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
But the most important question is as to those vicious habits in which
there is no love to sin, but only a dread and recoiling from intolerable
pain, as in the case of the miserable drunkard! I trust that these
epileptic agonies are rather the punishments than the augumenters of his
guilt. The annihilation of the wicked is a fearful thought, yet it would
solve many difficulties both in natural religion and in Scripture. And
Taylor in his Arminian dread of Calvinism is always too shy of this
"grace of God:" he never denies, yet never admits, it any separate
operancy 'per se'. And this, I fancy, is the true distinction of
Arminianisrn and Calvinism in their moral effects. Arminianism is cruel
to individuals, for fear of damaging the race by false hopes and
improper confidences; while Calvinism is horrible for the race, but full
of consolation to the suffering individual.
The next section is, taken together, one of the many instances that
confirm my opinion that Calvinism (Archbishop Leighton's for example),
compared with Taylor's Arminianism, is as the lamb in the wolf's skin to
the wolf in the lamb's skin: the one is cruel in the phrases, the other
in the doctrine.
Ib. s. lvi. p. 469.
But if a single act of contrition cannot procure pardon of sins that
are habitual, then a wicked man that returns not till it be too late
to root out vicious habits, must despair of salvation. I answer, &c.
Would not Taylor's purposes have been sufficiently attained by pressing
the contrast between attrition and contrition with faith, and the utter
improbability that the latter (which alone can be efficient), shall be
vouchsafed to a sinner who has continued in his sins in the flattery of
a death-bed repentance; a blasphemy that seems too near that against the
Holy Ghost? My objection to Taylor is, that he seems to reduce the death
of Christ almost to a cypher; a contrivance rather to reconcile the
attributes of God, than an act of infinite love to save sinners. But the
truth is, that this is the peccant part of Arminianism, and Tillotson is
yet more open than Taylor. Forbid me, common goodness, that I should
think Tillotson conscious of Socinianism! but that his tenets involved
it, I more than suspect. See his Discourses on Transubstantiation, and
those near it in the same volume.
Ib. lxiv. p. 478.
Now there is no peradventure, but new-converted persons, heathens
newly giving up their names to Christ and being baptized, if they die
in an hour, and were baptized half an hour after they believe in
Christ, are heirs of salvation.
This granted, I should little doubt of confuting all the foregoing, as
far as I object to it. I would rather be 'durus pater infantum', like
Austin, than 'durus pater ægrotantium'. Taylor considers all Christians
who are so called.
Ib. s. lxvi. p. 481.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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