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
Thus, to use a dim similitude and merely as a faint illustration, all
materiality abstracted from a circle, it would become space, and though
not infinite, yet one with infinite space. The mystery of omnipresence
greatly aids this conception; 'totus in omni parte': and in truth this
is the divine character of all the Christian mysteries, that they aid
each other, and many incomprehensibles render each of them, in a certain
qualified sense, less incomprehensible.
Ib. p. 208.
But first, it is impious to think of destroying Christ in any sort.
For though it be true, that in sacrificing of Christ on the altar of
the cross, the destroying and killing of him was implied, and this his
death was the life of the world, yet all that concurred to the killing
of him, as the Jews, the Roman soldiers, Pilate, and Judas sinned
damnably, and so had done, though they had shed his blood with an
intention and desire, that by it the world might be redeemed.
Is not this going too far? Would it not imply almost that Christ himself
could not righteously sacrifice himself, especially when we consider
that the Romanists would have a right to say, that Christ himself had
commanded it? But Bellarmine's conceit [9] is so absurd that it scarce
deserves the compliment of a serious confutation. For if sacramental
being be opposed to natural or material, as 'noumenon' to 'phænomenon',
place is no attribute or possible accident of it 'in se'; consequently,
no alteration of place relatively to us can affect, much less destroy,
it; and even were it otherwise, yet translocation is not destruction;
for the body of Christ, according to themselves, doth indeed nourish our
souls, even as a fish eaten sustains another fish, but yet with this
essential difference, that it ceases not to be and remain itself, and
instead of being converted converts; so that truly the only things
sacrificed in the strict sense are all the evil qualities or
deficiencies which divide our souls from Christ.
Ib. p. 218.
That which we do is done in remembrance of that which was then done;
for he saith, 'Do this in remembrance of me.'
This is a 'metastasis' of Scripture. 'Do this in remembrance of
me', that is, that which Christ was then doing. But Christ was not
then suffering, or dying on the cross.
Ib. p.223.
That the Saints do pray for us 'in genere', desiring God to be
merciful to us, and to do unto us whatsoever in any kind he knoweth
needful for our good, there is no question made by us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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