'In initio'.
I strongly suspect that this third part, which ought not to have been
thus conjoined with Bunyan's work, was written by a Roman Catholic
priest, for the very purpose of counteracting the doctrine of faith so
strongly enforced in the genuine Progress.
Ib. p. 443, in Edwards.
Against all which evils fasting is the proper remedy.
It would have been well if the writer had explained exactly what he
meant by the fasting, here so strongly recommended; during what period
of time abstinence from food is to continue and so on. The effects, I
imagine, must in good measure depend on the health of the individual. In
some constitutions, fasting so disorders the stomach as to produce the
very contrary of good;--confusion of mind, loose imaginations against
the man's own will, and the like.
'In fine'.
One of the most influential arguments, one of those the force of which I
feel even more than I see, for the divinity of the New Testament, and
with especial weight in the writings of John and Paul, is the
unspeakable difference between them and all other the earliest extant
writings of the Christian Church, even those of the same age (as, for
example, the Epistle of Barnabas,) or of the next following,--a
difference that transcends all degree, and is truly a difference in
kind. Nay, the catalogue of the works written by the Reformers and in
the two centuries after the Reformation, contain many many volumes far
superior in Christian light and unction to the best of the Fathers. How
poor and unevangelic is Hermas in comparison with our Pilgrim's
Progress!
[Footnote 1: P. 98, &c. of the edition by Murray and Major, 1830 Ed.]
[Footnote 2: See 'ante'. Ed.]
[Footnote 3: Prefixed to an edition of the Pilgrim's Progress, by R.
Edwards, 1820. Ed.]
[Footnote 4: The second of two 'Letters written to persons under trouble
of mind.' Ed.]
[Footnote 5: Sermon of the certainty and perpetuity of faith in the
elect. Vol. iii. p. 583. Keale's edit. Ed.]
NOTES ON SELECT DISCOURSES BY JOHN SMITH. [1]
It would make a delightful and instructive essay, to draw up a critical
and (where possible) biographical account of the Latitudinarian party at
Cambridge, from the close of the reign of James I to the latter half of
Charles II.
The greater number were Platonists, so called at least, and such they
believed themselves to be, but more truly Plotinists. Thus Cudworth, Dr.
Jackson (chaplain of Charles I, and vicar of Newcastle-on-Tyne), Henry
More, this John Smith, and some others. Taylor was a Gassendist, or
'inter Epicureos evangelizantes', and, as far as I know, he is the only
exception.
They were all alike admirers of Grotius, which in Jeremy Taylor was
consistent with the tone of his philosophy. The whole party, however,
and a more amiable never existed, were scared and disgusted into this by
the catachrestic language and skeleton half-truths of the systematic
divines of the Synod of Dort on the one hand, and by the sickly
broodings of the Pietists and Solomon's-Song preachers on the other.
What they all wanted was a pre-inquisition into the mind, as part organ,
part constituent, of all knowledge, an examination of the scales,
weights and measures themselves abstracted from the objects to be
weighed or measured by them; in short, a transcendental æsthetic, logic,
and noetic. Lord Herbert was at the entrance of, nay, already some paces
within, the shaft and adit of the mine, but he turned abruptly back, and
the honour of establishing a complete [Greek: propaideía] of philosophy
was reserved for Immanuel Kant, a century or more afterwards.
From the confounding of Plotinism with Platonism, the Latitudinarian
divines fell into the mistake of finding in the Greek philosophy many
anticipations of the Christian Faith, which in fact were but its echoes.
The inference is as perilous as inevitable, namely, that even the
mysteries of Christianity needed no revelation, having been previously
discovered and set forth by unaided reason.
...
The argument from the mere universality of the belief, appears to me far
stronger in favour of a surviving soul and a state after death, than for
the existence of the Supreme Being. In the former, it is one doctrine in
the Englishman and in the Hottentot; the differences are accidents not
affecting the subject, otherwise than as different seals would affect
the same wax, though Molly, the maid, used her thimble, and Lady
'Virtuosa' an 'intaglio' of the most exquisite workmanship.
Far otherwise in the latter. 'Mumbo Jumbo', or the 'cercocheronychous
Nick-Senior', or whatever score or score thousand invisible huge men
fear and fancy engender in the brain of ignorance to be hatched by the
nightmare of defenceless and self-conscious weakness--these are not the
same as, but are 'toto genere' diverse from, the 'una et unica
substantia' of Spinosa, or the World-God of the Stoics.
And each of these again is as diverse from the living Lord God, the
creator of heaven and earth. Nay, this equivoque on God is as
mischievous as it is illogical: it is the sword and buckler of Deism.
OF THE EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF GOD.
Besides, when we review our own immortal souls and their dependency
upon some Almighty mind, we know that we neither did nor could produce
ourselves, and withal know that all that power which lies within the
compass of ourselves will serve for no other purpose than to apply
several pre-existent things one to another, from whence all
generations and mutations arise, which are nothing else but the events
of different applications and complications of bodies that were
existent before; and therefore that which produced that substantial
life and mind by which we know ourselves, must be something much more
mighty than we are, and can be no less indeed than omnipotent, and
must also be the first architect and [Greek: daemiourgòs] of all other
beings, and the perpetual supporter of them.
A Rhodian leap! Where our knowledge of a cause is derived from our
knowledge of the effect, which is falsely (I think) here supposed,
nothing can be logically, that is, apodeictically, inferred, but the
adequacy of the former to the latter. The mistake, common to Smith, with
a hundred other writers, arises out of an equivocal use of the word
'know.' In the scientific sense, as implying insight, and which ought to
be the sense of the word in this place, we might be more truly said to
know the soul by God, than to know God by the soul.
...
So the Sibyl was noted by Heraclitus as [Greek: mainomén_o stómati
gelastà kaì akall_ópista phtheggoménae] 'as one speaking ridiculous
and unseemly speeches with her furious mouth.'
This fragment is misquoted and misunderstood: for--[Greek: gelastà] it
should be [Greek: amuristà]. unperfumed, inornate lays, not redolent of
art.--Render it thus:
... Not her's
To win the sense by words of rhetoric,
Lip-blossoms breathing perishable sweets;
But by the power of the informing Word
Roll sounding onward through a thousand years
Her deep prophetic bodements.
[Greek: Stómati mainomén_o] is with ecstatic mouth.
...
If the ascetic virtues, or disciplinary exercises, derived from the
schools of philosophy (Pythagorean, Platonic and Stoic) were carried to
an extreme in the middle ages, it is most certain that they are at
present in a far more grievous disproportion underrated and neglected.
The 'regula maxima' of the ancient [Greek: askaesis] was to conquer the
body by abstracting the attention from it. Our maxim is to conciliate
the body by attending to it, and counteracting or precluding one set of
sensations by another, the servile dependence of the mind on the body
remaining the same. Instead of the due subservience of the body to the
mind (the favorite language of our Sidneys and Miltons) we hear nothing
at present but of health, good digestion, pleasurable state of general
feeling, and the like.
[Footnote 1: Of Queen's College, Cambridge, 1660.]
TO ADAM STEINMETZ K------. [1]
MY DEAR GODCHILD,
I offer up the same fervent prayer for you now, as I did kneeling before
the altar, when you were baptized into Christ, and solemnly received as
a living member of His spiritual body, the Church.
Years must pass before you will be able to read with an understanding
heart what I now write; but I trust that the all-gracious God, the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, who, by his only
begotten Son, (all mercies in one sovereign mercy!) has redeemed you
from the evil ground, and willed you to be born out of darkness, but
into light--out of death, but into life--out of sin, but into
righteousness, even into the 'Lord our Righteousness'; I trust that He
will graciously hear the prayers of your dear parents, and be with you
as the spirit of health and growth in body and mind.
My dear Godchild!--You received from Christ's minister at the baptismal
font, as your Christian name, the name of a most dear friend of your
father's, and who was to me even as a son, the late Adam Steinmetz,
whose fervent aspiration and ever-paramount aim, even from early youth,
was to be a Christian in thought, word, and deed--in will, mind, and
affections.
I too, your Godfather, have known what the enjoyments and advantages of
this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learning and
intellectual power can bestow; and with all the experience which more
than threescore years can give, I now, on the eve of my departure,
declare to you (and earnestly pray that you may hereafter live and act
on the conviction) that health is a great blessing,--competence obtained
by honorable industry a great blessing,--and a great blessing it is to
have kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the
greatest of all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all
privileges, is to be indeed a Christian. But I have been likewise,
through a large portion of my later life, a sufferer, sorely afflicted
with bodily pains, languors, and bodily infirmities; and, for the last
three or four years, have, with few and brief intervals, been confined
to a sick-room, and at this moment, in great weakness and heaviness,
write from a sick-bed, hopeless of a recovery, yet without prospect of a
speedy recovery; and I, thus on the very brink of the grave, solemnly
bear witness to you that the Almighty Redeemer, most gracious in His
promises to them that truly seek Him, is faithful to perform what He
hath promised, and has preserved, under all my pains and infirmities,
the inward peace that passeth all understanding, with the supporting
assurance of a reconciled God, who will not withdraw His Spirit from me
in the conflict, and in His own time will deliver me from the Evil One!
O, my dear Godchild! eminently blessed are those who begin early to
seek, fear, and love their God, trusting wholly in the righteousness and
mediation of their Lord, Redeemer, Saviour, and everlasting High Priest,
Jesus Christ!
O, preserve this as a legacy and bequest from your unseen Godfather and
friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
July 13, 1834. [2]
[Footnote 1: See 'ante', p. 291. Ed.]
[Footnote 2: He died on the 25th day of the same month.]
END OF VOL. III.
CORRIGENDA.
Pages 32, 33, insert _men_ between the pages.
Page 41. N. after _see post_, add _Vol. IV._
330, line 7 from bottom, _for_ result _read_ rennet.