The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 4 — John Shaqi
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
5. The characteristic contradistinction between the speculative
reasoners of the age before the Revolution, and those since, is this:
--the former cultivated metaphysics, without, or neglecting, empirical
psychology the latter cultivate a mechanical psychology to the neglect
and contempt of metaphysics. Both therefore are almost equi-distant from
pure philosophy. Hence the belief in ghosts, witches, sensible replies
to prayer, and the like, in Baxter and in a hundred others. See also
Luther's Table Talk.
6. The earlier part of this volume is interesting as materials for
medical history. The state of medical science in the reign of Charles I.
was almost incredibly low.
The saddest error of the theologians of this age is, [Greek: hos émoige
dokei], the disposition to urge the histories of the miraculous actions
and incidents, in and by which Christ attested his Messiahship to the
Jewish eye-witnesses, in fulfilment of prophecies, which the Jewish
Church had previously understood and interpreted as marks of the
Messiah, before they have shewn what and how excellent the religion
itself is including the miracles as for us an harmonious part of the
internal or self-evidence of the religion. Alas! and even when our
divines do proceed to the religion itself as to a something which no man
could be expected to receive except by a compulsion of the senses, which
by force of logic only is propagated from the eye witnesses to the
readers of the narratives in 1820--(which logic, namely, that the
evidence of a miracle is not diminished by lapse of ages, though this
includes loss of documents and the like; which logic, I say, whether it
be legitimate or not, God forbid that the truth of Christianity should
depend on the decision!)--even when our divines do proceed to the
religion itself, on what do they chiefly dwell? On the doctrines
peculiar to the religion? No! these on the contrary are either evaded or
explained away into metaphors, or resigned in despair to the next world
where faith is to be swallowed up in certainty.
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