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
might be possible, and subject of insight; but it was not determinable
by words, and was therefore to be left among the rewards of the Spirit
to the pure in heart in inward vision and silent contemplation.
Ib. s. xl. p. 495.
All that is necessary to give a full and satistory import to this
excellent paragraph, and to secure it from all inconvenient
consequences, is to understand the distinction between the objective and
general revelation, by which the whole Church is walled around and kept
together ('principium totalitatis et cohæsionis'), and the subjective
revelation, the light from the life ('John' i. 4.), by which the
individual believers, each according to the grace given, grow in faith.
For the former, the Apostles' Creed, in its present form, is more than
enough; for the latter, it might be truly said in the words of the
fourth Gospel, that all the books which the world could contain would
not suffice to set forth explicitly that mystery in which all treasures
of knowledge are hidden, 'reconduntur'.
From the Apostles' Creed, nevertheless, if regarded in the former point
of view, several clauses must be struck out, not as false, but as not
necessary. "I believe that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified under
Pontius Pilate, rose from the dead on the third day; and I receive him
as the Christ, the Son of the living God, who died for the remission of
the sins of as many as believe in the Father through him, in whom we
have the promise of life everlasting." This is the sufficient creed.
More than this belongs to the Catechism, and then to the study of the
Scriptures.
Ib. s. vi. p. 506.
So did the ancient Papias understand Christ's millenary reign upon
earth, and so depressed the hopes of Christianity and their desires to
the longing and expectation of temporal pleasures and satisfactions.
And he was followed by Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Tertullian, Lactantius,
and indeed, the whole Church generally, till St. Austin and St.
Jerome's time, who, first of any whose works are extant, did reprove
the error.
Bishop Taylor is, I think, mistaken in two points; first, that the
Catholic Millenaries looked forward to carnal pleasures in the kingdom
of Christ;--for even the Jewish Rabbis of any note represented the
'Millenium' as the preparative and transitional state to perfect
spiritualization:--second, that the doctrine of Christ's reign upon
earth rested wholly or principally on the twentieth chapter of the
Revelations, which actually, in my judgment, opposes it.
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