Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit E-Book

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 121

Beschreibung

Never was there a book less entitled than the "Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit" to the honour of effecting a revolution in theology, or becoming the manifesto of any school of inquirers accustomed to habits of sound and accurate reasoning. With not a little to remind us of the reach and originality of thought which distinguish the other writings of Coleridge, it is marked to a most vicious excess with looseness and inaccuracy of conception; it betrays a painful ignorance of the main facts and fundamental principles involved in the question at issue; and, by the confident, but impotent attempt which he makes to marry a mystical philosophy to an unsound theology, he only shows that he has strayed into a province of speculation with whose guiding landmarks he was completely unacquainted. Nor is this failure to grasp, and inability to deal with, the necessary conditions of the problem to be solved, so conspicuous in Coleridge's discussion of the doctrine of inspiration, altogether due to his limited and defective preparation for dealing with the subject; it is in no small measure to be attributed to the exigencies of his position and argument.

Leseprobe

Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Confessions of an inquiring spirit, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Deutschland

ISBN: 9783849652241

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

[email protected]

CONTENTS:

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.1

THE PENTAD OF OPERATIVE CHRISTIANITY.. 2

LETTERS ON THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.3

LETTER I.3

LETTER II.6

LETTER III.9

LETTER IV.13

LETTER V.21

LETTER VI.22

LETTER VII.29

AN ESSAY ON FAITH.. 33

NOTES ON THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.39

A NIGHTLY PRAYER.45

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.

The following Letters on the Inspiration of the Scriptures were left by Mr. Coleridge in MS. at his death. The Reader will find in them a key to most of the Biblical criticism scattered throughout the Author's own writings, and an affectionate, pious, and, as the Editor humbly believes, a profoundly wise attempt to place the study of the Written Word on its only sure foundation,—a deep sense of God's holiness and truth, and a consequent reverence for that Light—the image of Himself—which He has kindled in every one of his rational creatures.—[Henry Nelson Coleridge.]

Lincoln's Inn, September 22, 1840.

Being persuaded of nothing more than of this, that whether it be matter of speculation or of practice, no untruth can possibly avail the patron and defender long, and that things most truly are likewise most behovefully spoken.—Hooker.

Any thing will be pretended rather than admit the necessity of internal evidence, or acknowledge, among the external proofs, the convictions and experiences of Believers, though they should be common to all the faithful in every age of the Church. But in all superstition there is a heart of unbelief; and, vice versâ, where a man's belief is but a superficial acquiescence, credulity is the natural result and accompaniment, if only he be not required to sink into the depths of his being, where the sensual man can no longer draw breath.—[Coleridge's Literary Remains.]

Faith subsists in the synthesis of the Reason and the individual Will. By virtue of the latter, therefore, it must be an energy, and, inasmuch as it relates to the whole moral man, it must be exerted in each and all of his constituents or incidents, faculties and tendencies:—it must be a total, not a partial—a continuous, not a desultory or occasional—energy. And by virtue of the former, that is, Reason, Faith must be a Light, a form of knowing, a beholding of Truth. In the incomparable words of the Evangelist, therefore,—Faith must be a Light originating in the Logos, or the substantial Reason, which is co-eternal and one with the Holy Will, and which Light is at the same time the Life of men. Now, as Life is here the sum or collective of all moral and spiritual acts, in suffering, doing, and being, so is Faith the source and the sum, the energy and the principle of the fidelity of Man to God, by the subordination of his human Will, in all provinces of his nature, to his Reason, as the sum of spiritual Truth, representing and manifesting the Will Divine.—[Coleridge's Essay on Faith: Literary Remains, vol. iv. page 437. We reprint the entire essay at the end of the present volume. See p. 339.—Ed.]

THE PENTAD OF OPERATIVE CHRISTIANITY

Prothesis

Christ, the Word.

Thesis

Mesothesis,

Antithesis

or the Indifference,

The Scriptures.

The Holy Spirit.

The Church.

Synthesis

The Preacher.[170]

The Scriptures, the Spirit, and the Church, are co-ordinate; the indispensable conditions and the working causes of the perpetuity, and continued renascence and spiritual life of Christ still militant. The Eternal Word, Christ from everlasting, is the Prothesis, or identity;—the Scriptures and the Church are the two poles, or Thesis and Antithesis; and the Preacher in direct line under the Spirit, but likewise the point of junction of the Written Word and the Church, is the Synthesis.

This is God's Hand in the World.

[170]   Coleridge gives this same "Pentad" in his "Notes on Donne," "Literary Remains," v. iii. pp. 92-153.—Ed.

Seven Letters to a Friend concerning the bounds between the right, and the superstitious, use and estimation of the Sacred Canon; in which the Writer submissively discloses his own private judgment on the following Questions:—

I. Is it necessary, or expedient, to insist on the belief of the divine origin and authority of all, and every part of the Canonical Books as the Condition, or first principle, of Christian Faith?—

II. Or, may not the due appreciation of the Scriptures collectively be more safely relied on as the result and consequence of the belief in Christ; the gradual increase—in respect of particular passages—of our spiritual discernment of their truth and authority supplying a test and measure of our own growth and progress as individual believers, without the servile fear that prevents or overclouds the free honour which cometh from love? 1 John iv. 18.

LETTERS ON THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.

LETTER I.

My Dear Friend,

I employed the compelled and most unwelcome leisure of severe indisposition in reading The Confessions of a fair Saint in Mr. Carlyle's recent translation of the Wilhelm Meister, which might, I think, have been better rendered literally The Confessions of a Beautiful Soul.[171] This, acting in conjunction with the concluding sentences of your Letter, threw my thoughts inward on my own religious experience, and gave the immediate occasion to the following Confessions of one, who is neither fair nor saintly, but who—groaning under a deep sense of infirmity and manifold imperfection—feels the want, the necessity, of religious support;—who cannot afford to lose any the smallest buttress, but who not only loves Truth even for itself, and when it reveals itself aloof from all interest, but who loves it with an indescribable awe, which too often withdraws the genial sap of his activity from the columnar trunk, the sheltering leaves, the bright and fragrant flower, and the foodful or medicinal fruitage, to the deep root, ramifying in obscurity and labyrinthine way-winning—

In darkness there to house unknown,Far underground,Pierc'd by no soundSave such as live in Fancy's ear alone.That listens for the uptorn mandrake's parting groan!

I should, perhaps, be a happier—at all events a more useful—man if my mind were otherwise constituted. But so it is: and even with regard to Christianity itself, like certain plants, I creep towards the light, even though it draw me away from the more nourishing warmth. Yea, I should do so, even if the light had made its way through a rent in the wall of the Temple. Glad, indeed, and grateful am I, that not in the Temple itself, but only in one or two of the side chapels—not essential to the edifice, and probably not coeval with it—have I found the light absent, and that the rent in the wall has but admitted the free light of the Temple itself.

I shall best communicate the state of my faith by taking the creed, or system of credenda, common to all the Fathers of the Reformation—overlooking, as non-essential, the differences between the several Reformed Churches—according to the five main classes or sections into which the aggregate distributes itself to my apprehension. I have then only to state the effect produced on my mind by each, of these, or the quantum of recipiency and coincidence in myself relatively thereto, in order to complete my Confession of Faith.

I. The Absolute; the innominable Αυτοπατωρ et Causa Sui, in whose transcendant I Am, as the Ground, is whatever verily is:—the Triune God, by whose Word and Spirit, as the transcendant Cause, existswhatever substantially exists:—God Almighty—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, undivided, unconfounded, co-eternal. This class I designate by the word, Στασις.

II. The Eternal Possibilities; the actuality of which hath not its origin in God: Chaos spirituale:—Αποστασις.

III. The Creation and Formation of the heaven and earth by the Redemptive Word:—The Apostasy of Man:—The Redemption of Man:—the Incarnation of the Word in the Son of Man:—the Crucifixion and Resurrection of the Son of Man:—the Descent of the Comforter:—Repentance (μετανοια):—Regeneration:—Faith:—Prayer:— Grace: Communion with the Spirit: Conflict: Self-abasement: Assurance through the righteousness of Christ: Spiritual Growth: Love: Discipline: Perseverance: Hope in death:—Μεταστασις—Αναστασις.

IV. But these offers, gifts, and graces are not for one, or for a few. They are offered to all. Even when the Gospel is preached to a single individual, it is offered to him as to one of a great Household. Not only Man, but, says St. Paul, the whole Creation is included in the consequences of the Fall—τηςαποστασεως—; so also in those of the Change at the Redemption—τηςμεταστασεως, καιτηςαναστασεως. We too shall be raised in the Body. Christianity is fact no less than truth. It is spiritual, yet so as to be historical; and between these two poles there must likewise be a midpoint, in which the historical and spiritual meet. Christianity must have its history—a history of itself, and likewise the history of its introduction, its spread, and its outward-becoming; and, as the midpoint above-mentioned, a portion of these facts must be miraculous, that is, phænomena in nature that are beyond nature. Furthermore, the history of all historical nations must in some sense be its history;—in other words, all history must be providential, and this a providence, a preparation, and a looking forward to Christ.

Here, then, we have four out of the five classes. And in all these the sky of my belief is serene, unclouded by a doubt. Would to God that my faith, that faith which works on the whole man, confirming and conforming, were but in just proportion to my belief, to the full acquiescence of my intellect, and the deep consent of my conscience! The very difficulties argue the truth of the whole scheme and system for my understanding, since I see plainly that so must the truth appear, if it be the truth.

V. But there is a Book, of two parts,—each part consisting of several books. The first part—(I speak in the character of an uninterested critic or philologist)—contains the reliques of the literature of the Hebrew people, while the Hebrew was still the living language. The second part comprises the writings, and, with one or two inconsiderable and doubtful exceptions, all the writings of the followers of Christ within the space of ninety years from the date of the Resurrection. I do not myself think that any of these writings were composed as late as A.D. 120; but I wish to preclude all dispute. This Book I resume, as read, and yet unread,—read and familiar to my mind in all parts, but which is yet to be perused as a whole;—or rather, a work, cujus particulas et sententiolas omnes et singulas recogniturus sum, but the component integers of which, and their conspiration, I have yet to study. I take up this work with the purpose to read it for the first time as I should read any other work,—as far at least as I can or dare. For I neither can, nor dare, throw off a strong and awful prepossession in its favour—certain as I am that a large part of the light and life, in and by which I see, love, and embrace the truths and the strengths co-organized into a living body of faith and knowledge in the four preceding classes, has been directly or indirectly derived to me from this sacred volume,—and unable to determine what I do not owe to its influences. But even on this account, and because it has these inalienable claims on my reverence and gratitude, I will not leave it in the power of unbelievers to say, that the Bible is for me only what the Koran is for the deaf Turk, and the Vedas for the feeble and acquiescent Hindoo. No; I will retire up into the mountain, and hold secret commune with my Bible above the contagious blastments of prejudice, and the fog-blight of selfish superstition. For fear hath torment. And what though my reason be to the power and splendour of the Scriptures but as the reflected and secondary shine of the moon compared with the solar radiance:—yet the sun endures the occasional co-presence of the unsteady orb, and leaving it visible seems to sanction the comparison. There is a Light higher than all, even the Word that was in the beginning;—the Light, of which light itself is but the shechinah and cloudy tabernacle;—the Word that is light for every man, and life for as many as give heed to it. If between this Word and the written Letter I shall any where seem to myself to find a discrepance, I will not conclude that such there actually is; nor on the other hand will I fall under the condemnation of them that would lie for God, but seek as I may, be thankful for what I have—and wait.

With such purposes, with such feelings, have I perused the books of the Old and New Testaments,—each book as a whole, and also as an integral part. And need I say that I have met every where more or less copious sources of truth, and power, and purifying impulses;—that I have found words for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterances for my hidden griefs, and pleadings for my shame and my feebleness? In short whatever finds me, bears witness for itself that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit, even from the same Spirit, which remaining in itself, yet regenerateth all other powers, and in all ages entering into holy souls maketh them friends of God, and prophets. (Wisd. vii.) And here, perhaps, I might have been content to rest, if I had not learned that, as a Christian, I cannot,—must not—stand alone; or if I had not known that more than this was holden and required by the Fathers of the Reformation, and by the Churches collectively, since the Council of Nice at latest;—the only exceptions being that doubtful one of the corrupt Romish Church implied, though not avowed, in its equalization of the Apocryphal Books with those of the Hebrew Canon,[172] and the irrelevant one of the few and obscure Sects who acknowledge no historical Christianity. This somewhat more, in which Jerome, Augustine, Luther, and Hooker, were of one and the same judgment, and less than which not one of them would have tolerated—would it fall within the scope of my present doubts and objections? I hope it would not. Let only their general expressions be interpreted by their treatment of the Scriptures in detail, and I dare confidently trust that it would not. For I can no more reconcile the Doctrine which startles my belief with the practice and particular declarations of these great men, than with the convictions of my own understanding and conscience. At all events—and I cannot too early or too earnestly guard against any misapprehension of my meaning and purpose—let it be distinctly understood that my arguments and objections apply exclusively to the following Doctrine or Dogma. To the opinions which individual divines have advanced in lieu of this doctrine, my only objection, as far as I object, is—that I do not understand them. The precise enunciation of this doctrine I defer to the commencement of the next Letter. Farewell.

[171]   Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele.—H. N. C.

[172]   Si quis—(Esdræ primum et secundum, Tobiam, Judith, Esther, &c.)—pro sacris et canonicis non susceperit, ... anathema sit. Conc. Trid. Decr. Sess. IV.—H. N. C.