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
In continuation of this reasoning, if God who is light, the Sun of the
Moral World, should in his union of Infinite Wisdom, Power, and
Goodness, and from all Eternity, have ordained that an emanation from
himself (for aught we know, an essential emanation, as light is
inseparable from the luminary of day) should not only have existed in
his Son, in the fulness of time to be united to a mortal body, but
that a like emanation from himself (also perhaps essential) should
have constituted the Holy Spirit, who, without losing his ubiquity,
was more especially sent to this lower earth, 'by' the SON, 'at' the
impulse of the Father, then, in the most comprehensive sense, God, and
his Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, are ONE. 'Three Persons in
one God,' and thus form the true Trinity in Unity.
To suppose that more than ONE Independent Power, or Governing mind
exists in the whole universe, is absolute Polytheism, against which
the denunciations of all the Jewish, and Christian Canonical books
were directed. And if there be but ONE directing MIND, that Mind is
GOD!--operating, however, in Three Persons, according to the direct
and uniform declarations of that inspiration which 'brought life and
immortality to light.' Yet this divine doctrine of the Trinity is to
be received, not because it is, or can be clear to finite
apprehension, but, (in reiteration of the argument) because the
Scriptures, in their unsophisticated interpretation expressly state
it. The Trinity, therefore, from its important aspects, and Biblical
prominence, is the grand article of faith, and the foundation of the
whole Christian system.
Who can say, as Christ [17] and the Holy Ghost proceeded from, and are
still one with the Father, and as all the disciples of Christ derive
their fulness from him, and, in spirit, are inviolately united to him
as a branch is to the vine, who can say, but that, in one view, what
was once mysteriously separated, may, as mysteriously, be recombined,
and, (without interfering with the everlasting Trinity, and the
individuality of the spiritual and seraphic orders) the Son, at the
consummation of all things, deliver up his mediatorial kingdom to the
Father, and God, in some peculiar, and infinitely sublime sense,
become All 'in' All!
God love you,
S.T. COLERIDGE." [18]
Those who are acquainted with Mr. Coleridge's maturer view of the
doctrine of the Trinity, will not need to be informed that this letter
does not convey his later conviction in regard to this awful mystery,
and will know that his philosophic meditations rested essentially in the
same faith that dictated the Article of the Church of England on this
subject.
Mr. De Quincey has made several mistatements in a memoir on Mr.
Coleridge, which he wrote in Tait's Magazine; but it may be only fair
first to quote a few interesting remarks, with which he begins:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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