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
Those who will persevere, will persevere, and God foresees; and as to
the proof from predestination, that is, that he who predestines the end
necessarily predestines the adequate means, I can more readily imagine
logical consequences adverse to the sense of responsibility than
Christian consequences, such as an individual may apply for his own
edification.
And I am persuaded that the doctrine does not need these supports,
according, I mean, to the ordinary notion of predestination. The
predestinative force of a free agent's own will in certain absolute
acts, determinations, or elections, and in respect of which acts it is
one either with the divine or the devilish will; and if the former, the
conclusions to be drawn from God's goodness, faithfulness, and spiritual
presence; these supply grounds of argument of a very different
character, especially where the mind has been prepared by an insight
into the error and hollowness of the antithesis between liberty and
necessity.
Ib. p. 178.
But how contrary to this is the walk and conduct of some who profess
to be pilgrims, and yet can wilfully and deliberately go upon the
Devil's ground, and indulge themselves in carnal pleasures and sinful
diversions.
'Note in Edwards on the Enchanted Ground'.
But what pleasures are carnal,--what are sinful diversions,--so I mean
as that I may be able to determine what are not? Shew us the criterion,
the general principle; at least explain whether each individual case is
to be decided for the individual by his own experience of the effects of
the pleasure or the diversion, in dulling or distracting his religious
feelings; or can a list, a complete list, of all such pleasures be made
beforehand?
PART III.
'In initio'.
I strongly suspect that this third part, which ought not to have been
thus conjoined with Bunyan's work, was written by a Roman Catholic
priest, for the very purpose of counteracting the doctrine of faith so
strongly enforced in the genuine Progress.
Ib. p. 443, in Edwards.
Against all which evils fasting is the proper remedy.
It would have been well if the writer had explained exactly what he
meant by the fasting, here so strongly recommended; during what period
of time abstinence from food is to continue and so on. The effects, I
imagine, must in good measure depend on the health of the individual. In
some constitutions, fasting so disorders the stomach as to produce the
very contrary of good;--confusion of mind, loose imaginations against
the man's own will, and the like.
'In fine'.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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