Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc.
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by Samuel Taylor Coleridge >> Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc.
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This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
from the 1892 Cassell & Company edition.
CONFESSIONS OF AN INQUIRING SPIRIT AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS
FROM "THE FRIEND"
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Contents:
Introduction
Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit
Letters on the Inspiration of the Scriptures.
An Essay on Faith
Notes on the Book of Common Prayer
A Nightly Prayer
A Sailor's Fortune
Essay I
Essay II
Essay III
Essay IV
Essay V
Essay VI
INTRODUCTION
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on the 21st of October, 1772,
youngest of many children of the Rev. John Coleridge, Vicar of the
Parish and Head Master of the Grammar School of Ottery St. Mary, in
Devonshire. One of the poet's elder brothers was the grandfather of
Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. Coleridge's mother was a notable
housewife, as was needful in the mother of ten children, who had
three more transmitted to her from her husband's former wife.
Coleridge's father was a kindly and learned man, little
sophisticated, and distinguishing himself now and then by comical
acts of what is called absence of mind. Charles Buller, afterwards a
judge, was one of his boys, and, when her husband's life seemed to be
failing, had promised what help he could give to the anxious wife.
When his father died, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was but eight years
old, and Charles Buller obtained for him his presentation to Christ's
Hospital. Coleridge's mind delighted in far wandering over the
fields of thought; from a boy he took intense delight in dreamy
speculation on the mysteries that lie around the life of man. From a
boy also he proved his subtleties of thought through what Charles
Lamb called the "deep and sweet intonations" of such speech as could
come only from a poet.
From the Charterhouse, Coleridge went to Jesus College, Cambridge,
where he soon won a gold medal for a Greek ode on the Slave Trade,
but through indolence he slipped into a hundred pounds of debt. The
stir of the French Revolution was then quickening young minds into
bold freedom of speculation, resentment against tyranny of custom,
and yearning for a higher life in this world. Old opinions that
familiarity had made to the multitude conventional were for that
reason distrusted and discarded. Coleridge no longer held his
religious faith in the form taught by his father. He could not sign
the Thirty-nine Articles, and felt his career closed at the
University. His debt also pressed upon him heavily. After a long
vacation with a burdened mind, in which one pleasant day of picnic
gave occasion to his "Songs of the Pixies," Coleridge went back to
Cambridge. But soon afterwards he threw all up in despair. He
resolved to become lost to his friends, and find some place where he
could earn in obscurity bare daily bread. He came to London, and
then enlisted as a private in the 15th Light Dragoons. After four
months he was discovered, his discharge was obtained, and he went
back to Cambridge.
But he had no career before him there, for his religious opinions
then excluded belief in the doctrine of the Trinity, and the
Universities were not then open to Dissenters. A visit to Oxford
brought him into relation with Robert Southey and fellow-students of
Southey's who were also touched with revolutionary ardour. Coleridge
joined with them in the resolve to leave the Old World and create a
better in the New, as founders of a Pantisocracy--an all-equal
government--on the banks of the Susquehannah. They would need wives,
and Southey knew of three good liberal-minded sisters at Bristol, one
of them designed for himself; her two sisters he recommended for as
far as they would go. The chief promoters of the Pantisocracy
removed to Bristol, and one of the three sisters, Sarah Fricker, was
married by Coleridge; Southey marrying another, Edith; while another
young Oxford enthusiast married the remaining Miss Fricker; and so
they made three pairs of future patriarchs and matriarchs.
Nothing came of the Pantisocracy, for want of money to pay fares to
the New World. Coleridge supported himself by giving lectures, and
in 1797 published Poems. They included his "Religious Musings,"
which contain expression of his fervent revolutionary hopes. Then he
planned a weekly paper, the Watchman, that was to carry the lantern
of philosophic truth, and call the hour for those who cared about the
duties of the day. When only three or four hundred subscribers had
been got together in Bristol, Coleridge resolved to travel from town
to town in search of subscriptions. Wherever he went his eloquence
prevailed; and he came back with a very large subscription list. But
the power of close daily work, by which alone Coleridge could carry
out such a design, was not in him, and the Watchman only reached to
its tenth number.
Then Coleridge settled at Nether Stowey, by the Bristol Channel,
partly for convenience of neighbourhood to Thomas Poole, from whom he
could borrow at need. He had there also a yearly allowance from the
Wedgwoods of Etruria, who had a strong faith in his future. From
Nether Stowey, Coleridge walked over to make friends with Wordsworth
at Racedown, and the friendship there established caused Wordsworth
and his sister to remove to the neighbourhood of Nether Stowey. Out
of the relations with Wordsworth thus established came Coleridge's
best achievements as a poet, the "Ancient Mariner" and "Christabel."
The "Ancient Mariner" was finished, and was the chief part of
Coleridge's contribution to the "Lyrical Ballads," which the two
friends published in 1798. "Christabel," being unfinished, was left
unpublished until 1816.
With help from the Wedgwoods, Coleridge went abroad with Wordsworth
and his sister, left them at Hamburg, and during fourteen months
increased his familiarity with German. He came back in the late
summer of 1799, full of enthusiasm for Schiller's last great work,
his Wallenstein, which Coleridge had seen acted. The Camp had been
first acted at Weimar on the 18th of October, 1798; the Piccolomini
on the 30th of January, 1799; and Wallenstein's Death on the 10th of
the next following April. Coleridge, under the influence of fresh
enthusiasm, rapidly completed for Messrs. Longman his translation of
Wallenstein's Death into an English poem of the highest mark.
Then followed a weakening of health. Coleridge earned fitfully as
journalist; settled at Keswick; found his tendency to rheumatism
increased by the damp of the Lake Country; took a remedy containing
opium, and began to acquire that taste for the excitement of opium
which ruined the next years of his life. He was invited to Malta,
for the benefit of the climate, by his friend, John Stoddart, who was
there. At Malta he made the acquaintance of the governor, Sir
Alexander Ball, whose worth he celebrates in essays of the Friend,
which are included under the title of "A Sailor's Fortune" in this
little volume. For a short time he acted as secretary to Sir
Alexander, then returned to the Lakes and planned his journal, the
Friend, published at Penrith, of which the first number appeared on
the 1st of August, 1809, the twenty-eighth and last towards the end
of March, 1810.
Next followed six years of struggle to live as journalist and
lecturer in London and elsewhere, while the habit of taking opium
grew year by year, and at last advanced from two quarts of laudanum a
week to a pint a day. Coleridge put himself under voluntary
restraint for a time with a Mr. Morgan at Calne. Finally he placed
himself, in April, 1816--the year of the publication of "Christabel"-
-with a surgeon at Highgate, Mr. Gillman, under whose friendly care
he was restored to himself, and in whose house he died on the 25th of
July, 1834. It was during this calm autumn of his life that
Coleridge, turning wholly to the higher speculations on philosophy
and religion upon which his mind was chiefly fixed, a revert to the
Church, and often actively antagonist to the opinions he had held for
a few years, wrote, his "Lay Sermons," and his "Biographia
Literaria," and arranged also a volume of Essays of the Friend. He
lectured on Shakespeare, wrote "Aids to Reflection," and showed how
his doubts were set at rest in these "Confessions of an Inquiring
Spirit," which were first published in 1840, after their writer's
death.
H. M.
CONFESSIONS OF AN INQUIRING SPIRIT.
LETTERS ON THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
LETTER I.
My dear friend,
I employed the compelled and most unwelcome leisure of severe
indisposition in reading The Confessions of a Fair Saint in Mr.
Carlyle's recent translation of the Wilhelm Meister, which might, I
think, have been better rendered literally The Confessions of a
Beautiful Soul. This, acting in conjunction with the concluding
sentences of your letter, threw my thoughts inward on my own
religious experience, and gave immediate occasion to the following
Confessions of one who is neither fair nor saintly, but who, groaning
under a deep sense of infirmity and manifold imperfection, feels the
want, the necessity, of religious support; who cannot afford to lose
any the smallest buttress, but who not only loves Truth even for
itself, and when it reveals itself aloof from all interest, but who
loves it with an indescribable awe, which too often withdraws the
genial sap of his activity from the columnar trunk, the sheltering
leaves, the bright and fragrant flower, and the foodful or medicinal
fruitage, to the deep root, ramifying in obscurity and labyrinthine
way-winning -
In darkness there to house unknown,
Far underground,
Pierced by no sound
Save such as live in Fancy's ear alone,
That listens for the uptorn mandrake's parting groan!
I should, perhaps, be a happier--at all events a more useful--man if
my mind were otherwise constituted. But so it is, and even with
regard to Christianity itself, like certain plants, I creep towards
the light, even though it draw me away from the more nourishing
warmth. Yea, I should do so, even if the light had made its way
through a rent in the wall of the Temple. Glad, indeed, and grateful
am I, that not in the Temple itself, but only in one or two of the
side chapels, not essential to the edifice, and probably not coeval
with it, have I found the light absent, and that the rent in the wall
has but admitted the free light of the Temple itself.
I shall best communicate the state of my faith by taking the creed,
or system of credenda, common to all the Fathers of the Reformation--
overlooking, as non-essential, the differences between the several
Reformed Churches, according to the five main classes or sections
into which the aggregate distributes itself to my apprehension. I
have then only to state the effect produced on my mind by each of
these, or the quantum of recipiency and coincidence in myself
relatively thereto, in order to complete my Confession of Faith.
I. The Absolute; the innominable [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced] et Causa Sui, in whose transcendent I AM, as the Ground,
IS whatever VERILY is:- the Triune God, by whose Word and Spirit, as
the transcendent Cause, EXISTS whatever SUBSTANTIALLY exists:- God
Almighty--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, undivided, unconfounded, co-
eternal. This class I designate by the word [Greek text which cannot
be reproduced].
II. The Eternal Possibilities; the actuality of which hath not its
origin in God: Chaos spirituale:- [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced].
III. The Creation and Formation of the heaven and earth by the
Redemptive Word:- the Apostasy of Man:- the Redemption of Man:- the
Incarnation of the Word in the Son of Man:- the Crucifixion and
Resurrection of the Son of Man:- the Descent of the Comforter:-
Repentance ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced]):- Regeneration:-
Faith:- Prayer:- Grace--Communion with the Spirit:- Conflict:- Self-
abasement:- Assurance through the righteousness of Christ:- Spiritual
Growth:- Love:- Discipline:- Perseverance:- Hope in death:- [Greek
text which cannot be reproduced]
IV. But these offers, gifts, and graces are not for one, or for a
few. They are offered to all. Even when the Gospel is preached to a
single individual it is offered to him as to one of a great
household. Not only man, but, says St. Paul, the whole creation is
included in the consequences of the Fall--[Greek text which cannot be
reproduced]--so also in those of the change at the Redemption--[Greek
text which cannot be reproduced]. We too shall be raised IN THE
BODY. Christianity is fact no less than truth. It is spiritual, yet
so as to be historical; and between these two poles there must
likewise be a midpoint, in which the historical and spiritual meet.
Christianity must have its history--a history of itself and likewise
the history of its introduction, its spread, and its outward-
becoming; and, as the midpoint abovementioned, a portion of these
facts must be miraculous, that is, phenomena in nature that are
beyond nature. Furthermore, the history of all historical nations
must in some sense be its history--in other words, all history must
be providential, and this a providence, a preparation, and a looking
forward to Christ.
Here, then, we have four out of the five classes. And in all these
the sky of my belief is serene, unclouded by a doubt. Would to God
that my faith, that faith which works on the whole man, confirming
and conforming, were but in just proportion to my belief, to the full
acquiescence of my intellect, and the deep consent of my conscience!
The very difficulties argue the truth of the whole scheme and system
for my understanding, since I see plainly that so must the truth
appear, if it be the truth.
V. But there is a Book of two parts, each part consisting of several
books. The first part (I speak in the character of an uninterested
critic or philologist) contains the relics of the literature of the
Hebrew people, while the Hebrew was still the living language. The
second part comprises the writings, and, with one or two
inconsiderable and doubtful exceptions, all the writings of the
followers of Christ within the space of ninety years from the date of
the Resurrection. I do not myself think that any of these writings
were composed as late as A.D. 120; but I wish to preclude all
dispute. This Book I resume as read, and yet unread--read and
familiar to my mind in all parts, but which is yet to be perused as a
whole, or rather a work, cujus particulas et sententiolas omnes et
singulas recogniturus sum, but the component integers of which, and
their conspiration, I have yet to study. I take up this work with
the purpose to read it for the first time as I should read any other
work, as far at least as I can or dare. For I neither can, nor dare,
throw off a strong and awful prepossession in its favour--certain as
I am that a large part of the light and life, in and by which I see,
love, and embrace the truths and the strengths co-organised into a
living body of faith and knowledge in the four preceding classes, has
been directly or indirectly derived to me from this sacred volume--
and unable to determine what I do not owe to its influences. But
even on this account, and because it has these inalienable claims on
my reverence and gratitude, I will not leave it in the power of
unbelievers to say that the Bible is for me only what the Koran is
for the deaf Turk, and the Vedas for the feeble and acquiescent
Hindoo. No; I will retire UP INTO THE MOUNTAIN, and hold secret
commune with my Bible above the contagious blastments of prejudice,
and the fog-blight of selfish superstition. FOR FEAR HATH TORMENT.
And what though MY reason be to the power and splendour of the
Scriptures but as the reflected and secondary shine of the moon
compared with the solar radiance; yet the sun endures the occasional
co-presence of the unsteady orb, and leaving it visible seems to
sanction the comparison. There is a Light higher than all, even THE
WORD THAT WAS IN THE BEGINNING; the Light, of which light itself is
but the shechinah and cloudy tabernacle; the Word that is Light for
every man, and life for as many as give heed to it. If between this
Word and the written letter I shall anywhere seem to myself to find a
discrepance, I will not conclude that such there actually is, nor on
the other hand will I fall under the condemnation of them that would
LIE FOR GOD, but seek as I may, be thankful for what I have--and
wait.
With such purposes, with such feelings, have I perused the books of
the Old and New Testaments, each book as a whole, and also as an
integral part. And need I say that I have met everywhere more or
less copious sources of truth, and power, and purifying impulses,
that I have found words for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy,
utterances for my hidden griefs, and pleadings for my shame and my
feebleness? In short, whatever FINDS me, bears witness for itself
that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit, even from the same Spirit,
WHICH REMAINING IN ITSELF, YET REGENERATETH ALL OTHER POWERS, AND IN
ALL AGES ENTERING INTO HOLY SOULS, MAKETH THEM FRIENDS OF GOD, AND
PROPHETS. (Wisd. vii.) And here, perhaps, I might have been content
to rest, if I had not learned that, as a Christian, I cannot, must
not, stand alone; or if I had not known that more than this was
holden and required by the Fathers of the Reformation, and by the
Churches collectively, since the Council of Nice at latest, the only
exceptions being that doubtful one of the corrupt Romish Church
implied, though not avowed, in its equalisation of the Apocryphal
Books with those of the Hebrew Canon, and the irrelevant one of the
few and obscure sects who acknowledge no historical Christianity.
This somewhat more, in which Jerome, Augustine, Luther, and Hooker
were of one and the same judgment, and less than which not one of
them would have tolerated--would it fall within the scope of my
present doubts and objections? I hope it would not. Let only their
general expressions be interpreted by their treatment of the
Scriptures in detail, and I dare confidently trust that it would not.
For I can no more reconcile the doctrine which startles my belief
with the practice and particular declarations of these great men,
than with the convictions of my own understanding and conscience. At
all events--and I cannot too early or too earnestly guard against any
misapprehension of my meaning and purpose--let it be distinctly
understood that my arguments and objections apply exclusively to the
following doctrine or dogma. To the opinions which individual
divines have advanced in lieu of this doctrine, my only objection, as
far as I object, is--that I do not understand them. The precise
enunciation of this doctrine I defer to the commencement of the next
Letter. Farewell.
LETTER II.
My dear friend,
In my last Letter I said that in the Bible there is more that FINDS
me than I have experienced in all other books put together; that the
words of the Bible find me at greater depths of my being; and that
whatever finds me brings with it an irresistible evidence of its
having proceeded from the Holy Spirit. But the doctrine in question
requires me to believe that not only what finds me, but that all that
exists in the sacred volume, and which I am bound to find therein,
was--not alone inspired by, that is composed by, men under the
actuating influence of the Holy Spirit, but likewise--dictated by an
Infallible Intelligence; that the writers, each and all, were
divinely informed as well as inspired. Now here all evasion, all
excuse, is cut off. An infallible intelligence extends to all
things, physical no less than spiritual. It may convey the truth in
any one of the three possible languages--that of sense, as objects
appear to the beholder on this earth; or that of science, which
supposes the beholder placed in the centre; or that of philosophy,
which resolves both into a supersensual reality. But whichever be
chosen--and it is obvious that the incompatibility exists only
between the first and second, both of them being indifferent and of
equal value to the third--it must be employed consistently; for an
infallible intelligence must intend to be intelligible, and not to
deceive. And, moreover, whichever of these three languages be
chosen, it must be translatable into truth. For this is the very
essence of the doctrine, that one and the same intelligence is
speaking in the unity of a person; which unity is no more broken by
the diversity of the pipes through which it makes itself audible,
than is a tune by the different instruments on which it is played by
a consummate musician, equally perfect in all. One instrument may be
more capacious than another, but as far as its compass extends, and
in what it sounds forth, it will be true to the conception of the
master. I can conceive no softening here which would not nullify the
doctrine, and convert it to a cloud for each man's fancy to shift and
shape at will. And this doctrine, I confess, plants the vineyard of
the Word with thorns for me, and places snares in its pathways.
These may be delusions of an evil spirit; but ere I so harshly
question the seeming angel of light--my reason, I mean, and moral
sense in conjunction with my clearest knowledge--I must inquire on
what authority this doctrine rests. And what other authority dares a
truly catholic Christian admit as coercive in the final decision, but
the declarations of the Book itself--though I should not, without
struggles, and a trembling reluctance, gainsay even a universal
tradition?
I return to the Book. With a full persuasion of soul respecting all
the articles of the Christian Faith, as contained in the first four
classes, I receive willingly also the truth of the history, namely,
that the Word of the Lord did come to Samuel, to Isaiah, to others;
and that the words which gave utterance to the same are faithfully
recorded. But though the origin of the words, even as of the
miraculous acts, be supernatural, yet the former once uttered, the
latter once having taken their place among the phenomena of the
senses, the faithful recording of the same does not of itself imply,
or seem to require, any supernatural working, other than as all truth
and goodness are such. In the books of Moses, and once or twice in
the prophecy of Jeremiah, I find it indeed asserted that not only the
words were given, but the recording of the same enjoined by the
special command of God, and doubtless executed under the special
guidance of the Divine Spirit. As to all such passages, therefore,
there can be no dispute; and all others in which the words are by the
sacred historian declared to have been the Word of the Lord
supernaturally communicated, I receive as such with a degree of
confidence proportioned to the confidence required of me by the
writer himself, and to the claims he himself makes on my belief.
Let us, therefore, remove all such passages, and take each book by
itself; and I repeat that I believe the writer in whatever he himself
relates of his own authority, and of its origin. But I cannot find
any such claim, as the doctrine in question supposes, made by these
writers, explicitly or by implication. On the contrary, they refer
to other documents, and in all points express themselves as sober-
minded and veracious writers under ordinary circumstances are known
to do. But perhaps they bear testimony, the successor to his
predecessor? Or some one of the number has left it on record, that
by special inspiration HE was commanded to declare the plenary
inspiration of all the rest? The passages which can without violence
be appealed to as substantiating the latter position are so few, and
these so incidental--the conclusion drawn from them involving
likewise so obviously a petitio principii, namely, the supernatural
dictation, word by word, of the book in which the question is found
(for, until this is established, the utmost that such a text can
prove is the current belief of the writer's age and country
concerning the character of the books then called the Scriptures)--
that it cannot but seem strange, and assuredly is against all analogy
of Gospel revelation, that such a doctrine--which, if true, must be
an article of faith, and a most important, yea, essential article of
faith--should be left thus faintly, thus obscurely, and, if I may so
say, OBITANEOUSLY, declared and enjoined. The time of the formation
and closing of the Canon unknown;--the selectors and compilers
unknown, or recorded by known fabulists;--and (more perplexing still)
the belief of the Jewish Church--the belief, I mean, common to the
Jews of Palestine and their more cultivated brethren in Alexandria
(no reprehension of which is to be found in the New Testament)--
concerning the nature and import of the [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced] attributed to the precious remains of their Temple
Library;--these circumstances are such, especially the last, as in
effect to evacuate the tenet, of which I am speaking, of the only
meaning in which it practically means anything at all tangible,
steadfast, or obligatory. In infallibility there are no degrees.
The power of the High and Holy One is one and the same, whether the
sphere which it fills be larger or smaller;--the area traversed by a
comet, or the oracle of the house, the holy place beneath the wings
of the cherubim;--the Pentateuch of the Legislator, who drew near to
the thick darkness where God was, and who spake in the cloud whence
the thunderings and lightnings came, and whom God answered by a
voice; or but a letter of thirteen verses from the affectionate ELDER
TO THE ELECT LADY AND HER CHILDREN, WHOM HE LOVED IN THE TRUTH. But
at no period was this the judgment of the Jewish Church respecting
all the canonical books. To Moses alone--to Moses in the recording
no less than in the receiving of the Law--and to all and every part
of the five books called the Books of Moses, the Jewish doctors of
the generation before, and coeval with, the apostles, assigned that
unmodified and absolute theopneusty which our divines, in words at
least, attribute to the Canon collectively. In fact it was from the
Jewish Rabbis--who, in opposition to the Christian scheme, contended
for a perfection in the revelation by Moses, which neither required
nor endured any addition, and who strained their fancies in
expressing the transcendency of the books of Moses, in aid of their
opinion--that the founders of the doctrine borrowed their notions and
phrases respecting the Bible throughout. Remove the metaphorical
drapery from the doctrine of the Cabbalists, and it will be found to
contain the only intelligible and consistent idea of that plenary
inspiration, which later divines extend to all the canonical books;
as thus:- "The Pentateuch is but ONE WORD, even the Word of God; and
the letters and articulate sounds, by which this Word is communicated
to our human apprehensions, are likewise divinely communicated."
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