The sublime and abstruse doctrines of Christian belief belong to the
church; but the faith of the individual, centered in his heart, is or may
be collateral to them.[1]
Faith is subjective. I throw myself in adoration before God; acknowledge
myself his creature,--simple, weak, lost; and pray for help and pardon
through Jesus Christ: but when I rise from my knees, I discuss the doctrine
of the Trinity as I would a problem in geometry; in the same temper of
mind, I mean, not by the same process of reasoning, of course.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge used very frequently to insist upon the distinction between
belief and faith. He once told me, with very great earnestness, that if he
were that moment convinced--a conviction, the possibility of which,
indeed, he could not realize to himself--that the New Testament was a
forgery from beginning to end--wide as the desolation in his moral
feelings would be, he should not abate one jot of his faith in God's power
and mercy through some manifestation of his being towards man, either in
time past or future, or in the hidden depths where time and space are not.
This was, I believe, no more than a vivid expression of what he always
maintained, that no man had attained to a full faith who did not
_recognize_ in the Scriptures a correspondency to his own nature, or see
that his own powers of reason, will, and understanding were preconfigured
to the reception of the Christian doctrines and promises.--ED.]
_August_ 4. 1832.