The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 4Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Religion
The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 4
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Literature -- History and criticism
Besides, what is there in doctrines common to the creed of all
religions, and enforced by all the schools of philosophy, except the
Epicurean, which should have prevented their being taught to all at the
same time? I perceive, that this difficulty does not press on Socinians
exclusively: but yet it presses on them with far greater force than on
others. For they make Christianity a mere philosophy, the same in
substance with the Stoical, only purer from errors and accompanied with
clearer evidence:--while others think of it as part of a covenant made
up with Abraham, the fulfilment of which was in good faith to be first
offered to his posterity. I ask this only because the Barrister
professes to find every thing in the four Gospels so plain and easy.
Ib. p. 106.
The Reformers by whom those articles were framed were educated in the
Church of Rome, and opposed themselves rather to the perversion of its
power than the errors of its doctrine.
An outrageous blunder.
Ib. p. 107.
Lord Bacon was the first who dedicated his profound and penetrating
genius to the cultivation of sound philosophy, &c.
This very same Lord Bacon has given us his 'Confessio Fidei' at great
length, with full particularity. Now I will answer for the Methodists'
unhesitating assent and consent to it; but would the Barrister subscribe
it?
Ib. p. 108.
We look back to that era of our history when superstition threw her
victim on the pile, and bigotry tied the martyr to his stake:--but we
take our eyes from the retrospect and turn them in thankful admiration
to that Being who has opened the minds of many, and is daily opening
the minds of more amongst us to the reception of these most important
of all truths, that there is no true faith but in practical goodness,
and that the worst of errors is the error of the 'life'.
Such is the conviction of the most enlightened of our Clergy: the
conviction, I trust, of the far greater part * * *. They deem it
better to inculcate the moral duties of Christianity in the pure
simplicity and clearness with which they are revealed, than to go
aside in search of 'doctrinal mysteries'. For as mysteries cannot be
made manifest, they, of course, cannot be understood; and that which
cannot be understood cannot be believed, and can, consequently, make
no part of any system of faith: since no one, till he understands a
doctrine, can tell whether it be true or false; till then, therefore,
he can have no faith in it, for no one can rationally affirm that he
believes that doctrine to be true which he does not know to be so; and
he cannot know it to be true if he does not understand it. In the
religion of a true Christian, therefore, there can be nothing
unintelligible; and if the preachers of that religion do not make
mysteries, they will never find any.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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