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
This is what I most complain of in Jeremy Taylor's ethics; namely, that
he constantly refers us to the deeds or 'phenomena' in time, the
effluents from the source, or like the 'species' of Epicurus; while the
corrupt nature is declared guiltless and irresponsible; and this too on
the pretext that it was prior in time to the commandment, and therefore
not against it. But time is no more predicable of eternal reason than of
will; but not of will; for if a will be at all, it must be 'ens
spirituale'; and this is the first negative definition of
spiritual--whatever having true being is not contemplable in the forms
of time and space. Now the necessary consequence of Taylor's scheme is a
conscience-worrying, casuistical, monkish work-holiness. Deeply do I
feel the difficulty and danger that besets the opposite scheme; and
never would I preach it, except under such provisos as would render it
perfectly compatible with the positions previously established by Taylor
in this chapter, s. xliv. p. 158. 'Lastly; the regenerate not only hath
received the Spirit of God, but is wholly led by him,' &c.
Ib.
If this Treatise of Repentance contain Bishop Taylor's habitual and
final convictions, I am persuaded that in some form or other he believed
in a Purgatory. In fact, dreams and apparitions may have been the
pretexts, and the immense addition of power and wealth which the belief
entailed on the priesthood, may have been their motives for patronizing
it; but the efficient cause of its reception by the churches is to be
found in the preceding Judaic legality and monk-moral of the Church,
according to which the fewer only could hope for the peace of heaven as
their next immediate state. The holiness that sufficed for this would
evince itself (it was believed) by the power of working miracles.
Ib. s. lii. p. 208.
'It shall not be pardoned in this world nor in the world to come';
that is, neither to the Jews nor to the Gentiles. For 'sæculum hoc',
this world, in Scripture, is the period of the Jews' synagogue, and
[Greek: mellon aion], the world to come, is taken for the Gospel, or
the age of the Messias, frequently among the Jews.
This is, I think, a great and grievous mistake. The Rabbis of best name
divide into two or three periods, the difference being wholly in the
words; for the dividers by three meant the same as those by two.
The first was the 'dies expectationis', or 'hoc sæculum,' [Greek: en
touto kairo]: the second 'dies Messiæ', the time of the Messiah, that
is, the 'millenium': the third the 'sæculum futurum', or future state,
which last was absolutely spiritual and celestial.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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