion.

So having done, you will be in point of professional knowledge such a clergyman as will make glad the heart of your loving father,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

N. B.--See Book iv Chap. 7, p. 351, both for a masterly confutation of the Paleyo-Grotian evidences of the Gospel, and a decisive proof in what light that system was regarded by the Church of England in its best age. Like Grotius himself, it is half way between Popery and Socinianism.

B. i. c. 3. p. 5.

But men desired only to be like unto God in omniscience and the
general knowledge of all things which may be communicated to a
creature, as in Christ it is to his human soul.

Surely this is more than doubtful; and even the instance given is irreconcilable with Christ's own assertion concerning the last day, which must be understood of his human soul, by all who hold the faith delivered from the foundation, namely, his deity. Field seems to have excerpted this incautiously from the Schoolmen, who on this premiss could justify the communicability of adoration, as in the case of the saints. Omniscience, it may be proved, implies omnipotence. The fourth of the arguments in this section, and, as closely connected with it, the first (only somewhat differently stated) seem the strongest, or rather the only ones. For the second is a mere anticipation of the fourth, and all that is true in the third is involved in it.

Ib. c. 5. p. 9.

And began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them
utterance.

That is, I humbly apprehend, in other than the Hebrew and Syrochaldaic languages, which (with rare and reluctant exceptions in favor of the Greek) were appropriated to public prayer and exhortation, just as the Latin in the Romish Church. The new converts preached and prayed, each to his companions in his and their dialect;--they were all Jews, but had assembled from all the different provinces of the Roman and Parthian empires, as the Quakers among us to the yearly meeting in London; this was a sign, not a miracle. The miracle consisted in the visible and audible descent of the Holy Ghost, and in the fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel, as explained by St. Peter himself. 'Acts' ii. 15.

Ib. p.10.

'Aliud est etymologia nominis et aliud significatio nominis.
Etymologia attenditur secundum id it quo imponitur nomen ad
significandum: nominis vero significatio secundum id ad quod
significandum imponitur.'

This passage from Aquinas would be an apt motto for a critique on
Horne Tooke's Diversions of Purley. The best service of etymology is,
when the sense of a word is still unsettled, and especially when two
words have each two meanings; A=a-b, and B=a-b, instead of A=a and
B=b. Thus reason and understanding as at present popularly confounded.
Here the 'etyma,--ratio,' the relative proportion of thoughts and
things,--and understanding, as the power which substantiates
'phænomena (substat eis)'--determine the proper sense. But most often
the 'etyma' being equivalent, we must proceed 'ex arbitrio,' as 'law
compels,' 'religion obliges;' or take up what had been begun in some
one derivative. Thus 'fanciful' and 'imaginative,' are
discriminated;--and this supplies the ground of choice for giving to
fancy and imagination, each its own sense. Cowley is a fanciful
writer, Milton an imaginative poet. Then I proceed with the
distinction, how ill fancy assorts with imagination, as instanced in
Milton's Limbo. [3]

Ib.

I should rather express the difference between the faithful of the Synagogue and those of the Church, thus:--That the former hoped generally by an implicit faith;--"It shall in all things be well with all that love the Lord; therefore it cannot but be good for us and well with us to rest with our forefathers." But the Christian hath an assured hope by an explicit and particular faith, a hope because its object is future, not because it is uncertain. The one was on the road journeying toward a friend of his father's, who had promised he would be kind to him even to the third and fourth generation. He comforts himself on the road, first, by means of the various places of refreshment, which that friend had built for travellers and continued to supply; and secondly, by anticipation of a kind reception at the friend's own mansion-house. But the other has received an express invitation to a banquet, beholds the preparations, and has only to wash and put on the proper robes, in order to sit down.

Ib. p. 11.

The reason why our translators, in the beginning, did choose rather to
use the word 'congregation' than 'Church,' was not, as the adversary
maliciously imagineth, for that they feared the very name of the
Church; but because as by the name of religion and religious men,
ordinarily in former times, men understood nothing but _factitias
religiones_, as Gerson out of Anselme calleth them, that is, the
professions of monks and friars, so, &c.

For the same reason the word 'religion' for [Greek: Thraeskia] in St. James [4] ought now to be altered to ceremony or ritual. The whole version has by change of language become a dangerous mistranslation, and furnishes a favorite text to our moral preachers, Church Socinians and other christened pagans now so rife amongst us. What was the substance of the ceremonial law is but the ceremonial part of the Christian religion; but it is its solemn ceremonial law, and though not the same, yet one with it and inseparable, even as form and substance. Such is St. James's doctrine, destroying at one blow Antinomianism and the Popish popular doctrine of good works.

Ib. c. 18. p. 27.

But if the Church of God remains in Corinth, where there were
'divisions, sects, emulations', &c. ... who dare deny those societies
to be the Churches of God, wherein the tenth part of these horrible
evils and abuses is not to be found?

It is rare to meet with sophistry in this sound divine; but here he seems to border on it. For first the Corinthian Church upon admonition repented of its negligence; and secondly, the objection of the Puritans was, that the constitution of the Church precluded discipline.

B. II. c. 2. p. 31.

'Miscreant' is twice used in this page in its original sense of misbeliever.

Ib. c. 4. p. 35.

'Discourse' is here used for the discursive acts of the understanding, even as 'discursive, is opposed to 'intuitive' by Milton [5] and others. Thus understand Shakspeare's "discourse of reason" for those discursions of mind which are peculiar to rational beings.

B. III. c. 1.p. 53.

The first publishers of the Gospel of Christ delivered a rule of faith
to the Christian Churches which they founded, comprehending all those
articles that are found in that 'epitome' of Christian religion, which
we call the Apostles' Creed.

This needs proof. I rather believe that the so called Apostles' Creed was really the Creed of the Roman or Western church, (and possibly in its present form, the catechismal rather than the baptismal creed),--and that other churches in the East had Creeds equally ancient, and, from their being earlier troubled with Anti Trinitarian heresies, more express on the divinity of Christ than the Roman.

Ib. p. 58.

Fourthly, that it is no less absurd to say, as the Papists do, that
our satisfaction is required as a condition, without which Christ's
satisfaction is not appliable unto us, than to say, Peter hath paid
the debt of John, and he to whom it was due accepteth of the same
payment, conditionally if he pay it himself also.

This [6] propriation of a metaphor, namely, forgiveness of sin and abolition of guilt through the redemptive power of Christ's love and of his perfect obedience during his voluntary assumption of humanity, expressed, on account of the sameness of the consequences in both cases, by the payment of a debt for another, which debt the payer had not himself incurred,--the propriation of this, I say, by transferring the sameness from the consequents to the antecedents is the one point of orthodoxy (so called, I mean) in which I still remain at issue. It seems to me so evidently a [Greek: metábasis eis allo génos.] A metaphor is an illustration of something less known by a more or less partial identification of it with something better understood. Thus St. Paul illustrates the consequences of the act of redemption by four different metaphors drawn from things most familiar to those, for whom it was to be illustrated, namely, sin-offerings or sacrificial expiation; reconciliation; ransom from slavery; satisfaction of a just creditor by vicarious payment of the debt. These all refer to the consequences of redemption.

Now, St. John without any metaphor declares the mode by and in which it is effected; for he identifies it with a fact, not with a consequence, and a fact too not better understood in the one case than in the other, namely, by generation and birth. There remains, therefore, only the redemptive act itself, and this is transcendant, ineffable, and 'a fortiori', therefore, inexplicable. Like the act of primal apostasy, it is in its own nature a mystery, known only through faith in the spirit.

James owes John £100, which (to prevent James's being sent to prison) Henry pays for him; and John has no longer any claim. But James is cruel and ungrateful to Mary, his tender mother. Henry, though no relation, acts the part of a loving and dutiful son to Mary. But will this satisfy the mother's claims on James, or entitle him to her esteem, approbation, and blessing? If, indeed, by force of Henry's example or persuasion, or any more mysterious influence, James repents and becomes himself a good and dutiful child, then, indeed, Mary is wholly satisfied; but then the case is no longer a question of debt in that sense in which it can be paid by another, though the effect, of which alone St. Paul was speaking, is the same in both cases to James as the debtor, and to James as the undutiful son. He is in both cases liberated from the burthen, and in both cases he has to attribute his exoneration to the act of another; as cause simply in the payment of the debt, or as likewise 'causa causæ' in James's reformation. Such is my present opinion: God grant me increase of light either to renounce or confirm it.

Perhaps the different terms of the above position may be more clearly stated thus:

1. 'agens causator' 2. 'actus causativus:' 3. 'effectus causatus:' 4. 'consequentia ab effecto.'

1. The co-eternal Son of the living God, incarnate, tempted, crucified, resurgent, communicant of his spirit, ascendant, and obtaining for his church the descent of the Holy Ghost.

2. A spiritual and transcendant mystery.

3. The being born anew, as before in the flesh to the world, so now in the spirit to Christ: where the differences are, the spirit opposed to the flesh, and Christ to the world; the 'punctum indifferens', or combining term, remaining the same in both, namely, a birth.

4. Sanctification from sin and liberation from the consequences of sin, with all the means and process of sanctification, being the same for the sinner relatively to God and his own soul, as the satisfaction of a creditor for a debt, or as the offering of an atoning sacrifice for a transgressor of the law; as a reconciliation for a rebellious son or a subject to his alienated parent or offended sovereign; and as a ransom is for a slave in a heavy captivity.

Now my complaint is that our systematic divines transfer the paragraph 4 to the paragraphs 2 and 3, interpreting 'proprio sensu et ad totum 'what is affirmed 'sensu metaphorico et ad partem', that is, 'ad consequentia a regeneratione effecta per actum causativum primi agentis, uempe [Greek: Logou] redemptoris', and by this interpretation substituting an identification absolute for an equation proportional.

4th May, 1819.

Ib. p. 62.

Personality is nothing but the existence of nature itself.

God alone had his nature in himself; that is, God alone contains in himself the ground of his own existence. But were this definition of Field's right, we might predicate personality of a worm, or wherever we find life. Better say,--personality is individuality existing in itself, but with a nature as its ground.

Ib. p.66.

Accursing Eutyches as a heretic.

It puzzles me to understand what sense Field gave to the word, heresy. Surely every slight error, even though persevered in, is not to be held a heresy, or its asserters accursed. The error ought at least to respect some point of faith essential to the great ends of the Gospel. Thus the phrase 'cursing Eutyches,' is to me shockingly unchristian. I could not dare call even the opinion cursed, till I saw how it injured the faith in Christ, weakened our confidence in him, or lessened our love and gratitude.

Ib. p.71.

'If ye be circumcised ye are fallen from grace, and Christ
can profit you nothing.'

It seems impossible but that these words had a relation to the particular state of feeling and belief, out of which the anxiety to be circumcised did in those particular persons proceed, and not absolutely, and at all times to the act itself, seeing that St. Paul himself circumcised Timothy from motives of charity and prudence.

Ib. c.3. p.76.

The things that pertain to the Christian faith and religion are of two
sorts; for there are some things 'explicite', some things
'implicite credenda'; that is, there are some things that must be
particularly and expressly known and believed, as that the Father is
God, the Son is God and the Holy Ghost God, and yet they are not three
Gods but one God; and some other, which though all men, at all times,
be not bound upon the peril of damnation to know and believe
expressly, yet whosoever will be saved must believe them at least
'implicite', and in generality, as that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus
fled into Egypt.

Merciful Heaven! Eternal misery and the immitigable wrath of God, and the inextinguishable fire of hell amid devils, parricides, and haters of God and all goodness--this is the verdict which a Protestant divine passes against the man, who though sincerely believing the whole Nicene creed and every doctrine and precept taught in the New Testament, and living accordingly, should yet have convinced himself that the first chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke were not parts of the original Gospels!

Ib. p.77.

So in the beginning, Nestorius did not err, touching the unity of
Christ's person in the diversity of the natures of God and man; but
only disliked that Mary should be called the mother of God: which form
of speaking when some demonstrated to be very fitting and unavoidable,
if Christ were God and man in the unity of the same person, he chose
rather to deny the unity of Christ's person than to acknowledge his
temerity and rashness in reproving that form of speech, which the use
of the church had anciently received and allowed.

A false charge grounded on a misconception of the Syriac terms. Nestorius was perfectly justifiable in his rejection of the epithet [Greek: theotókos], as applied to the mother of Jesus. The Church was even then only too ripe for the idolatrous 'hyper-dulia' of the Virgin. Not less weak is Field's defence of the propriety of the term. Set aside all reference to this holy mystery, and let me ask, I trust without offence, whether by the same logic a mule's dam might not be called [Greek: hippotókos], because the horse and ass were united in one and the same subject. The difference in the perfect God and perfect man does not remove the objection: for an epithet, which conceals half of a truth, the power and special concerningness of which, relatively to our redemption by Christ, depends on our knowledge of the whole, is a deceptive and a dangerously deceptive epithet.

Ib. c.20. p.110.

Thus, then, the Fathers did sometimes, when they had particular
occasions to remember the Saints, and to speak of them, by way of
'apostrophe', turn themselves unto them, and use words of
doubtful compellation, praying them, if they have any sense of these
inferior things, to be remembrancers to God for them.

The distinct gradations of the process, by which commemoration and rhetorical apostrophes passed finally into idolatry, supply an analogy of mighty force against the heretical 'hypothesis 'of the modern Unitarians. Were it true, they would have been able to have traced the progress of the Christolatry from the lowest sort of 'Christodulia' with the same historical distinctness against the universal Church, that the Protestants have that of hierolatry against the Romanists. The gentle and soft censures which our divines during the reign of the Stuarts pass on the Roman Saint worship, or hieroduly, as an inconvenient superstition, must needs have alarmed the faithful adherents to the Protestantism of Edward VI. and the surviving exiles of bloody Queen Mary's times, and their disciples.

Ib. p.111.