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
The taking away the guilt does not, however, imply of necessity the
natural removal of the consequences of sin. And in this sense, I
suppose, the subtler Romanists would defend this accursed doctrine. A
man may have bitterly repented and thoroughly reformed the sin of
drunkenness, and by this genuine 'metanoia' and faith in Christ
crucified have obtained forgiveness of the guilt, and yet continue to
suffer a heavy punishment in a schirrous liver or incurable dyspepsy.
But who authorized the Popes to extend this to the soul?
Ib. p. 153.
St. Ambrose saith that 'death is a haven of rest.'
Consider the strange and oftentimes awful dreams accompanying the
presence of irritating matter in the lower abdomen, and the seeming
appropriation of particular sorts of dream images and incidents to
affections of particular organs and 'viscera.' Do the material causes
act positively, so that with the removal of the body by death the total
cause is removed, and of course the effects? Or only negatively and
indirectly, by lessening and suspending that continuous texture of
organic sensation, which, by drawing outward the attention of the soul,
sheaths her from her own state and its corresponding activities?--A
fearful question, which I too often agitate, and which agitates me even
in my dreams, when most commonly I am in one of Swedenborg's hells,
doubtful whether I am once more to be awaked, and thinking our dreams to
be the true state of the soul disembodied when not united with Christ.
On awaking from such dreams, I never fail to find some local pain,
'circa-' or 'infra-'umbilical, with kidney affections, and at the base
of the bladder.
PART II.--INTRODUCTION.
P. 227.
But yet because I will humour J.S. for this once; even here also 'The
Dissuasive' relies upon a first and self-evident principle as any is
in Christianity, and that is, 'Quod primum verum.'
I am surprised to meet such an assertion in so acute a logician and so
prudent an advocate as Jeremy Taylor. If the 'quod primum verum' mean
the first preaching or first institution of Christianity by its divine
Founder, it is doubtless an evident inference from the assumed truth of
Christianity, or, if you please, evidently implied therein; but surely
the truth of the Christian system, composed of historical narrations,
doctrines, precepts, and arguments, is no self-evident position, still
less, if there be any tenable distinction between the words, a primary
truth. How then can an inference from a particular, a variously
proveable and proof-requiring, position be itself a universal and
self-evident one?
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