The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838Gillman, James
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The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838
Gillman, James
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834; Critics -- Great Britain -- Biography; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
I have in my head some floating ideas on the 'Logos', which I hope,
hereafter, to mould into a consistent form; but it is a gross
perversion of the truth, in 'Socinians', to declare that we believe in
'Three Gods', and they know it to be false. They might, with equal
justice, affirm that we believe in 'three suns'. The meanest peasant,
who has acquired the first rudiments of Christianity, would shrink
back from a thought so monstrous. Still the Trinity has its
difficulties. It would be strange if otherwise. A 'Revelation' that
revealed nothing, not within the grasp of human reason!--no
religation, no binding over again, as before said: but these
difficulties are shadows, contrasted with the substantive, and
insurmountable obstacles with which they contend who admit the 'Divine
authority of Scripture', with the 'superlative excellence of Christ',
and yet undertake to prove that these Scriptures teach, and that
Christ taught, his own 'pure humanity!'
If Jesus Christ was merely a Man,--if he was not God as well as Man,
be it considered, he could not have been even a 'good man'. There is
no medium. The SAVIOUR 'in that case' was absolutely 'a deceiver!'
one, transcendently 'unrighteous!' in advancing pretensions to
miracles, by the 'Finger of God,' which he never performed; and by
asserting claims, (as a man) in the most aggravated sense,
blasphemous!
These consequences, Socinians, to be consistent, must allow, and which
impious arrogation of Divinity in Christ, (according to their faith,)
as well as his false assumption of a community of 'glory' with the
Father, 'before the world was,' even they will be necessitated to
admit, completely exonerated the Jews, according to their law, in
crucifying one, who 'being a man,' 'made himself God!' But, in the
Christian, rather than in the 'Socinian', or 'Pharisaic' view, all
these objections vanish, and harmony succeeds to inexplicable
confusion. If Socinians hesitate in ascribing 'unrighteousness' to
Christ, the inevitable result of their principles, they tremble, as
well they might, at their avowed creed, and virtually renounce what
they profess to uphold.
The Trinity, as Bishop Leighton has well remarked, is, 'a doctrine of
faith, not of demonstration,' except in a 'moral' sense. If the New
Testament declare it, not in an insulated passage, but through the
whole breadth of its pages, rendering, with any other admission, the
Book, which is the Christian's anchor-hold of hope, dark and
contradictory, then it is not to be rejected, but on a penalty that
reduces to an atom, all the sufferings this earth can inflict.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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