The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 3Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Religion
The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 3
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Literature -- History and criticism
our author himself again furnish abundant materials for the work. For
surely, since the Apostolic age, never did the spirit of supplication
move on the deeps of a human soul with a more genial life, or more
profoundly impregnate the rich gifts of a happy nature, than in the
person of Jeremy Taylor! To render the fruits available for all, we need
only a combination of Christian experience with that finer sense of
propriety which we may venture to call devotional taste in the
individual choosing, or chosen, to select, arrange and methodize; and no
less in the dignitaries appointed to revise and sanction the collections.
Perhaps another want is a scheme of Christian psalmody fit for all our
congregations, and which should not exceed 150 or 200 psalms and hymns.
Surely if the Church does not hesitate in the titles of the Psalms and
of the chapters of the Prophets to give the Christian sense and
application, there can be no consistent objection to do the same in its
spiritual songs. The effect on the morals, feelings, and information of
the people at large is not to be calculated. It is this more than any
other single cause that has saved the peasantry of Protestant Germany
from the contagion of infidelity.
Ib. s. xvii. p. 325.
Thus the Holy Ghost brought to their memory all things which Jesus
spake and did, and, by that means, we come to know all that the Spirit
knew to be necessary for us.
Alas! it is one of the sad effects or results of the enslaving Old
Bailey fashion of defending, or, as we may well call it, apologizing
for, Christianity,--introduced by Grotius and followed up by the modern
'Alogi', whose wordless, lifeless, spiritless, scheme of belief it alone
suits,--that we dare not ask, whether the passage here referred to must
necessarily be understood as asserting a miraculous remembrancing,
distinctly sensible by the Apostles; whether the gift had any especial
reference to the composition of the Gospels; whether the assumption is
indispensable to a well grounded and adequate confidence in the veracity
of the narrators or the verity of the narration; if not, whether it does
not unnecessarily entangle the faith of the acute and learned inquirer
in difficulties, which do not affect the credibility of history in its
common meaning--rather indeed confirm our reliance on its authority in
all the points of agreement, that is, in every point which we are in the
least concerned to know,--and expose the simple and unlearned Christian
to objections best fitted to perplex, because easiest to be understood,
and within the capacity of the shallowest infidel to bring forward and
exaggerate; and lastly, whether the Scriptures must not be read in that
faith which comes from higher sources than history, that is, if they are
read to any good and Christian purpose. God forbid that I should become
the advocate of mechanical infusions and possessions, superseding the
reason and responsible will. The light 'a priori', in which, according
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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