The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 2Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
History
The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 2
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Literature -- History and criticism; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Criticism and interpretation
enesi], or possibly from [Greek: en thusiais], those who, in sacrifice
to, or at, the altar of truth or falsehood, are possessed by a spirit or
influence mightier than their own individuality. 'Fanatici-qui circum
fana favorem mutuo contrahunt el afflant'--those who in the same
conventicle, or before the same shrine, relique or image, heat and
ferment by co-acervation.
I am fully aware that the words are used by the best writers
indifferently, but such must be the case in very many words in a
composite language, such as the English, before they are desynonymized.
Thus imagination and fancy; chronical and temporal, and many others.
FÉNÉLON ON CHARITY.[1]
Note to pages 196,197.
This chapter is plausible, shewy, insinuating, and (as indeed is the
character of the whole work) 'makes the amiable.' To many,--to myself
formerly,--it has appeared a mere dispute about words: but it is by no
means of so harmless a character, for it tends to give a false direction
to our thoughts, by diverting the conscience from the ruined and
corrupted state, in which we are without Christ. Sin is the disease.
What is the remedy? What is the antidote?--Charity?--Pshaw! Charity in
the large apostolic sense of the term is the health, the state to be
obtained by the use of the remedy, not the sovereign balm itself,--faith
of grace,--faith in the God-manhood, the cross, the mediation, and
perfected righteousness, of Jesus, to the utter rejection and abjuration
of all righteousness of our own! Faith alone is the restorative. The
Romish scheme is preposterous;--it puts the rill before the spring.
Faith is the source,--charity, that is, the whole Christian life, is the
stream from it. It is quite childish to talk of faith being imperfect
without charity. As wisely might you say that a fire, however bright and
strong, was imperfect without heat, or that the sun, however cloudless,
was imperfect without beams. The true answer would be:--it is not
faith,--but utter reprobate faithlessness, which may indeed very
possibly coexist with a mere acquiescence of the understanding in
certain facts recorded by the Evangelists. But did John, or Paul, or
Martin Luther, ever flatter this barren belief with the name of saving
faith? No. Little ones! Be not deceived. Wear at your bosoms that
precious amulet against all the spells of antichrist, the 20th verse of
the 2nd chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians:--'I am crucified
with Christ, nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me:
and the life, which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the
Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me'.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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