Coleridge, the Bible, and Religion (Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters)

Coleridge, the B ible, and R eligion

Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters Series Editor: Marilyn Gaull The nineteenth century invented major figures: gifted, productive, and influential writers and artists in English, European, and American public life who captured and expressed what Hazlitt called “The Spirit of the Age.” Their achievements summarize, reflect, and shape the cultural traditions they inherited and influence the quality of life that followed. Before radio, film, and journalism deflected the energies of authors and audiences alike, literary forms such as popular verse, song lyrics, biographies, memoirs, letters, novels, reviews, essays, children’s books, and drama generated a golden age of letters incomparable in Western history. Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters presents a series of original biographical, critical, and scholarly studies of major figures evoking their energies, achievements, and their impact on the character of this age. Projects to be included range from works on Blake to Hardy, Erasmus Darwin to Charles Darwin, Wordsworth to Yeats, Coleridge and J. S. Mill, Joanna Baillie, Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats to Dickens, Tennyson, George Eliot, Browning, Hopkins, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, and their contemporaries. The series editor is Marilyn Gaull, PhD from Indiana University. She has served on the faculty at Temple University, New York University, and is now Research Professor at the Editorial Institute at Boston University. She brings to the series decades of experience as editor of books on nineteenth century literature and culture. She is the founder and editor of The Wordsworth Circle, author of English Romanticism: The Human Context, publishes editions, essays, and reviews in numerous journals and lectures internationally on British Romanticism, folklore, and narrative theory. PUBLISHED BY PALGRAVE: Shelley’s German Afterlives, by Susanne Schmid Romantic Literature, Race, and Colonial Encounter, by Peter J. Kitson Coleridge, the Bible, and Religion, by Jeffrey W. Barbeau FORTHCOMING TITLES: Byron: Heritage and Legacy, edited by Cheryl A. Wilson The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles, by Matthew Schneider Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in 19th Century Literary Culture, by Lynn Parramore

Coleridge, the Bible, and R eligion J e f f r e y W. B a r b e a u

COLERIDGE, THE BIBLE, AND RELIGION

Copyright © Jeffrey W. Barbeau, 2008. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–60134–5 ISBN-10: 0–230–60134–0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barbeau, Jeffrey W. Coleridge, the Bible, and religion / by Jeffrey W. Barbeau. p. cm.––(Nineteenth-century major lives and letters) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–230–60134–0 1. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772–1834––Religion. 2. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772–1834. Confessions of an inquiring spirit. 3. Bible––Inspiration. 4. Revelation––Christianity. 5. Theology, Doctrinal––England––History––19th century. 6. Christian literature, English––History and criticism. I. Title. PR4487.R4B37 2008 821.7––dc22

2007013061

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: January 2008 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

For Amber

THE PENTAD OF OPERATIVE CHRISTIANITY. Prothesis Christ, the Word. Thesis

Mesothesis, or the Indifference, The Scriptures. The Holy Spirit.

Antithesis The Church.

Synthesis The Preacher. The Scriptures, the Spirit, and the Church, are coordinate; the indispensable conditions and the working causes of the perpetuity, and continued renascence and spiritual life of Christ still militant. The Eternal Word, Christ from everlasting, is the Prothesis, or identity;—the Scriptures and the Church are the two poles, or Thesis and Antithesis; and the Preacher in direct line under the Spirit, but likewise the point of junction of the Written Word and the Church, is the Synthesis. This is God’s Hand in the World.

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Abbreviations

xi

1 Introduction: “Revealed” Religion and Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit

1

2

Christ, the Word: The Coleridgean Creed

11

3

The Scriptures: The Mirror of Faith

27

4 The Scriptures: The Interpretation of the Old Testament

47

5 The Scriptures: The Interpretation of the New Testament

77

6 The Church: Tradition as the Master-Key of Interpretation

111

7 The Holy Spirit: Reason and the Divine Image

127

8 The Preacher: Imagination and the Inspired Prophet

143

9 Conclusion: The Reception of Coleridge’s Religious System

161

Notes

171

Works Cited

207

Index

217

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Acknowledgments

I am indebted to a number of people who supported me during my

work on this volume. At Marquette University, where I first developed the thesis of this book, Paul Misner, Bradford Hinze, and my mentor Patrick Carey each encouraged my early study of Coleridge and historical theology. Subsequent postdoctoral research as a Visiting Fellow of the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge proved pivotal for my work on the late notebooks and the Opus Maximum. Douglas Hedley is a supportive colleague and friend whose encouragement has helped me far more than I can repay—my title pays homage to Douglas’s excellent Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion (2000). Daniel Hardy, Maggi Dawn, Jeremy Morris, Rosalind Paul, Catherine Pickstock, David Thompson, members of the “Coleridge’s Opus Maximum Seminar,” Roger Greeves, and the Fellows of Clare College, all contributed to the productivity of my stay. Several individuals critiqued all or parts of various drafts of this book, including Graham Davidson, Peter Giersch, and Wayne Coppins. Marilyn Gaull deserves special notice for her generous advice, encouragement, and editorial skill. Farideh Koohi-Kamali, Julia Cohen, Katie Fahey, and the editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan have been gracious throughout. Thanks are due to the editors of the Heythrop Journal, who published an early version of chapter six as “Coleridge and the ‘Master-Key’ of Biblical Interpretation” (The Heythrop Journal 45 [2004]: 1–21). I presented parts of various chapters at conferences—the Coleridge Summer Conference, the American Society of Church History, and the American Catholic Historical Association—where I received valuable feedback and criticism. I am grateful to the following individuals for their assistance and advice: Claude Welch, Harvey Shoolman, Anya and Mark Taylor, James Shelton, Samuel Thorpe, Adam and Cara Leavitt, Cheryl Leavitt, Lee and Jennifer Raney, Forrest and Vanessa Horn, Christopher Buskirk, Doug and Gina Kaisler, Ted and Lili Badgley, and my parents. My children—Elizabeth, Rebekah, Benjamin, and Samuel—bring me endless joy; thinking of them brings a smile to my face. I dedicate this book to my graceful wife Amber, who has been a constant source of strength, a true friend, and an abiding example of the love of God.

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Abbreviations

AR Assertion

BL

C&S

CIS CIS-CC CL CM

CN

DNB Friend Lects 1795

LS ODCC

S. T. Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, ed. John B. Beer (London and Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993). Jeffrey W. Barbeau, ed., Coleridge’s Assertion of Religion: Essays on the Opus Maximum, Studies in Philosophical Theology, 33 (Louvain: Peeters, 2006). S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, eds. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate, 2 vols. (London and Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983). S. T. Coleridge, On the Constitution of the Church and State, ed. John Colmer (London and Princeton: Princeton UP, 1976). S. T. Coleridge, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (London: William Pickering, 1840). S. T. Coleridge, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit in vol. 2, SW&F 1111–71. The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956–71). S. T. Coleridge, Marginalia, eds. George Whalley and H. J. Jackson, 6 vols. (London and Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980–2001). The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, eds. Kathleen Coburn, Merton Christensen, and Anthony John Harding, 5 vols. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957–2002). Dictionary of National Biography S. T. Coleridge, The Friend, ed. Barbara E. Rooke, 2 vols. (London and Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969). S. T. Coleridge, Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion, eds. Lewis Patton and Peter Mann (London and Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971). S. T. Coleridge, Lay Sermons, ed. R. J. White (London and Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972). Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, third ed. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997).

xii

Op Max

PW SW&F

TT Watchman

A b b r e v i at i o n s

S. T. Coleridge, Opus Maximum, ed. Thomas McFarland, with the assistance of Nicholas Halmi (London and Princeton: Princeton UP, 2002). S. T. Coleridge, Poetical Works, ed. J. C. C. Mays, 6 vols. (London and Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001). S. T. Coleridge, Shorter Works and Fragments, eds. H. J. Jackson and J. R. de. J. Jackson, 2 vols. (London and Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995). S. T. Coleridge, Table Talk, ed. Carl Woodring, 2 vols. (London and Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990). S. T. Coleridge, The Watchman, ed. Lewis Patton (London and Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970).

Chapter 1

Introduction: “Revealed” Religion and C O N F E S S I O N S O F A N I N QU I R I N G S P I R I T

That All may know the TRUTH; And that the TRUTH may make us FREE!! John 8:32 (in Watchman 3) So hold up your head, Master Coleridge . . . and speak up like a Man. S. T. Coleridge (CN V 5840)

James Marsh’s influential “Preliminary Essay” to the first American edition of Aids to Reflection (AR; 1829) offers a penetrating assessment of Coleridge’s religious system: Instead of adopting, like the popular metaphysicians of the day, a system of philosophy at war with religion . . . he boldly asserts the reality of something distinctively spiritual in man, and the futility of all those modes of philosophizing, in which this is not recognized, or which are incompatible with it . . . It is in his view the proper business and the duty of the Christian philosopher to remove all appearance of contradiction between the several manifestations of the one Divine Word, to reconcile reason with revelation, and thus to justify the ways of God to man. (In AR 497)

This book is about Coleridge’s religious system. John Beer claims that Coleridge’s literary production cannot be understood “without

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Coleridge, the Bible, and Religion

attending to the religious impulses” that pervade his works (Coleridge’s Writings vii). For Coleridge, talk about religion is, by necessity, talk about revelation—for “a religion not revealed is . . . no religion at all” (AR 184). In the Opus Maximum, the fragmentary remains of the great “Assertion of Religion,” Coleridge plainly declares his hope to demonstrate (1) that religion implies revelation and (2) that Christianity “is the only revelation of universal validity” (Op Max 48). In this book, I argue that Coleridge’s Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (1840) presents a system of “revealed” religion and provides a framework for recovering his late writings on Christian doctrine. I explain his method of theological inquiry, examine his conception of the Bible, survey his thoughts on each book of the Bible, and place his understanding of Scripture in dialogue with three other sources of divine disclosure: the church, the Spirit, and the preacher. Bibles permeate Coleridge’s England, but Coleridge is no biblicist. Controversies rage throughout the nation—controversies about Bibles, Bible societies, Bible publishing, and the translation of the Bible. Still, though he is aware of all these contemporary concerns, he reads the text with modern German commentators at hand, especially Eichhorn. Coleridge reads Scripture as any other book—no different than Shakespeare, Milton, or Pope. He also prays Scripture. He loves the Psalms and finds strength in the heartfelt, piercing cries of humanity that resound in each chapter of Scripture. In reading the Old Testament, he finds Christ again and again, despite his recognition that the original authors knew nothing of a man named Jesus of Nazareth. Coleridge’s heart is with the apostles Paul and John—in their writings, Coleridge finds the principles of true religion expressed in the clearest terms. His commitment to the philosophical truth of Christianity frees him to question the Bible, even at the risk of unorthodoxy. Coleridge’s struggle with orthodoxy cannot be overestimated. Privately, he writes with great freedom, methodically scrutinizing the Bible, noting each verse that strikes his attention, and freely challenging long-standing traditions of the church. Yet he loves the church even as he loves his nation. The traditions of Christianity—the creeds, liturgy, and prayers—are interpretive guides to faith. Church traditions are the “master-key” of biblical interpretation and they guard against the individualism rampant among many Protestants. Still, the Spirit continues to teach individuals by means of Reason. Reason is a philosophical term, widely recognized in Coleridge studies as the source of divinity in the human person. But Coleridge drops the

Introduction

3

terminology of Reason when he writes overtly theological or ecclesiastical prose. In its place, Coleridge evokes the activity of the Spirit as the point of correlation and, in the language of Western theology since Augustine, as the source of community. He thereby affirms that the Bible is “the mirror of faith,” since Scripture teaches truths that may also be known through the interior work of the Spirit. The same Spirit continues to inspire Christian preachers, who—though frail and fallible—are sources of divine revelation. Preachers speak the word of God just as Old Testament prophets cried out “Thus saith the Lord.” Coleridge believes that these four sources of divinity—the Bible, the traditions of the church, the interior work of the Spirit, and the inspired preacher—reveal the Logos. I first studied Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit because I read that it was about biblical inspiration. Nearly two hundred years after Coleridge’s days in Highgate, the meaning, limitations, and implications of biblical inspiration are still matters of discussion and controversy. To my surprise, although Coleridge repeatedly refers to the text as a work on the Bible, I discovered that Confessions is a focused, comprehensive treatment of “revealed” religion. He first refers to the manuscript in Aids to Reflection as “a series of Letters on the right and the superstitious use and estimation of the Bible” (AR 388). Just as he wrote Aids to Reflection for “Students intended for the Ministry,” so, too, did he propose the “Letters” for “a Candidate for Holy orders in the established church” (AR 6; CL V 51). The content of Confessions clarifies the relationship between religion and revelation: Confessions is an English apology for the Christian doctrine of divine revelation.1 The text belongs to the genre of Christian apologetics and is among Coleridge’s most readable books. Confessions is deeply personal, too. He pleads his case, always writing with an eye on the one inquiring into Christianity. He challenges his orthodox peers from the first page on: Must an inquirer into Christianity believe in the full authority of Scripture from the commencement of faith? Is belief in the divine origin of the Bible a first principle? The answer to both is a resounding “no.” Coleridge invokes a grammar of assent and maintains that the authority of Scripture grows “as the result and consequence of the belief in Christ” (CIS 1). While other English Christians claim the Bible as their religion, Coleridge develops a systematic method of faith. Through a series of seven letters “to a friend,” Coleridge explains his primary aim: “to convince myself and others, that the Bible and Christianity are their own sufficient evidence” (CIS 21). A wholly objective and outward conception of the Bible severely hampers a full

4

Coleridge, the Bible, and Religion

account of the Christian faith. “Revealed religion,” for Coleridge, “is in its highest contemplation the unity, that is, the identity or co-inherence, of Subjective and Objective” (CIS 91). For example, the Bible provides a necessary objective source of the same faith present in the individual subject. Yet Coleridge is not furtively reproducing German theology and philosophy. As a young man, he was fond of Lessing, and collected materials for a biography during his stay in Germany. He critically relies on the biblical scholarship of Eichhorn to the end of his life and marks his personal Bible with marginalia that reflect his ongoing study of German biblical critics. But these influences ought not to overshadow the decidedly English tone of Coleridge’s work. His work on Scripture reflects his peculiar knowledge of English theological history, the Reformation-era debates over the authority of the Bible with respect to the traditions of the church, the practices of English evangelical Bible societies that blanketed the nation with religious literature, and the writings of English divines such as Hooker, Baxter, Taylor, and Paley. Coleridge’s work on Scripture reminds readers that “the cradle of biblical criticism lay in the English-speaking world”— and even after Germany became the center of new developments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Coleridge and others continued to wrestle with both the origin and meaning of the biblical texts (Barr, “Forward” in Reventlow xi). The “Letters” remained in manuscript until Henry Nelson Coleridge published them as Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit in 1840—more than five years after Coleridge’s death. Compelling evidence indicates that Coleridge hoped to attach the “Letters on the Bible” to Aids to Reflection, but could not include it due to prescribed page limits (AR 388). The scenario is corroborated by a letter to Blanco White in July 1825, in which Coleridge claims that the manuscript has “for more than a year been in my Publishers’ Hands” (CL V 486). A restrictive or even neglectful publisher makes for a convenient end to the story. But Coleridge also maintains in one February 1826 notebook entry that he worried that the response to Aids to Reflection might be hindered by his more controversial work on Scripture (CN IV 5323). This private assertion echoes the public claim in Aids to Reflection that his other disquisitions will be published, “should the reception given to the present volume encourage or permit the publication” (AR 388). The preceding statements have led some to conclude that the proper locus of Confessions is Aids to Reflection. Elinor Shaffer points out that only the 1854 Bohn edition of Aids to Reflection managed to rectify the situation by publishing the two works together. For

Introduction

5

Shaffer, the Bohn edition honored Coleridge’s “original intention to publish them side by side,” a practice that she believes the Collected Coleridge ought to have followed (“Ideologies” para. 12). Shaffer’s suggestion raises compelling questions, and I am sympathetic to her interest in rehabilitating Confessions,2 but her position must still contend with two troubling facts: (1) Coleridge did not publish Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit with Aids to Reflection in 1825 and (2) Confessions was never published with Aids to Reflection during Coleridge’s lifetime—even his later revision of Aids to Reflection in 1831 did not include the “Letters.” The omission of the “Letters” in the second edition is a curious one. What led to the decision against incorporating his work on the Bible? Surely Coleridge could have attached the “Letters” to the later edition of Aids to Reflection had he truly understood them as part and parcel of the same project. Fear for his public reputation may have encouraged Coleridge to repress the publication of the “Letters” with Aids to Reflection. If so, Coleridge accurately assessed the magnitude of the moment: the publication of Aids to Reflection signaled his emergence as a major theologian, someone increasingly respected as an orthodox thinker. One reviewer, for example, celebrated Coleridge’s turn toward theological orthodoxy in Aids to Reflection, noting that Coleridge serves as an example of one who, “after all his excursive wanderings into the regions of fancy, all his minute researches through the subtleties of metaphysics and the refinements of philosophy, rests at last, at a mature age, in the conviction that the Christian faith is the perfection of human intelligence” (Jackson, Coleridge: The Critical Heritage I 486). Coleridge was not above the desire for public approbation, and this interest conceivably led him to withhold his “Letters on the Bible.” However, another possible motivation to withhold his work exists: the unfinished magnum opus. By 1828, Coleridge began to conceive of the “Letters” as part of the magnum opus, a complete philosophical defense of religion that he dreamed of writing for more than thirty years. According to his fullest description of the magnum opus, Coleridge expected the “Letters on Scripture” to take a prefatory role in a principal section of the project. For many years, Coleridge hoped to include a detailed commentary on the Gospel of St. John in the opus.3 In one extensive notebook entry on the “Estecean Methodology,” for example, Coleridge claims that the letters constitute part of the fifth section of his opus (CN V 5868). Why Coleridge initially withheld Confessions from Aids to Reflection may never be known. Whether this late description of the opus was realistically

6

Coleridge, the Bible, and Religion

achievable in his lifetime—McFarland calls the entry an unreliable account and an impossible project—misses the point.4 By 1828, Coleridge saw his private writings on the Bible (including both the notebook commentaries and the “Letters” that would later be known as Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit) as integral parts of his lifelong goal of producing a system of thought that confirms the philosophical vitality of Christianity as “the one only true Religion.” Structurally, this book follows the outline of Coleridge’s “Pentad of Operative Christianity,” which prefaces the 1840 publication by Henry Nelson Coleridge: The Pentad of Operative Christianity. Prothesis Christ, the Word. Thesis The Scriptures.

Mesothesis, or the Indifference, The Holy Spirit.

Antithesis The Church.

Synthesis The Preacher5

The revealing Word, the Prothesis in Coleridge’s scheme, represents the Ground and Absolute Cause. The Word is not Scripture—the written letters of a book—but the divine source of all revelation. The Word is also analogous to the unitary being of God.6 Coleridge’s theology of the Word encompasses his understanding of Christianity. In chapter two, I discuss four confessional claims that Coleridge makes in the first letter: the Trinity, the fallen state of humanity, the plan of redemption, and the nature of Christianity. These are the central teachings of religion that Coleridge returns to throughout his life, from early Unitarianism to later Trinitarianism. In chapter three, I contextualize Coleridge’s biblical study by identifying the ecclesiastical atmosphere of early nineteenth-century England—a religious climate permeated with Christian literature, prayer books, Bible societies, and new versions of the Bible. Coleridge develops a twofold notion of the Bible, linking the latest trends in higher biblical criticism to a philosophical interpretation of the text. One can interpret the Bible using the same methods as any other work of literature. Yet, when read through the eyes of faith, Scripture is a product of divine inspiration that communicates spiritual meanings through symbolical language. The Bible is, thereby, an objective source of divine wisdom; Scripture communicates and confirms what the individual knows by faith.

Introduction

7

Coleridge interprets the Old Testament, the subject of chapter four, in light of New Testament teachings on Jesus. He devotes the bulk of his attention—more than any other segment of the Old Testament— to the Pentateuch. Coleridge’s study of the Prophets centers on their responsiveness to typological interpretation. Among the wisdom literature of the Writings, Coleridge considers the Psalms, favorably strengthened by their prominence in the Book of Common Prayer, to be a regular source of comfort and permanent interest, while the skeptical and evidentiary uses of Daniel provoke his most scathing notations. He maintains a cautious appreciation of the Apocrypha. Coleridge believes that the New Testament, the focus of chapter six, completes the Old Testament through a divine disclosure of the Logos. He distinguishes between the so-called Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and the Gospel of John without fail— unlike many of Coleridge’s contemporaries, who harmonize the four Gospels and thereby reduce them to a single unit. The first three Gospels, written “according to the flesh,” are broadly reliable records. The Synoptics are artistic, literary accounts of the life of Christ that provide an early demonstration of Christianity to the Jews. By contrast, John, the Gospel “according to the Spirit,” preserves the only true eyewitness account of one of Jesus’ original apostles. John explicates Christianity for Christians and explains the redemptive work of Christ. The Epistles provide insight into the teachings of the apostles—especially Paul, whose memoirs comprise the majority of the Book of Acts and whose authentic writings present truths that are harmonious with the Gospel of John. Finally, the Apocalypse (the Book of Revelation), a work of lifelong interest, requires an interpreter who is uniquely skilled with the literary and philosophical senses of the Bible. Coleridge did not neglect the role of the church and its traditions, as I show in chapter six. In the Pentad, the Scriptures and the church serve as coordinate vehicles of divine revelation. The creeds and liturgy of the Church of England provide an authoritative, though fallible, interpretation of the spiritual sense of Scripture. Coleridge’s conception of the church is neither rigid nor dogmatic. The traditions of the church are a living and ongoing record of the work of the Spirit in the churches since the time of Christ; they function as an interpretive key that flows out of the Bible and guard against the Protestant tendency toward individualism. The objective vehicles of revelation in Scripture and the church are neither more nor less important than the Spirit-guided revelation that comes to the finite subject in Reason. For Coleridge, both objective

8

Coleridge, the Bible, and Religion

and subjective vehicles of revelation are equally necessary parts of the whole revelatory scheme of Christianity. Objective vehicles of revelation require the participation of actively receptive, Spirit-led individuals; likewise, a wholly individualistic faith that fails to interact with the objective testimony of Scripture and church traditions leads to the error of subjectivism. In chapter seven, I examine the relationship between the Holy Spirit and Reason. Reason is a constitutive source of knowledge by which the individual apprehends divine wisdom through the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit confirms the objective sources of revelation. Yet Coleridge struggles to develop a robust pneumatology to match his philosophy of religion. His study of Scripture led to numerous questions about the distinctly personal nature of the Spirit, though he formally acquiesces to the broad confessions of the church. The common operation of the Holy Spirit actuates both the authors and readers of Scripture. In the Pentad of Operative Christianity, the Spirit and the preacher stand in direct line under the Word. The preacher, the focus of chapter eight, orally communicates the divine truth that is drawn from both Scripture and church traditions in a Spirit-guided act. The role of the preacher, almost wholly absent from the Confessions, is “to synthesize the conditions into a language which will mediate through the spirit, the one Word” (Happel II 648). Thus the preacher, as “Christ’s ambassador and representative,” is closely connected to the work of the Spirit in Reason, enabling the finite individual to substitute “a barren acquiescence in the letter for the lively faith that cometh by hearing” (CIS 63; cf. Romans 10:17). Coleridge—influenced by Protestant thinkers such as Luther, Taylor, and his father John Coleridge—came to recognize the power of the Imagination in the visions and dreams of the Old Testament prophets. In the Christian dispensation, the preacher continues to reveal the truths of God through the unfolding of ideas that stimulate the reflective powers of the hearers. The conclusion briefly examines the reception of Coleridge’s religious system in the nineteenth century. Many early critics claimed that Coleridge invoked a system of religion predicated on the exclusive authority of the individual subject. Although Confessions contains the pivotal features of his system of religion, his failure to complete the magnum opus limited subsequent appreciation of his distinctive contribution to the history of ideas. Remarkable intersections exist between Coleridge’s overtly religious writings and his work in other fields of study. I believe that Coleridge’s method of biblical interpretation, for example, opens his

Introduction

9

literary criticism to fresh readings. His critical approach to Scripture, the church, and the role of the Spirit prove remarkably indicative of his literary criticism, political writings, and philosophical commitment to Reason. Seamus Perry explains that “[a]nyone writing about Coleridge must make a decision about coherence” (2). I maintain that anyone writing about Coleridge must also make a decision about his faith. One must decide whether Coleridge was always a radical at heart, a progressively orthodox thinker, a hopelessly conflicted soul, or, as I propose, a man living in the tensions of a journey of faith. “Faith is fidelity,” claims Coleridge, “fidelity to the conscience” (Op Max 78). Coleridge lived a life of faith, and he was aware of the public consequences of such a decision. John Henry Newman, for example, too quickly collapsed Coleridge’s method of theological inquiry with his conclusions, and surreptitiously condemned him for indulging “a liberty of speculation, which no Christian can tolerate” and “conclusions which were often heathen rather than Christian” (94).7 By examining Coleridge’s system of “revealed religion,” I hope to reorient the discussion of Coleridge’s coherence from the peculiarities of his conclusions to the genius of his method. Coleridge’s “disciples” can be identified less for common beliefs (since so many of his religious conclusions remained unpublished in the private notebooks) as for a shared theological method. Coleridge’s comment on Robert Southey’s Life of Wesley (1820) is instructive: The prominent Fault (or what to fault-finders would appear such) of this delightful Work is for me one of its characteristic Charms—the frequent inconsistency, I mean. But observe! only the inconsistency of page this with page that, some 40 or 50 pages apart—no inconsistency of Southey with himself under any one existing impression or in relation to any one fact or set of circumstances! (CM V 121)

Shifting attention to Coleridge’s method moves the discussion beyond the current impasse over unity and fragmentation, success and failure. More than thirty years after proclaiming “the Truth” in The Watchman, Coleridge continued to seek truth faithfully, noting in one notebook entry: “Nothing will do with me, but the Truth, the whole truth and the naked truth when I am writing . . . either this or Silence” (CN V 5840). But the epigraph to this chapter—“hold up your head, Master Coleridge . . . and speak up like a Man”—reminds readers that while Coleridge’s daring sometimes wavered and his conclusions changed, his commitment to the life of faith endured.

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Chapter 2

Christ, the W ord: The Coleridgean Creed

I knew my God, and I would have no guide but him. Goethe (Wilhelm Meister I 428)

Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit opens with a peculiar reference to

Goethe. Coleridge explains that Carlyle’s recent translation of Goethe’s Confessions of a Fair Saint (part of Wilhelm Meister) inspired him to write down his thoughts on the Bible. The allusion provides a poignant reminder of Coleridge’s hope to serve others as a spiritual guide. Goethe’s Confessions is not a series of dark professions by one who has committed an evil deed and seeks absolution through a declaration of Mariner-like culpability. Rather, Goethe’s confessor speaks of the trials she has suffered during her lifetime and her steadfast reliance on the “invisible Being”: “I knew my God, and I would have no guide but him.” Coleridge’s cryptic allusion to Goethe indicates that he does not seek absolution in the Confessions by unveiling a dark and hideous secret, but that he wishes to teach lessons drawn from the course of a difficult and contemplative life. Coleridge identifies himself with Goethe’s confessor—he, too, would rather leave his native country, parents, and friends than act against the dictates of conscience (Goethe I 420). The Confessions of a Fair Saint had the power to mollify the “violent and stubborn temper” of Goethe’s Aurelia (I 394). Similarly, in Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, Coleridge offers words to kindle the hearts and minds of his readers, even as he transforms his persona into that of a “beautiful soul” called to instruct others in the way of truth.

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Coleridge, the Bible, and Religion

Coleridge’s self-identification with Goethe’s confessor immediately precedes another confession in the first letter—a confession of faith. The connection between the two is not incidental. The confession of faith functions as a strategic theological prolegomenon to the letters and, by extension, to the whole of his mature theology. The confession signals Coleridge’s trustworthiness, even while tackling the controversial and sacred doctrines of divine revelation. In this chapter, I explore Coleridge’s lifelong struggle to define four fundamental truths of faith that comprise his creed: the Trinity, theological anthropology, redemption, and the nature of Christianity.1 The confession of faith highlights the centrality of the Logos in Coleridge’s Trinitarian theology. After Coleridge’s return to Trinitarianism in the early 1800s, the Logos serves as the “all-encompassing” and “unifying principle” in his system.2 Guthrie’s description of the Logos for Heraclitus applies to Coleridge as well: the Logos “seems so puzzlingly to be at the same time the word he utters, the truth which it contains, and the external reality which he conceives himself to be describing” (Mary Anne Perkins 11). By placing his creed at the commencement of the letters, Coleridge distinguishes the Word as the foundation of true religion and the source of all divine knowledge.

The Trinitarian God Coleridge was the youngest son of Reverend John Coleridge (1719–81) and Ann Bowdon Coleridge (d. 1809). John Coleridge was the vicar at Ottery St. Mary and the author of books including a Dissertation on the Book of Judges (1768). John Coleridge was “not a first-rate Genius,” claims his son, but he was “a first-rate Christian” (CL I 310). A reverent yet endearing humor pervades Coleridge’s description of his father. John Coleridge died when his son was only nine years old: “My Father made the world his confidant with respect to his Learning & ingenuity: & the world seems to have kept the secret very faithfully—His various works, uncut, unthumbed, have been preserved free from all pollution, except that of his Family’s Tails [sic].” Though his direct influence was short-lived, John Coleridge was an orthodox churchman who bequeathed to his son an eye for the work of divinity in the universe, a love for languages, and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Ten years after his father’s death, however, Coleridge resided within the radical wings of Jesus College, Cambridge, under the intellectual influence of rising Unitarians such as William Frend (1757–1841) and Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), among others.3

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Coleridge’s theological turn from the Anglicanism of his childhood to Unitarianism during the 1790s is inextricably linked to the politics of dissent. Daniel W. White explains that religious dissent in lateeighteenth-century England is a phenomenon accompanied by a broad political identity beyond the specifically partisan issue of the Corporation and Test Acts: parliamentary reform for a more equal representation . . . support for Corsican independence and the American colonies in the 1760s and 70s, “Wyvill and Reform” in the early 1780s, abolition of the slave trade and the boycott on sugar in the 1780s and 90s, and opposition to the war with revolutionary France in the mid 1790s. (181)

Political and religious dissent are vitally linked in Coleridge’s thought during the 1790s. As a lecturer in Bristol, Coleridge exemplifies the early Unitarian mindset. The fifth of the Lectures on Revealed Religion, “The Corruptions of Christianity,” opens with a characteristically Unitarian statement of theism: “That there is one God infinitely wise, powerful and good, and that a future state of Retribution is made certain by the Resurrection of Jesus who is the Messiah—are all the doctrines of the Gospel. That Christians must behave towards the majority with loving kindness and submission preserving among themselves a perfect Equality is a Synopsis of its Precepts” (Lects 1795 195). As with Joseph Priestley, Coleridge’s aversion to the Trinity springs from its apparent contradiction to reason: “A mysterious Doctrine is never more keenly ridiculed, than when a man of sense, who professes it from interested motives, endeavors to make it appear consistent with Reason” (Lects 1795 206–07). Coleridge rejects the tendentious and vague reliance on “mystery” that obfuscates Christian Trinitarianism and “volatilizes absurdity into nothingness.” He disclaims the Christian application of Plato—that “wild-minded Disciple of Socrates who hid Truth in a dazzle of fantastic allegory”— and the Neoplatonic philosophy of the early Christian Fathers. Yet, philosophically, he allows that the Trinity is “a mysterious way of telling a plain Truth, namely that God is a living Spirit, infinitely powerful, wise and benevolent” (Lects 1795 207–08). Similarly, in his 1796 miscellany, The Watchman, Coleridge maintains that the belief in a loving God is inconsistent with the brutal English slave trade: “They, who believe a God, believe him to be the loving Parent of all men—And is it possible that they who really believe and fear the Father, should fearlessly authorize the oppression of his Children? The slavery and Tortures, and most horrible Murder of tens of thousands

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of his Children!” (136). Coleridge insists that those who support the slave trade do believe in God, “[t]hese men are not Atheists,” but their actions against other men and women argue, by contrast, that “they are the causes of Atheism” (137). Shortly after the demise of The Watchman, Coleridge’s stance on Unitarianism, along with his view of God, slowly began to waver. One tremor signaling his shifting views came in a letter on June 23, 1797, to Reverend John Prior Estlin (1747–1817), stating that he could no longer receive the Lord’s Supper without hypocrisy (CL I 337–38). But financial troubles, which followed him for much of his life, presented only two alternatives: he could either continue writing on politics or be forced to take up the Unitarian ministry. The latter option seemed all but assured in an invitation he received to take up the ministry at Shrewsbury, but Coleridge eventually chose to accept an annuity from Tom Wedgwood (1771–1805) and his brother Josiah (1769–1840), with full self-assurance that subsequent private endeavors would validate the decision at some later date: “I have an humble trust, that many years will not pass over my head before I shall have given proof in some way or other that active zeal for Unitarian Christianity, not indolence or indifference, has been the motive of my declining a local and stated settlement as preacher of it” (CL I 377). The letters and notebooks of these years reveal Coleridge’s internal turmoil; as Willey points out, “one must allow for Coleridge’s chameleonism” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge 80). On the one hand, Coleridge publicly writes as a “Dissenter” to Estlin, while privately penning a simple yet telling entry in a notebook: “Socinianism Moonlight—Methodism &c A Stove! O for some Sun that shall unite Light & Warmth” (CL I 577; CN I 467). The turn of mind is important: satisfied with neither the reasonableness of a rational and intellectual faith (in Unitarianism) nor with the enthusiasm he perceived in a largely emotional practice of belief (in evangelical movements such as Methodism), Coleridge longed for a faith that could unite the two in a religion of both head and heart. The numerous personal challenges he faced during these years certainly implicated matters of spirituality—the strained relationship with his wife, an ever-apparent addiction to opium, and declining health—but Coleridge’s concept of God was at the root of these spiritual tremors. Coleridge’s reading of Bishop Samuel Horsley’s (1733–1806) Horsley’s Letters in Rep. to Dr. P.: Letters from the Archdeacon of Saint Albons in reply to Dr. Priestley (1784) was the climax of a series of steps toward his complete rejection of Unitarianism: “No Trinity, no God” (CN II 2448; February 1805). He describes his

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passage from Unitarianism to Trinitarianism as “the Religion of a man, whose Reason would make him an Atheist but whose Heart and Common sense will not permit him to be so” (CN II 2448).4 Coleridge’s experience was a genuine re-conversion—simultaneously described in the language of philosophy and spiritual renewal: “O that this Conviction may work upon me and in me/and that my mind may be made up as to the character of Jesus, and of historical Christianity, as clearly as it is of the Logos and intellectual or spiritual Christianity— that I may be made to know either their especial and peculiar Union, or their absolute disunion in any peculiar Sense.”5 Despite his confident rhetoric, Coleridge did not turn from a Unitarian notion of the Godhead to a resolute, Trinitarian perception of the Divine all at once. Herbert W. Piper describes the same Malta notebook entry as if it were a completely unanticipated moment of discovery: “There was no sign of any change in opinion in 1804, but he was converted to a belief in the Trinity in a sudden rush ‘at 1:30 p.m. on 12 February, 1805.’ The conversion was quite complete . . .” (23). Coleridge claims the thought as one that “burst upon me at once,” but his earlier mention of “Socinian Moonlight” reflects his prior irresolution on Christian theism (CN II 2448). For example, in one October 1803 notebook entry on the famous Oxford Bampton Lectures (an entry written three years after his note on Socinian moonlight), Coleridge argues that Trinitarian doctrine is illogical: “far nobler subjects for yearly Bampton Lectures might be found, than the Trinity that none but an Ideot can believe, & the Existence of God which none but a madman can disbelieve” (CN I 1543). Only two months after musing on the idiocy of Trinitarianism, Coleridge, increasingly taken by Kant’s philosophy, claims Trinitarian doctrine does not originate in an ancient myth but directly from the claims of Christ.6 A day or two before his allegedly “sudden” conversion, Coleridge writes in his notebook what Coburn considers “his first recorded explicit statement of Trinitarianism as having supplanted his earlier Unitarianism” (CN II 2444n). By the time he left Malta, Italy, on September 23, 1805, Coleridge experienced a profound change in his conception of God. Coleridge henceforth founded his system on a robust metaphysics of the Logos. Unitarianism became his foil and, as Bate attests, provided an essential backdrop for his mature theology: “How well he could understand the commendable hope and Puritan essentialism of the Unitarian!—had he not himself lived through it, more than taken it for granted, and himself said all that could be said for it? But here, in the Trinity, intelligently interpreted, was the deeper answer he really

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needed” (216). Even in his Unitarian period, when he believed that the doctrine of the Trinity was “an esoteric doctrine of revealed religion” that was better confined “to the schools of philosophy,” Coleridge’s approach to the doctrine of God was propelled by philosophical concerns. What he lacked at the time was a “more thorough revolution in my philosophic principles, and a deeper insight into my own heart” in order to bring about that “final re-conversion to the whole truth in Christ” (BL I 204–05). Initially, Coleridge’s return to Trinitarianism was a shift in philosophical understanding. Only later did his personal experience of the redeeming Christ buttress his conviction. The role of philosophy in Coleridge’s conversion to Trinitarianism clarifies the source of controversy that sometimes surrounds his writings: because Coleridge often works from a philosophical rather than a strictly biblical basis, his speculative Trinitarian formulations often appear unorthodox.7 His philosophical orientation also clarifies the rhetorical framework of the first article of Coleridge’s confession of faith: I. The Absolute; the innominable [self-engendered and Father of self ], in whose transcendant I AM, as the Ground, is whatever verily is:—The Triune God, by whose Word and Spirit, as the transcendant Cause, exists whatever substantially exists:—God Almighty—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, undivided, unconfounded, co-eternal. This class I designate by the word, [stasis]. (CIS 5; CIS–CC II 1118n)

Coleridge’s first article, while not a direct restatement of either the Nicene or Apostles’ Creed (which he generally accepted, with some qualifications), is no less powerful in its fully Trinitarian affirmation. As with the Prothesis of the Pentad, so, too, with his confession of faith: the Absolute commences all and is the self-caused cause of all that exists. God is the “I AM.” The statement signals Coleridge’s belief that God is a personal being. In Aids to Reflection, for example, Coleridge speaks of “a good, wise, living, and personal God” (186). In isolation, the statement is not a major departure from his prior claim as a Unitarian that “God is a living Spirit, infinitely powerful, wise and benevolent” (Lects 1795 207–08). But Coleridge’s adherence to God’s personal nature came to represent his unflinching commitment to Trinitarian theology. In the Opus Maximum, where Coleridge overtly avoids appealing to the Bible as an authority, he unambiguously identifies the Triune God with the personal God of Scripture: “the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the God of Abraham,

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Isaac, and Jacob, the living Jehovah whose name is I AM!, whose first and Eternal Name is in the declaration of that personality . . . to which Nature does indeed bear witness, as darkness beareth witness to light” (119).8 Coleridge recognizes that the Trinity is among the most difficult doctrines to demonstrate, yet he simultaneously believes that the Trinity remains “the one which of all others least needs to be demonstrated” since a lack of conclusive proof does not indicate the irrationality of the doctrine (AR 186). What is at stake is not the bounds of logic but God’s personal nature and, almost as important, the universal need for a redeemer: “because the doctrine of Redemption from Sin supplies the Christian with motives and reasons for the divinity of the redeemer far more . . . subjectively, i.e., in the economy of his own Soul, than are all the inducements that can influence the Deist objectively, i.e. in the interpretation of Nature” (AR 188).

Theological Anthropology The second and third articles of Coleridge’s confession of faith emerge as logical consequents of his discussion of the nature of God. The second article of Coleridge’s creed examines the human condition: II. The Eternal Possibilities; the actuality of which hath not its origin in God: Chaos spirituale:—’Ao´ . (CIS 5)

Coleridge’s abstract statement hardly bolsters his claim to Christian orthodoxy. Spiritual chaos results when humanity separates from God and the stasis of the Absolute. “Apostasy” encapsulates the theme of the whole statement, indicating Coleridge’s identification of the alienation of humanity from the stasis of God. The statement reflects Coleridge’s rejection of a pantheistic notion that the polar opposite of the Absolute is within God. Spiritual chaos and the consequent fall from God is a condition of humanity that does not originate in God. Hedley insists that “[o]ne might argue that the concept of sin is a symptom of the neurotic guilt-ridden mentality of Christian theology. Yet Coleridge would deny this. He insists that it is proper consideration of ethics which drives theology to consider evil and sin with due seriousness” (250).9 Coleridge recognizes the weight of sin on the human condition. He was far less enthusiastic about the doctrine of sin in his early years. Joseph Priestley not only influenced his notion of Christian theism, but also his concept of will and evil. Priestley, as with other

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philosophical necessitarians such as William Godwin (1756–1836), relied heavily on the tenets of David Hartley’s (1705–57) associationalism. Hartley’s Observations on Man (1749), especially the first of the two parts, maintains a theory of association reliant on a psychological notion of the human person. Hartley conceived of “miniature vibrations” that permeate every aspect of life. Bate compares the human in Hartley’s theory of associationalism to a computer that progressively develops: “When an object is encountered, vibrations carry the impression through the white medullary substance of the nerves to the brain, after which fainter vibrations (‘vibratiuncles’) remain ready in the brain to coalesce with others. Memory begins, and man develops step by step as more complex and refined reactions take place” (12). Since true human freedom cannot exist when ideas and actions are wholly the result of prior causes, the upshot of Hartley’s associationalism is necessitarianism. Willey, writing in criticism of Priestley’s conception of the doctrine of philosophic necessitarianism, explains how Priestley defended the human will through its supposed participation in the chain of events: “We are so made that, unlike the animals, we can shift our allegiance from one system of determinism to another—to a higher system, if ‘good character’ is our aim. Something in us enables us to see our former motives as contemptible, so that we cease to take pleasure in what formerly determined our will” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge 39). The problem with Priestley’s defense is that he rationalizes the fate of an individual when true necessitarianism requires that “nothing could have been otherwise than it has been, and that God has caused it all, good and evil alike.”10 Consequently, Coleridge’s optimism led him—for a time—to deny the existence of evil. In his Bristol lectures, Coleridge explains that rationalizing even the idea of evil is a difficult task. Since God is either good or evil, the acts of God are equally benevolent or malignant. In turn, evil itself must be denied since the idea compromises the ultimate benevolence of God (Lects 1795 105). Instead, Coleridge prefers to describe evil by its effect: pain. The pain a human experiences rouses the moral being out of a state of wickedness, as Coleridge explains: “the greatest possible Evil is Moral Evil. Those Pains therefore that rouse us to the removal of it become Good. So we shall find through all Nature that Pain is intended as a stimulus to Man in order that he may remove moral Evil” (Lects 1795 106). While reflecting on the cathartic qualities of marriage in one May 1796 letter to John Thelwall (1764–1834), Coleridge explains that moral evil is rooted in the material: “The real source of inconstancy, depravity, & prostitution, is Property, which mixes with & poisons every thing

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good—& is beyond doubt the Origin of all Evil” (CL I 214).11 Vice results from political inequality (Lects 1795 134).12 Coleridge’s denial of moral evil and, concomitantly, the doctrine of original sin did not last long. Following his acceptance of the Wedgwood annuity in early 1798, a noticeable shift occurs. In a letter to his brother Reverend George Coleridge (1764–1828), one that “marks a crucial point of transition in Coleridge’s thought” (Willey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 71), Coleridge affirms his belief in original sin while repudiating his previously radical political sentiments: “I believe most steadfastly in original Sin; that from our mothers’ wombs our understandings are darkened; and even where our understandings are in the Light, that our organization is depraved, & our volitions imperfect” (CL I 396). Coleridge was not yet prepared to embrace the atonement of Christ, however, and his solution to the problem of sin is rather nebulous: an appeal to the “Spirit of the Gospel.” Still, from this time, Coleridge recognizes that the alterity or “otherness” of God demands a free will—freedom even to sin. In Aids to Reflection, Coleridge unabashedly claims that evil not only exists, but also has a definable origin: “The Man of sober mind, who seeks for truths that possess a moral and practical interest, is content to be certain, first, that Evil must have had a beginning, since otherwise it must either be God, or a co-eternal and co-equal Rival of God; both impious notions, and the latter foolish to boot” (256).13 Agency is paramount. In Augustinian fashion, he maintains that sin is rooted in the evil Will of the individual: “A Sin is an Evil which has its ground or origin in the Agent, and not in the compulsion of Circumstances” (266).14 If the control of circumstances determines evil, then evil cannot be identified as sin, “such evil is not sin; and the person who suffers it, or who is the compelled instrument of its infliction on others, may feel regret, but cannot feel remorse” (267). Likewise, an act of sin cannot be reduced to one link in a chain of causes: “For if it be Sin, it must be original: and a State or Act, that has not its origin in the will, may be calamity, deformity, disease, or mischief; but a Sin it cannot be” (271). Evil originates in the human will.15 Evil does not originate in external objects that determine the fate of the human will, rather the individual chooses evil by disregarding the moral maxims of human conscience. All rational beings inevitably succumb to evil, but one must not confuse hereditary sin with original sin: Adam’s sin is representational only and not the first of a long series of necessary causes.16 The link between Adam and subsequent generations lies in the common propensity to moral evil: “The

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corruption of my will may very warrantably be spoken of as a Consequence of Adam’s Fall, even as my Birth of Adam’s Existence; as a consequence, a link in the historic Chain of instances, whereof Adam is the first” (AR 289).17 Coleridge acknowledges the representational link between Adam and subsequent human subjects, but he is wholly unwilling to admit any causal relationship impinging on the priority of the moral will. Nor will Coleridge allow that an extrinsic force of nature corrupts the will, a claim he makes on both logical and biblical grounds: “But that it is on account of Adam; or that this evil principle was, a priori, inserted or infused into my Will by the Will of another— which is indeed a contradiction in terms, my Will in such case being no Will—this is nowhere asserted in Scripture explicitly or by implication.”18 Coleridge’s Confessions thereby posits “the actuality of which hath not its origin in God” in order to highlight fallen human nature and the will (CIS 5). All religions retain some awareness of spiritual apostasy (AR 283). Peculiar to Christianity is the remedy: redemption by the Logos.

Divine Redemption The third class of Coleridge’s confession of faith is a diverse and ostensibly disjointed list of Christian tenets and disciplines. The punctuated list, distinct in its staccato style, contrasts with the connectional, thematic movement of ideas within the article: 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 ( ´ o):—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:—M ´—’A´. (CIS 6)

The third class of doctrine encapsulates the redemption of the created order. The article provides a holistic scheme of salvation, flowing from general cosmogony to individual eschatology and finding its center in the redemptive plan. The creation and formation of heaven and earth occurs “by the Redemptive Word.” The “Redemption of Man” follows immediately after the Fall in order to offset the apostasy of the individual will by the divine plan of salvation. Even the least

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suggestive themes, such as prayer, conflict, and discipline, all fall within the broad scope of the fruits of the redemption enacted by Christ, the Logos. Once again, Coleridge concludes the article with two Greek terms that provide the unifying idea of the article— M ´ and ’A´. The terms identify the “change of state” and “rising up” that take place in Christ’s work of redemption. The same terms reappear in the fourth article, where Coleridge’s repetition points to his objective in the third article: “Not only Man, but, says St. Paul, the whole Creation, is included in the consequences of the Fall . . . so also in those of the Change at the Redemption—of the change of the state and the rising again” (CIS 6; CIS–CC 1119n.4). The placement of the doctrine of redemption at this point in the confession of faith elucidates totalizing effect of the Word, impacting all of the created order, history, and individuals in the community of faith.19 The doctrine of redemption first becomes a matter of interest during Coleridge’s Unitarian period. He opposes the common Western notion of substitutionary atonement and, reflecting on the Jewish practice of sacrificial atonement, turns to passages of Scripture such as Isaiah 1:11 (“I delight not in the Blood of Bullocks, or of Lambs, or of Goats”) in order to emphasize the moral intent of sacrificial atonement (Lects 1795 203). Sacrifice does not cause God to act, but merely meliorates “our own Hearts” (202–03). These figural allusions were slowly lost over time as “[m]etaphors consolidated into realities.” By contrast, Jesus promulgated a spiritual law that allows people freedom from outward ceremonies. But early Christians and subsequent generations alike failed to recognize the true meaning of the atonement. The established doctrine of atonement is “perhaps the most irrational and gloomy Superstition that ever degraded the human mind” and a “more pernicious dogma” than the doctrine of the Trinity (204, 212).20 Long after Coleridge’s acceptance of the idea of the hypostasized Logos, his doubts about the morality of traditional accounts of redemption through the cross remained largely unchanged. He claims in the Biographia Literaria that “I was at that time and long after, though a Trinitarian (i.e. ad normam Platonis) in philosophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in Religion” (I 179–80). The notion of Christ’s “vicarious payment of a debt and the vicarious expiation of guilt” continues to trouble him throughout his life.21 Coleridge’s two Lay Sermons, for example, exemplify his interest in a moral conception of atonement. In the first lay sermon, “The Statesman’s Manual or

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The Bible the Best Guide to Political Skill and Foresight” (1816), Coleridge asks the reader to engage in spiritual self-examination: Am I sick, and therefore need a physician?—Am I in spiritual slavery, and therefore need a ransomer?—Have I given a pledge, which must be redeemed, and which I cannot redeem by my own resources?—Am I at one with God, and is my will concentric with that holy power, which is at once the constitutive will and the supreme reason of the universe? (LS 55)

A negative response to any of these questions leaves only one option: redemption. He writes, “[i]f not, must I not be mad if I do not seek, and miserable if I do not discover and embrace, the means of atone-ment?” A moral conception of redemption also serves as a pivotal theme and the line of demarcation between Unitarian and Trinitarian theologies in his A Lay Sermon (1817), which quotes Isaiah 32:20 (“Blessed Are Ye That Sow Beside All Waters!”) on the title page. Coleridge claims that Unitarian doctrines reflect a troubling biblical hermeneutic: There is one class of men who read the Scriptures, when they do read them, in order to pick and choose their faith; or (to speak more accurately) for the purpose of plucking away live asunder, as it were from the divine organism of the Bible, textual morsels and fragments for the support of doctrines which they had learned beforehand from the higher oracle of their own natural Common-Sense. (LS 181–83)

Coleridge rejects the Unitarian doctrine of redemption, whereby Christ’s death was effective only insofar as it serves as an example of his earnestness. He shudders at the thought that Jesus’ redemptive work on the cross may be diminished to that of any other martyr. By prioritizing the subjective effect over the objective act, a Unitarian hermeneutic strips the universal consequence from the redemptive power worked through the cross. The upshot of such a hermeneutic is an absurdity: if “a man had been influenced to an innocent and useful life by the example, precepts, and martyrdom of Socrates, Socrates and not Christ, would have been his Redeemer” (LS 183*). Coleridge’s two lay sermons thereby balance the individual need for redemption with the capacity of the redeemer to serve as more than a moral exemplar. Coleridge develops the distinction in Aids to Reflection, where he recommends that others approach redemption from either of two sides: its antecedent, “the Redeemer’s Act, as the efficient cause and condition of Redemption,” or its consequent, “the effects in and for the Redeemed” (AR 319). Too many divines identify the

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consequences of redemption with its causes. Coleridge encourages Christians to focus their attention, as with Paul, on the consequences of Christ’s redemptive work rather than on the antecedent cause of redemption, which remains a mystery. Paul relates four metaphors that point to the effects of redemption on the redeemed: sin-offering or sacrificial expiation, reconciliation or atonement, redemption or ransom from slavery, or satisfaction or payment of a debt (AR 320–21). These examples are metaphorical consequents of the redemptive work; each conveys only one dimension of the whole idea of redemption. For example, one can repay the financial debt of another before a judge. The metaphor fails in some contexts, however, exposing its figural quality. Despite inherent limitations in language, the metaphors point to Christ, the Logos, and “excite in the receivers a due sense of the magnitude and manifold operations of the Boon, and of the Love and gratitude due to the Redeemer” (AR 327).

The Nature of Christianity While the disjointed grammar of the third article certainly hampers interpretation, the abstruse content of the fourth article departs radically from the perspicuity of traditional creeds. Having affirmed his belief in the Trinity, the Fall, and the redemptive plan, Coleridge’s fourth article describes the implications of a doctrine of redemption for the nature of Christianity. Although he never announces his intention, Coleridge elucidates the spiritual and historical character of Christianity: “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” (CIS 6–7). Both poles—spiritual and historical—are indispensable to true religion. The opening of the article addresses the spiritual character of Christianity by affirming the universality of Christ’s redemptive work against a Reformed doctrine of election and limited atonement. He commences by affirming both the universal need for God’s mercy and the concomitant, universal availability of grace: “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” (CIS 6). Coleridge then turns to the historical as the progression of the Gospel in space and time. While he never explains precisely what he means by the spiritual truths of Christianity (the polar opposite of historical facts), this class

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of doctrine hinges on the perceived gap between spiritual truth and history. The fourth article raises distinctly modern Christian questions, and intimates the influence of Lessing. Lessing’s “On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power” (1777) highlights the gap that he perceives between spiritual truth-claims and the evidences of history. Lessing’s essay disputes the claim that the accidental events of history can be the foundation for spiritual truth. He calls this the “broad and ugly ditch which I cannot get across, no matter how often and earnestly I have tried to make the leap,” namely, the view that the “contingent truths of history can . . . become the proof of necessary truths of reason” (87, 85). Although Coleridge’s article does not name Lessing specifically, he takes a similar path. For Lessing, one’s acceptance of the truth of miracles or prophecies does not validate Christianity. Lessing places individual experience above the authority of Scripture. By contrast, Coleridge’s fourth article indicates that both the spiritual and the historical are necessary to a right conception of religion, since “Christianity is fact no less than truth” (CIS 6). The Logos is the ground of both the historical and the spiritual. Coleridge’s earlier writings provide alternate demonstrations of Christianity. In the 1795 lectures, Coleridge opposes Hume’s assault on the veracity of miracles by recalling, almost verbatim, the argument of Hartley: “before Magnetism & Electricity were discovered and verified by a variety of concurrent facts, there would have been as much reason to disallow the evidence of their particular effects attested by Eyewitnesses, as there is now to disallow the particular Miracles recorded in Scripture” (Lects 1795 112). Biblical miracles were not acts contrary to nature but the result of laws unfamiliar to biblical authors. But as early as August 1805, Coleridge begins to oppose the use of evidentiary logic to prove the truth of Christianity. Notebook entries denounce the evidentiary theologies of Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) and William Paley.22 Later, around 1815, the distinct language of the Confessions appears. The first Lay Sermon introduces the division between spiritual and historical Christianity: “Christianity is especially differenced from all other religions by being grounded on facts which all men alike have the means of ascertaining, the same means, with equal facility, and which no man can ascertain for another” (55). Coleridge refers to the role of Reason as a universal vehicle of God’s revelatory self-disclosure. Other modes of revelation, such as the historical proofs of the Christian faith, have an objective content but are “not equally within the means and opportunities of every man alike” (55). Historical evidences provide an inadequate

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foundation for Christianity, “nor can it without loss of essential faith be mistaken or substituted for the foundation” (56). Coleridge’s gradual interest in balancing the spiritual and historical becomes apparent in the following decade. By the 1820s, the era of Coleridge’s sustained biblical study, he affirms the concomitant importance of biblical history—even a miraculous one. In 1826, Coleridge explicitly rejects Herder’s description of Christianity for his failure to affirm Christianity’s historical character. Herder maintains a false conception of the Gospel: immortality is founded on a History so disguised in Symbols, Jewish allusions, and short and long Allegories, that of the two main Facts which give their value to all the others [Christ’s resurrection and ascension], Herder believes in the literal sense [of] neither the one nor the other, and does not favor us even with a hint, what we are to believe—i.e. historically—instead of them. (CN IV 5334)

Coleridge finds Herder’s superior tone offensive, and later mocks his tendency to deprecate the founders of Christianity: Poor simple Creatures! excuse them, Gentlemen! They had very good hearts, take my word for it. And tho’ they were somewhat silly, yet really put ourselves in their place, suppose that instead of our rank, education, and various immeasurable Superiorities, we had been poor vulgar superstitious ignorant Jew Blackguards; like Peter, John & the rest—really, Gentlemen!—do not be offended if I say, that we, even we ourselves, would have thought and acted much in the same way!—And this is a Defence of Christianity!!! (CN IV 5334)

Herder offends Coleridge not only because of his superior tone, but also because Herder fails to recognize the necessarily historical character of biblical events. The truth of Christianity emerges within the polarity of spiritual and historical. Departing from traditional phraseology, Coleridge could not have expected that his modern confession would bring immediate credibility to the Confessions. The creed did allow him, however, to assert his orthodoxy and declare his station as a trustworthy confessor. The creed functions as Coleridge’s theological prolegomenon; it clears a space for discussion of “revealed” religion. By stating his core beliefs up front—the Triune God, the Fall of humanity, the redemptive scheme, and the spiritual and historical nature of Christianity— Coleridge dissociates his mature theology from the Unitarianism he embraced as a young man. Through the creed, Coleridge develops a

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theology of the Word, and grounds his conception of religion on the Triune God, as Hardy explains: “Briefly stated, his intentions were to discover the order of all things in relation to their source in God” (Assertion 35).23 He then turns to the Bible, the most prominent book in England.

Chapter 3

The Scriptures: The Mirror of F aith

There have been moments (alas! how soon swallowed up in bodily Languor!) when I have seemed to hear myself called to the perilous Heraldry—when the Spirit of Luther has pointed to—a Trumpet. Truth! the Truth! the whole Truth! So only can a People be made free. S. T. Coleridge (CN V 5607)

In the opening decades of the nineteenth century, the Bible emerged

as the most accessible book in English society. The work of Bible societies (part of a wider, burgeoning evangelistic culture) and the technological and economic advances of the publishing industry brought Bibles to nearly every parish and home in England. Yet, just as Bibles were freely dispensed, so, too, was a doctrine of inspiration that often reduced the text to a product of mechanistic, divine dictation. Some theologians began to question received doctrines of Scripture, especially those in contact with German criticism. Controversies beset the churches in England amid the escalating intellectual and spiritual ferment. Meanwhile, in Coleridge’s view, the Bible suffered neglect: “A single word characterizes the Religion of this Country. It is idealess.—i.e. no Religion. The Ideas, that constitute Religion, neither exist for the Clergy nor in the Laity.—But as Leighton finely observes—The cold & the Darkness are often greatest just before the Break of Dawn” (CN V 5607). Coleridge attempted to set a new course for English Christians through a renewed vision of “revealed” religion.

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Coleridge’s Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit addresses the problem of biblical authority by reinvigorating the traditional Christian belief in the “two-fold character of the Scriptures” (CN V 5721). For Coleridge, the literary character of the text, which encapsulates its historical and grammatical meaning, opens Scripture as an objective source of knowledge to scholarly, critical investigation by the Understanding. The investigation of the literary sense of the Bible by the biblical critic is “a most worthy and honorable Object of Pursuit” and an object “commendable for all Christians who have the means of so doing, and a duty for the Doctors of the Church” (CN IV 5337). Coleridge unequivocally affirms that the Bible may also be approached through the eyes of faith. The spiritual sense of Scripture—often labeled its “subjective” or “philosophical” character in order to emphasize the Bible’s ability to communicate transcendental truths to the individual—speaks to the innermost needs of its readers. In one notebook entry from late 1829 or early 1830, Coleridge clarifies the distinction between these two senses, highlighting the way a single passage of Scripture may be viewed through two different lenses: O the difference, the unspeakable difference, between an historicocritical intellective Study of the Old Testament, and the praying of the same! I mean, the perusal of it with a personal moral and religious Interest, in the spirit of appropriation to our own wants & troubles.— Read in the latter spirit, it will be found to present no . . . USELESS tautologies, or repetitions. Take the Psalms, in the first instance.—How often do the same Adjurations recur—in the same general terms!—But be in affliction, of body and of mind—and pray the 86th or any similar Psalm. You will soon discover, that they recur no oftener than there is a Need of the Heart to receive them, or even already gone forth to meet them! (CN V 6241)

A psalm may appear to the eye of the philologist as a needless repetition. Yet, when prayed by the individual seeking spiritual succor, the same text provides a measured dose of divine comfort. These two senses of Scripture—the twofold character of the Bible—are aspects or modes of an objective revelation of God. Scripture, for Coleridge, is not Reason in disguise. Scripture is not an Augustinian “wax nose,” shaped by the reader’s fancy, nor is the Bible only an empty vessel of truths revealed by the Spirit to the individual subject. The Bible remains an independent source of religious knowledge—an object, an “other,” the revelation of the Logos. The reader encounters truth through faith, but he or she does not project meaning into the text. Scripture speaks and finds the reader.

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In the first letter of Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, the twofold character of Scripture provides the framework of his discussion of the Bible (the fifth class of doctrine).1 Coleridge opens his discussion of the Bible by emphasizing its literary character through the eyes of a detached observer. Then, in mid-sentence, he describes the same biblical text from the perspective of a believer who encounters the spiritual sense of the divine Word: 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 reliques 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 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-organized 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. (CIS 7–9)

Coleridge first uses the language of a literary scientist or philologist to describe the text as an artifact. Almost as if reading a “table of contents” and thumbing through the ancient volume, he posits a series of statements of objective, historical fact: the Bible is a book of two parts, consisting of many books; in the first part, the Old Testament, are “reliques” of an ancient people; in the second, the New Testament, are the writings of those who followed Christ. Coleridge quickly qualifies his claims to ensure his reliability as a detached and irreproachable—yet Christian—observer: “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” (CIS 8). The Bible ought to be the subject of critical analysis, thoughtful study, and examined as if read “for the first time as I should read any other work . . .” Then, in midsentence, Coleridge turns to describe the Bible in its subjective, spiritual character. He continues: “as far at least as I can or dare.” His tone changes, though it remains only a subtle shift. No longer does Coleridge, from this point, describe the text according to the model of a philologist, but as a captivated disciple hearing the words of a master: Coleridge is possessed by the text and it, in turn, provides the

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very means by which he understands his faith. The text reveals its spiritual or philosophical sense as an objective revelation of the Divine. Even in its subjective character, the Bible remains an other.2 Coleridge’s twofold approach to Scripture, with its capacity to hold the secular and sacred in polar tension, simultaneously reflects and conflicts with the enthusiastic embrace of the Bible in earlynineteenth-century England. Popular evangelical zeal for Scripture coupled with advances in technology during the early decades of the nineteenth century, as new methods of printing led to the unprecedented availability of Bibles for individual use. The presence of a Bible and a copy of the Book of Common Prayer could be expected in even the least affluent English homes. In one 1839 survey of families in the perpetual curate of Christ Church, Newark, for example, though only 385 adults regularly attended Christ Church or St. Mary’s, some 518 Bibles, 15 New Testaments, and 503 Books of Common Prayer were in circulation. Knight claims that this documentary evidence renders a clear judgment: “It seems implausible that all these prayer books had been dumped on unwilling householders by parish visitors. Rather, it suggests that some attempt at religious reading was being made even by the urban poor, and even if reading proved beyond them, the presence of the Bible and the Prayer Book in the home was seen as having a distinct value” (37). As access to books improved during the period, the ability to read and write was no longer merely a mark of sophistication, but requisite for professional expertise and spiritual growth (McGrath 6–8). While the physical text of Scripture had never been so accessible to the masses, illiteracy remained a barrier to those families, particularly the poor, who hoped to learn from the Bible. The mere availability of the Bible in English increased access for individuals who would sit and listen to others read Scripture in a language that they could understand. One story from the late 1520s is particularly instructive. William Maldon relates his experience as an illiterate Christian who cherished the chance to listen to others read Tyndale’s New Testament aloud. His father, however, often pulled him away from the crowds in order to say the Latin matins with him, but this “grieved me very much . . . then thought I, I would learn to read English, and then I will have the New Testament and read thereon myself” (qtd. in McGrath 78–79). Popular, “open air” teaching by the Methodists and the use of Scripture in hymns brought the Bible to the forefront of English society at the turn of the nineteenth century as well. John Wesley’s (1703–91) Methodist movement emphasized holiness of life and the

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interior work of the Spirit, especially through contact with the Bible. Wesley’s “Rules for the United Societies” claimed Scripture as “the only rule, and the sufficient rule, both of our faith and practice” (Outler 179). Wesley professed that the Bible’s teachings are confirmed through personal experience, since “his Spirit writes on every truly awakened heart.” Organizationally, Wesley’s lay-preachers expounded biblically driven messages and used hymns to teach Methodist doctrine to common people.3 Wesley, a lifelong member of the Church of England, taught that Scripture results from the inspiring operation of the Holy Spirit; the Bible is, in part, the fulfillment of the Johannine promise to send a Comforter who “should abide with us for ever” (Wesley, Works XI 504). Wesley typifies the evangelical belief that Scripture is so directed by the Spirit that “no considerable error should fall from its writers.” Wesley worried that allowing for “any error in Scripture” might “shake the authority of the whole.” Wesley’s evangelical emphasis on individual piety also carried risks: Coleridge lamented “the pervading, I, I, I, I” of Wesley (CM V 133). One widespread effect of the Methodist movement in England was renewed devotion to the Bible. Anglican clergy mimicked Methodist class meetings and sought to meet the needs of devout Anglicans by providing them with cottage meetings. While remaining under clerical rather than lay control, cottage meetings approached the characteristic “informality” and “intimacy” of the Methodist classes (Knight 40). Across sectarian divisions, an emphasis on pietistic biblical study became a commonplace of English church life by the turn of the century. Private Bible reading often required the aid of additional commentary and notation for adequate comprehension by the layperson. Bible publishers in the early nineteenth century competed through various accoutrements designed to assist the reader in private Bible study at home. Commentaries on the biblical narrative, social customs, and plant and animal life adorned many of the new Bibles that publishers circulated, some incorporating more than a thousand illustrations at a very low cost (Knight 39). As Gutjahr observes, reflecting on the contemporary parallel practice of Bible “packaging” by North American publishers, the use of key phrases in advertisements, such as labeling the volume a “New Pictorial Bible embellished with Sixteen Hundred Historical Engravings,” conveyed the value and authenticity of the biblical text: “The Harpers wanted their readers to know that their illustrations were based on historical fact, not artistic imagination” (74). The Prayer Book also reinforced the importance of the Bible for many English Christians in Coleridge’s lifetime. As Knight explains,

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Anglicanism during this age “was, more than any other denomination, a tradition of a book, a single book, the Book of Common Prayer” (42–43). The presence of the Book of Common Prayer strengthened scriptural literacy among families practicing the observance of private prayer. Through repetition of the prayers and prolonged contact with the language of the text, use of the Prayer Book connected the practitioners, including young children growing under the tutelage of the book through repetition and memorization, to a common Christian piety and the traditions of the Christian faith.4 The Book of Common Prayer was not a substitute for the biblical text, but served as an entryway into Scripture and a formative interpretive tool for understanding the Bible. Coleridge was fully aware of the work of evangelistic Bible societies, whose extensive reach made inexpensive copies of the Bible available throughout Britain. Coleridge’s primary Bible for marginal notation during the last decade of his life was produced by the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS).5 Many Bible societies, such as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), encouraged the use of both the Prayer Book and the Bible. As interdenominational agencies and charitable organizations, Bible societies maintained strong financial backing and, without the constraints of a single denomination, large societies such as the BFBS commanded the aid of numerous affiliates. One article on “Toleration” in an 1816 issue of the Edinburgh Review interprets the broad reach of Bible societies as a sign of progress: “with its various branches extending through the whole empire . . . Such an association, we believe, to be unexampled in history” (62).6 The Bible societies were organizationally and financially successful organs of evangelistic devotion to the Bible. Evangelical religion had a complex impact on English Christianity. On one hand, as Coleridge explains, English devotion to the Bible was widespread and tended to emphasize the divine character of the text. English Christians valued the Bible not merely as a great literary work, but as the very words of God. The Bible was also increasingly a matter of private devotion. As access to the printed text increased (through new distribution methods and rising literacy rates), the tendency to see the text through the lens of individual experience also increased. For Coleridge, the amalgamation of latent bibliolatry and growing privatization led to potentially devastating results for Christian faith: the whims of individual fancy could easily be mistaken for the dictates of the Divine. This helps to explain why Coleridge goes to such great lengths to insist that he reads the Bible as any other work of literature, for he wishes to help others avoid the tendency

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toward individualism and subjectivism that the evangelical revival allegedly produced. Treating the Bible as a work of literature bolstered a primary aim of the Confessions: to write on revealed religion in the tradition of Christian apologetics. Coleridge encourages the skeptic to first attend to the stories of Scripture, the text as a literary document, rather than feeling compelled to embrace a catalogue of beliefs or a Christian creed. The inquirer ought to read the Bible, which contains “examples of obedience and disobedience both in states and individuals, the lives and actions of men eminent under each dispensation, their sentiments, maxims, hymns, and prayers,—their affections, emotions, and conflicts” (CIS 66). The Bible, in this view, is a record, albeit a record not only of history and events, but also of emotions and states of mind. Scripture provides an account of the social history of believers and an objective work that relates the real struggles and emotions of individuals seeking God. Coleridge’s emphasis on the literary sense of Scripture not only counteracts the alleged evangelical privatization of the Bible, but also reflects a significant trend in English society: the emergence of the Bible as literature. Robert Lowth (1710–87), who ranks among the decisive figures in the story of modern biblical criticism, brought about a landmark shift in the presentation of the Psalms and Prophets by arranging the text into lines of poetic verse. Lowth’s most famous work, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews (1753), analyzed the literary style of the biblical writers and noted that, unlike the common language of the Hebrew people, biblical authors employ a sententious and sublime diction that lays bare the private, inner feelings of the author (83, cf. 75). Long before Schleiermacher, Lowth recommended that the reader identify with the mindset of the original Hebrew audience. Lowth encouraged the modern reader not only to understand the original language and customs of the Hebrew people, but even to think as a Hebrew: “we must even investigate their inmost sentiments, the manner and connexion of their thoughts; in one word, we must see all things with their eyes, estimate all things by their opinions: we must endeavor as much as possible to read Hebrew as the Hebrews would have read it” (78). Lowth’s insights on the Hebrew text were so valuable that continental biblical critics such as Johann David Michaelis and Johann Gottfried Herder took notice. Michaelis went so far as to publish a German edition of Lowth’s Lectures with extensive annotation. Despite Lowth’s success abroad, the literary approach faced an uphill battle in England. Years later, while Coleridge assiduously

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worked in his room in Highgate toward a complete study of the books of the Bible, Henry Hart Milman (1791–1868), a professor of poetry at Oxford (succeeded by John Keble), anonymously published The History of the Jews (1829). Milman’s History provides a narrative portrayal of the Jews as an ancient oriental people. Critics received his work, however, as an attempt to de-emphasize the miraculous in favor of a cultural portrait of the Old Testament. The miraculous still figures in numerous accounts, but he passes over miracles quite often. For example, Milman casually omits the famous story of Elijah being taken up into heaven in a whirlwind (2 Kings 2) with only an innocuous note that Elisha “had now assumed the prophetic office” (I 286). The occasional instances when Milman questioned the genuineness of the biblical record were even more problematic. His narration of Abraham’s second denial of Sarah as his wife in the Book of Genesis, for example, implies not only that the original story of the life of Abraham suffered corruption, but also the later account of Isaac: “With Abimelek an adventure took place, so similar in its circumstances with the seizure and restoration of Sarah in Egypt, as almost to excite a suspicion that it is a traditional variation of the same transaction, more particularly as it is unquestionably related out of its place in the Mosaic narrative, and again repeated in the life of Isaac” (I 21).7 The public met Milman’s literary account—a work in the “Family Library”—with widespread consternation. Critics distrusted the volume and booksellers quickly halted its sale. The publisher even discontinued the series in which it appeared (DNB XXXVIII 3). Critics supposed that Milman’s work was the fruit of German biblical criticism, though the History showed little, if any, continental influence. Rogerson explains that preachers, too, denounced Milman’s work from the pulpits in “most unmeasured language” (184), despite the profound sense of divine providence he displayed throughout the volume and only occasional notes of criticism: “Milman’s History of the Jews not only presents a very traditional account of the history of ancient Israel, with occasional mild instances of rationalization; it contains a deep sense of the divine providence which sustained and directed the fortunes of the people of Israel, and which vouchsafed a unique revelation to mankind through them” (187). Milman’s reference to comparative accounts of Abraham adopted in the Koran and unwillingness to adjudicate the veracity of these accounts was undoubtedly disconcerting to many readers: “The Arabian accounts of Abraham, adopted into the Koran, are no doubt much older than Mahomet; but whether they were primitive traditions, or

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embellishments of their authentic history, originating among the Jews themselves, is a question perhaps impossible to decide” (I 6). The public reaction to Milman’s literary approach to the Old Testament acclimatizes our ears to the radical tone of Coleridge’s words. Reading the Bible “as I should read any other work,—as far at least as I can or dare,” really was a matter of daring. Coleridge’s proposal opened the Sacred Scriptures to the possibility that, as a fully human work, the Bible contains inherent weaknesses at the historical– literary level of meaning. Coleridge compares those elements of the biblical narrative that contain an imperfect and finite record of events to “rusted swords.” He describes the skeptic who comes to Scripture with a mind determined to find discrepancies in the text as “an idler or a scoffer” who “should wander through the rooms, peering and peeping, and either detects, or fancies he has detected, here a rusted sword or pointless shaft, there a tool of rude construction, and superseded by later improvements” (CIS 71).8 What response ought the Christian give to such an individual? Coleridge argues that rather than insisting that “rust is not rust, or that it is a rust sui generis [of a peculiar kind], intentionally formed on the steel for some mysterious virtue in it,” one ought to “give the curious inquisitor joy of his mighty discoveries, and the credit of them for his reward.” Still emphasizing the peculiarly literary character of the Bible, Coleridge confidently acknowledges that “a few parts may be discovered of less costly materials and of meaner workmanship,” but a marked difference exists between the “the quadrant and telescope of Newton or Herschel” and “the staff and astrolabe of a shepherd–astronomer” (CIS 73, 71). The truth of Scripture remains. As with other great literature, the Bible’s truths do not tarnish easily: “Will you deny a spirit of wisdom in Lord Bacon, because in particular facts he did not possess perfect science, or an immunity from the positive errors which result from imperfect insight? A Davy will not so judge his great predecessor” (CIS 55–56).9 In the third letter of Confessions, Coleridge proposes that his readers consider the authority of a biography or “Life” of a noted statesman, such as William Rawley’s (1588–1667) work on Francis Bacon (1561–1626). One can rely on such a biography with the same confidence as if one were citing Bacon himself, mentioning the biographer in lieu of the individual: “[t]urn to your Rawley! He will set you right.” Although “[n]o man in his senses” would expect even the most veracious historical materials to fully recollect “time, place, and circumstance, together with the order and succession of the narrative,” when English laity refer to the text of the Bible, “it is quite

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otherwise” (CIS 29–30). The point of the analogy is plain: though the text of Scripture is quite trustworthy on the whole, by no means does this imply that every sentence of the Bible contains infallible truth.10 Coleridge did not base his claims on instinct, but the latest research in biblical criticism—research that pointed to the literary background and documentary sources of the Bible. Herbert Marsh (1757–1839), among the foremost conveyors of German biblical criticism for English theology during the period, was a former student of Michaelis.11 He translated Michaelis’s seminal New Testament study, Einleitung in die göttlichen Schriften des Neuen Bundes (Introduction to the New Testament [1793–1801]), introducing England to the latest German biblical criticism. Marsh also appended an extensive “Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of Our Three First Canonical Gospels” to the translation. He claimed that the “absolute independence” of the authors of the first three Gospels “is no longer tenable” and proposed his own hypothesis to reconcile the verbal discrepancies between the first three Gospel accounts (II 170).12 What is most striking about the “Dissertation,” however, is not its solution to the problem of the compositional origins of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but the thoroughgoing secularity of his proposal. Marsh’s “Dissertation” treats the Bible as a literary document; he writes about the origins of the Sacred Scriptures without resorting to the spiritualizing language that many orthodox scholars would assume in such an account. He resoundingly describes the Evangelists not as eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus or as Spirit-inspired secretaries, but—using plain literary terminology—as authors: “For though the Evangelists made use of more ancient documents, they are not to be considered as transcribers or translators, but as authors: and each of them, as such, made material additions, either of facts, or of discourses, or of circumstances, which were unnoticed by the other two, because they wrote without any knowledge of each other’s Gospels” (II 409). German and English biblical critics—including Eichhorn, Marsh, and others— shaped Coleridge’s literary view of the Bible.13 Coleridge found biblical harmonies vexing. On one hand, harmonies reflect the broader movement to conceptualize the Bible as literature, simultaneously providing both devotional literature and entertainment for the reader.14 Yet, in Coleridge’s view, harmonists flattened biblical divergences and the documentary origins of the Bible as they synthesized disparate accounts of the same histories (such as the Gospels). Thomas Hartwell Horne’s An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures (1818), widely

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acknowledged to be among the most thorough and encyclopedic explications of the academic study of the Bible in the period, recommends the work of biblical harmonists, especially as a weapon against infidelity.15 Horne claims that harmonizations are necessary “to show the perfect agreement of all parts of the sacred writings” against the “adversaries of Christianity” (II 474). Coleridge believed, by contrast, that harmonists twisted history and created more problems than they solved: “What, I say, could have tempted grave and pious men thus to disturb the foundation of the Temple, in order to repair a petty breach or rat-hole in the wall, or fasten a loose stone or two in the outer court, if not an assumed necessity arising out of the peculiar character of Bible history?” (CIS 42). Harmonists unwittingly degraded the spiritual character of Scripture by locating the unity and meaning of Scripture in its literary sense. Discussion of the literary sense alone—divorced and isolated from the spiritual—fails to capture Coleridge’s understanding of the twofold character of Scripture. Coleridge compares Scripture to other great literature because both may communicate truth: “Would not every genial mind understand by Shak[e]speare that unity or total impression comprising, and resulting from, the thousandfold several and particular emotions of delight, admiration, gratitude excited by his works?” (CIS 26). While Coleridge believes that the Bible ought to be studied as a literary document, his private notes and correspondence confirm that he entertained the notion that the Bible differs in kind and not merely in degree. Although Coleridge’s writings predominantly speak of the difference between Scripture and other literature as a matter of degree (such as his note to his son Hartley in Robert Anderson’s The Works of the British Poets, “[t]hese Sonnets then, I trust, if God preserve thy Life, Hartley! thou wilt read with a deep Interest . . . and subordinate only to thy Bible” [CM I 42]), still, on occasion one finds that Coleridge even names the difference between the Bible and other literature as one of kind. In Coleridge’s notes on Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Coleridge claims that the Bible is “above all comparison” and that Bunyan’s work may be “the best SUMMA THEOLOGIÆ Evangelicæ ever produced by a Writer not miraculously inspired.”16 This may be hyperbole. More likely, he is differentiating Scripture from all other literature—even the literature of genius—based on his commitment to the twofold character of the Bible.17 The spiritual or philosophical character of Scripture derives from the fact that the Holy Spirit inspired the authors of the Bible. The measure of inspiration and canonicity, however, is not based on the

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“innocent infirmities of humanity,” since “it is a mistaken Theory of Inspiration that would demand their exclusion from a canonical work” (CN IV 5354). The difference between the inspired biblical text and the non-canonical writing is “not that they occur [for example, errors and other time-bound claims], but that they are constantly recurring” in some and, “that they occupy the prominent place” of an uninspired work. The difference between the Bible and other literature is the presence of symbolic language that mediates a transcendental message “in and through the temporal” (Prickett, Romanticism and Religion 29). The problem, as Coleridge saw it, was a misapprehension of the meaning of biblical “inspiration.” Coleridge was certainly not the first to raise challenging questions about biblical inspiration in England or abroad. Herbert Marsh’s “Translator’s Preface” to Michaelis’s Introduction to the New Testament made explicit mention of the doctrine. Marsh recommends Michaelis’s chapter on inspiration to readers as containing “a variety of very sensible and judicious remarks” (I iv). There, Michaelis distinguishes between genuineness and inspiration and claims that the rejection of biblical inspiration is not tantamount to a complete rejection of a book’s usefulness: The question, whether the books of the New Testament are inspired, is not so important, as the question whether they are genuine. The truth of our religion depends upon the latter, not absolutely on the former. Had the Deity inspired not a single book of the New Testament, but left the Apostles, and Evangelists without any other aid, than that of natural abilities to commit what they knew to writing, admitting their works to be authentic, and possessed of a sufficient degree of credibility, the Christian religion would still remain the true one. (I 72)

Michaelis wrote on inspiration in the wake of Lessing’s controversial publication of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments.18 Lessing published the Fragments from Hermann Samuel Reimarus’s Apology or Defense for the Rational Worshippers of God, “the most significant work in which all the fruits of the biblical criticism of English Deism were systematically incorporated” (Reventlow 412). Michaelis’s distinction, then, has a direct context: overblown claims to biblical inspiration (and inerrancy) may undermine Christianity. Nearly a quarter of a century after Marsh’s translation of Michaelis, Connop Thirlwall (1797–1875) anonymously translated Friedrich Schleiermacher’s (1768–1834) Über die Schriften des Lukas (1817) and published the work as A Critical Essay on the Gospel of St. Luke (1825).19 Thirlwall admits that the conclusions reached on the

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compositional origins of Scripture are incompatible with traditional portraits of inspiration that portray the biblical authors as passive instruments in the hands of God (xi). He comments that while the learned have largely abandoned such a mechanical view, “undoubtedly it is still a generally received notion” (xii). Alternately, Thirlwall proposes that the church return to the ancient view of Scripture, namely, that the Bible is the result of “the constant and uniform operation of the Spirit” (xix). Otherwise, the notion of interdependence between the Gospel accounts will certainly cause alarm. Despite his hopes, Thirlwall’s “Introduction” did alarm many, and Schleiermacher’s Essay, with its bald-faced dismantling of the Gospel narratives (including the infancy narratives) and transformation of history to poetics, only furthered the latent distrust for German biblical criticism in England.20 T. H. Horne’s Introduction, by comparison, provides a mainstream view of inspiration among scholars in early-nineteenth-century England. Horne affirms the doctrine of inspiration, but denies a mechanistic view devoid of the traces of the human faculties. In its highest sense, inspiration is “the immediate communication of knowledge to the human mind by the Spirit of God,” but the common use of the term by theologians, according to Horne, primarily affirms the ability of the biblical authors to “communicate religious knowledge to others, without error or mistake” (I 515). Horne approvingly cites Erasmus’s view that divine inspiration does not imply that God dictated every word. The biblical writers maintained the use of their faculties and their memories remained fallible, but the Spirit enabled them to recall the words of Christ and “to understand those things rightly” (I 518). In Coleridge’s view, the doctrine of inspiration was one that most English Christians could no longer discuss objectively. The mechanical view of inspiration was widespread (as Thirlwall attested). Inspiration implied dictation and, almost by definition, plenary inerrancy. According to Coleridge, mechanical inspiration had been taught so persistently in the churches that the clergy convinced the laity that it was the only orthodox perspective: “the words of our Lord and the declarations of St. Paul can awaken no other sense” (CIS 24). In turn, church leaders stopped defending the doctrine: “I am weary of discussing a tenet,” Coleridge claims in the sixth letter of the Confessions, “which the generality of divines and the leaders of the Religious Public have ceased to defend, and yet continue to assert or imply” (CIS 75).21 From an apologetic standpoint, Coleridge believed that a neglectful approach to Christianity formed unnecessary

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roadblocks for the inquirer into the Christian faith. Meanwhile, too many religious leaders, aware of the problems with plenary inspiration, refused to oppose or clarify the doctrine for fear that a shift in popular belief might lead to disunity and fracturing within the body.22 Coleridge believed that the doctrine hindered dialogue by ascribing to God the moral, scientific, and philosophical notions of the historically situated biblical authors (CIS 54). In essence, English Protestants had capitulated to the desire for an irreproachable authority in a manner similar to the Roman Catholic defense of an infallible papacy.23 Both models proved injurious to Christianity. What was needed, quite simply, was “a religion of faith instead of a religion of fear” (CN V 6151).24 Coleridge clarifies biblical inspiration in Confessions by distinguishing between revelation and actuation. Revelation may be properly used “in the sense of Information miraculously communicated by voice or vision” (CIS 88). It signifies the supernatural and verbal communication of divine truth—“Thus saith the Lord . . .”— through some prophets and in various passages of the Pentateuch.25 By contrast, “actuation of the Holy Spirit” refers to those occasions in Scripture “where without any sensible addition or infusion, the writer or speaker uses and applies his existing gifts of power and knowledge under the predisposing, aiding, and directing actuation of God’s Holy Spirit” (CIS 88).26 Actuation emphasizes the writer’s existing talents or gifts. In actuation, the grace of God acts as a guide and predisposing support that aids the writer. Actuation thereby enables the individual to grasp divine truth by the assistance of the Holy Spirit. In the biblical writers, actuation is the divine guidance to understand spiritual realities through Reason and to communicate them through language. Revelation is a rare occurrence in Scripture. Most of the biblical authors wrote under the actuating influence of God. Thus, one may say that the Bible is inspired insofar as Scripture contains divine truth, even though not everything the biblical authors penned is rightly denominated the “words” of God. Coleridge’s understanding of the spiritual sense of the Bible is linked with its ability to communicate truth through symbols. For this reason, he often notes a key distinction between symbols, allegories, analogies, and metaphors.27 His most famous definition of the symbol appears in The Statesman’s Manual, where he explains that “by a symbol I mean, not a metaphor or allegory or any other figure of speech or form of fancy, but an actual and essential part of that, the whole of which it represents” (LS 79). In Aids to Reflection, Coleridge prominently distinguishes between analogies and metaphors. Analogous

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language renders “Conviction . . . wherever a thing, power, or principle in a higher dignity is expressed by the same thing, power, or principle in a lower but more known form” (AR 205). Analogies declare facts through different subjects that share a resemblance. John 3:6 (“That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”), for example, is analogous language because the former part expresses a principle of “higher dignity” in a “more known form.” By contrast, metaphors and allegories provide “illustration” by means of similarity. Metaphors are similes “where the subject intended by the Likeness together with the conjunctions or particles of Similitude or equation (as, like as, so &c) is understood, but not expressed” (CN IV 4711). Metaphorical language explains, for example, the effects of a transcendent act by means of a similar, widely known cause and effect. Paul relies on metaphors to explain the effect of God’s redemptive act on the cross: redemption is comparable to the reconciliation of an estranged child to a parent or the experience of forgiveness of a debt that one could not pay (AR 332–33). Metaphors do not describe an act, they represent the nature of the benefits for those who receive something like it (AR 206). Coleridge further defines allegory as only “a Total composed of connected Metaphors” or “[a] connected Series of Metaphors to one Whole” (CN IV 4711, 4832). Allegories translate “abstract notions into a picture-language” (LS 30). The Bible often communicates truth through symbols or symbolical language. The symbol is “characterized by . . . the translucence of the Eternal through and in the Temporal. It always partakes of the Reality which it renders intelligible; and while it enunciates the whole, abides itself as a living part in that Unity, of which it is the representative” (LS 30). Jesus’ declaration in Matthew 6:22 (“The light of the body is the eye”) is an example of symbolical language: the “eye” is a symbol of vision because the eye participates in the whole that it represents: “Instead of being allegorical, it is therefore so far necessarily tautegorical” (CN IV 4711).28 Symbols, by definition, are often linked to religious imagery; the most prominent example of a symbol is the Eucharist. J. Robert Barth is the best exponent of Coleridge’s sacramental view of symbols. Barth appeals to Schillebeeckx in order to highlight the capacity of symbols to function as an encounter “constantly revealing itself through and in the Temporal” (Symbolic Imagination 123). Swiatecka’s treatment of “the idea of the symbol” adds to Barth’s description, highlighting the way that the symbol signifies the place where the creative work of God and the human

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coincide: “language, as symbol, is not descriptive only, it is also creative; creative by its own power as symbol, which is the power within us which enables us to see it as symbol: but creative only when we allow that power to act” (58). The sacramental image captures Coleridge’s idea of the symbol because sacraments involve a material medium that participates in the thing signified. Yet, mystery remains, as Coleridge acknowledges in rephrasing the Pauline adage “we see thro’ a Glass darkly” to “we behold (Spiritual truths) by the suggestion of Symbols (enigmatically) as on a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12; CN V 6500).29 Thus, while the Bible as a literary document presents a narrative of the lives and struggles of others, Scripture also presents truth through symbolic language. The Bible records historical events that express divine mysteries and discloses the Logos to the reader—the “spiritual” sense of the text.30 For this reason, Scripture is uniquely suited to meet the needs of readers in every generation. The spiritual sense of the Bible touches Coleridge with “copious sources of truth, and power, and purifying impulses . . . words for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterances for my hidden griefs, and pleadings for my shame and my feebleness” (CIS 10). Scripture is unlike other great literature not because one comes to the books of the Bible with a presupposition regarding their divine origin, but because Scripture provides an objective vehicle of truth that resonates within the soul by the work of the Spirit.31 The symbolic language of Scripture expresses divine realities that continue to communicate beyond the localized context of their original historical–grammatical setting. What, then, is the Bible? Coleridge frequently repeats Gregory the Great’s dictum: the Bible is “the Mirror of Faith.”32 The Bible mirrors faith insofar as Scripture presents truth to the reader through symbolical language. The Christian acknowledgment of the Bible’s capacity to be the Word of God derives not from the outward letter, but from the fact that “it is capable of reflecting the faith in all it’s growths and phases, age after age, of all the Faithful” (CN V 5521). Only when an individual acknowledges this mirroring process—when one recognizes that Scripture contains an objective revelation apart from the work of Reason in the individual—can Christianity escape from the fear that drives controversies over biblical authority and inspiration. The reason is simple: the time-bound frailties of humanity that appear on the literary level of meaning may be identified by the work of the Spirit in Reason and judgment. Coleridge effectively describes his

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solution in a key notebook entry of 1829: How far it is possible and safe to separate the religion in the Bible from the Bible, so as to give to the former that absolute faith which we must will to have, and to which every thought as well as every desire must be brought in subjection, and to the latter a human and historic belief, made reverential by the sense of the great effects, of which Providence has made THE BOOK the medium and instrument, but yet susceptible of degrees, as applied to particular Books & Passages, up the whole scale of historical acquiescence even from Rejection to undoubting and affectionate Assurance—the answer depends on the Judgement, we form, affirmative or negative, on the reality and necessity of a subjective Revelation as the Co-factor and Complement of the Objective and Universal, this the Solar Light, that the Soliform Eye. (CN V 6151)

Generations have reverenced the literary sense of the Bible due to the effect that the spiritual sense has had on humanity through the work of Providence. The literal sense of the Bible alone is not, for Coleridge, Christianity. Christianity as true religion, in the words of the fourth article of his creed, 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” (CIS 6). Symbols bring the two senses together. So long as the twofold character of Scripture is upheld, one can freely affirm not only the reality of varying degrees of inspiration in the biblical text, but also the corresponding likelihood of varying degrees of assent to the words of Scripture—from rejection to assurance—since Truth is recognized in Scripture inasmuch as it mirrors the truths accessible through Reason. Scripture— the mirror of faith—is an objective revelation whose counterpart is Reason: “Scripture assures us, and Reason echoes the assurance” (CN V 6240). Coleridge’s understanding of symbols transformed his hermeneutic. He frequently combines historical–grammatical analysis with typological interpretation, since he believes that Scripture points to Christ, the Logos, throughout: “to an unlearned but earnest and thoughtful neighbour, I give the advice;—‘Use the Old Testament to express the affections excited, and to confirm the faith and morals taught you, in the New, and leave all the rest to the students and professors of theology and Church history!’” (CIS 84). He does not apply the typological method haphazardly though and frequently distinguishes between metaphor and symbol. For example, in one 1825 notebook entry on John Davidson’s Discourses on Prophecy, Coleridge

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corrects the commonplace view that the Old Testament sacrifices bear a direct correspondence to the sacrifice of Christ in the New Testament: “If Sacrifices were Types, the Anti-type could not be a Sacrifice in any other sense than as the proper name of the Type is continued into the metaphorical name of the subject typified” (CN IV 5269). Old Testament sacrifices prefigured the death of Christ, but only as a shadow “that mutely pointed at it.” Coleridge also distinguishes between the interpretation of symbols and allegories in Scripture: “There is, believe me! a wide difference between symbolical and allegorical. If I say that the Flesh and Blood (Corpus noumenon) of the Incarnate Word are Power and life, I say likewise that this mysterious Power and Life are verily and actually the Flesh and Blood of Christ” (AR 314*). Those who interpret such symbolic passages into mere metaphor and who “moralize these hard sayings, these high words of Mystery” are “Allegorizers of Holy Writ.” Recognizing an allegory in Scripture is different from relying on allegory as a method of interpretation. Coleridge acknowledges that allegory is an integral component of the interpretive practice of biblical authors: it may seem that “parables, allegories, and allegorical or typical applications, are incompatible with inspired Scripture,” but the example and “writings of St. Paul are sufficient proof of the contrary” (AR 264*). There is a wide difference between the use of allegory by a biblical author who wishes to apply the meaning of a text and its use as a method of interpreting the truth of Scripture.33 Readers must look first to the letter of Scripture as the foundation and guide for all spiritual meanings, including the typological.34 Writing in 1913, the great English historian V. F. Storr explained that “Coleridge, like Arnold, was anxious to prepare men’s minds for the shock which he knew must come to many, as critical methods spread in England” (195). Bitter controversies preceded him, yet Coleridge wrote with peculiar prescience, an uncanny awareness of the difficulties his nation would doubtless face in coming decades. Long after Coleridge’s death, battles over the Bible continued to inflame the passions of English Christians. The English translation of Strauss’s Life of Jesus (1846), the appearance of the naturalistic On the Origin of Species (1859), and the publication of Essays and Reviews (1860) each forced English churches to reevaluate their conception of the Sacred Scriptures. Coleridge, with Janus-eyes, gazed at the past and the future of Christianity in England and wrote with an awareness of the magnitude of the moment. Storr rightly notes that “[t]he Confessions was the very book to meet the needs of an age which was catching the spirit of historical inquiry, and awaking to larger views of

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the meaning of Revelation” (195). What further distinguishes Coleridge’s achievement in the nineteenth century—what Storr could not fathom a century ago—was his private efforts to test his doctrine of Scripture in practice as he interpreted each book of the Bible.35 In the next two chapters, I explore the notebooks and other writings that comprise a key portion of Coleridge’s religious system: a full study of the books of the Bible.

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Chapter 4

The Scriptures: The I nterpretation of the O ld Testament

Alas!—the main hindrance to the use of the Scriptures, as your Manual, lies in the notion that you are already acquainted with its contents . . . You say, you are already familiar with the Scriptures. With the words, perhaps, but in any other sense you might as wisely boast of your familiar acquaintance with the rays of the sun, and under that pretence turn away your eyes from the light of Heaven. S. T. Coleridge (LS 24)

In the last decade of his life, Coleridge wrote with a renewed sense of

divine calling and mission. He thought of himself as both a biblical critic and a theologian, and he devoted time each day to studying and writing on the Bible (CN V 5938). Correspondingly, the Bible became a more prominent aspect of the planned magnum opus than in earlier years. Biblical language permeates the distinctively philosophical sections on natural and revealed religion in late accounts. In the fifth of six parts (presumably forming an entire volume of its own), Coleridge even proposed to take up the “Letters on Scripture” (later published as Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit), and to examine each book of the Bible in order to form “a real History of the Bible,” “a complete Substitute for the German Introductions to the Old & New Testaments” (CN V 5868). Coleridge’s revised plan for the opus demonstrates that the biblical commentaries that fill the late notebooks are not random jottings but are rather a fundamental part of a

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larger project that he hoped to see through to publication during his lifetime. One September 1830 notebook entry offers a profound testament to his intentions: In the scattered Notes on the Scriptures contained in these Flycatchers, and which, God permitting and assisting, I intend to bring into some Sequence, corresponding to the Order of the Books in our Bible—my Object is—not to explain the geographical or historical primary meanings, except where some philosophical principle is involved therein . . . but I take the Books, as they must be read by the great Mass of Mankind, as Books of no time because for all times—not so much what David consciously meant or understood himself to mean, but what we may and ought to understand by the Words. (CN V 6463)

His commentaries are frequently introductory in nature; method predominates. He examines the Bible in order to clarify the historical– grammatical meaning of the original authors. Reflecting his twofold conception of Scripture, though, he frequently looks for the spiritual sense of each passage as well: “If by determining the position of Bozra & the contemporary fact which furnished the Prophet with his types, I can illustrate the for us purpose and accomplishment of these types—this indeed is an object, & from this I have never averted my attention—tho’ want of Books may too often have baffled it.” The goal of studying the literary sense is not the location of a city or the name of a man, but whether a historical event may be clarified in the pursuit of a spiritual truth. The spiritual meaning—the sense that mirrors faith—legitimates the Christian claim that the books of the Bible are “inspired” Scripture. In the next two chapters, I survey Coleridge’s treatment of the major genres of the Bible and explicate his method.1 Coleridge studied the Hebrew Scriptures fastidiously: he had a rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew, grounded in his studies at Christ’s Hospital, and he substantially benefited from the tutelage of his friend, the rabbi Hyman Hurwitz (1770–1844) (CM I 710n.25).2 Coleridge had a high estimation of the Old Testament; he even remarks that it contains the truest Christian books of all: “Speaking solely and exclusively in relation to Scriptures as Scriptures, I venture to affirm, that the best Christian-Scriptures, and of the most edification for Christians of all classes and in all states and duties, are the Books of the Old Testament read and studied in the light of Christianity” (CN V 5753).3 For this reason, the Old Testament can only be rightly interpreted according to the same spirit by which the books were written, thus, “none but a Christian can understand them aright.”4 Coleridge’s depth and

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frequency of comment on particular books and passages implies a hierarchy of authority.5 He devotes the bulk of his attention to the Pentateuch: the first five books of the Bible, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, fill more of Coleridge’s notebooks than any other segment of the Old Testament. Among the Prophets, second in importance for Coleridge, the Book of Isaiah uniquely fascinates him for its responsiveness to typological interpretation. The wisdom literature of the Writings ranks third. The Psalms, favorably strengthened by their prominence in the Book of Common Prayer, remained a continual source of comfort and permanent interest, while the skeptical and evidentiary uses of Daniel provoke Coleridge’s most scathing remarks. I conclude this chapter with a brief examination of Coleridge’s cautious attitude toward the Apocrypha.

The Pentateuch Coleridge’s study of the Pentateuch is the formative source of his conception of Old Testament language and interpretation. Although Coleridge consistently highlights the limitations of the Law and its ultimate fulfillment in the grace available through Jesus Christ, he devotes considerable energy to the study of the books of Moses. He claims that much of the Pentateuch results from Mosaic authorship; however, Coleridge almost always adds that subsequent editors must have gathered together earlier documents (CN V 6385).6 Coleridge’s notebook comments on the Pentateuch reflect his familiarity with the latest biblical scholarship in England and Germany—particularly Eichhorn, whom he read directly from German editions. Yet, although Eichhorn’s influence is pervasive in Coleridge’s biblical commentaries, Coleridge frequently disagrees with Eichhorn’s analysis and he is by no means Coleridge’s only source for biblical, historical, and scientific insight.7 Genesis The two creation accounts of Genesis are passages of acute interest to Coleridge, and when he began his longest extended commentary on Genesis in November 1829—just days after reaching his fifty-seventh birthday (CN V 6118)—Coleridge recognized the need to comprehend these most pivotal chapters. He begins by placing the opening creation account in its historical context, ascribing the origin of this “venerable Relic of ancient Cosmogony” to a time no earlier than the institution of the Sabbath at Sinai.8 Immediately noting the difficulties

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that the passage presents in its plain sense, Coleridge proposes that the religious or spiritual meaning of Genesis 1 only requires interpretation of the first and twenty-sixth verses. The former affirms “[t]hat the Earth & by parity of reason the whole Universe of Finites, are not eternal but Created, by an independent Wise and Good Being,” and the latter “that God created Man distinct from all other animals in kind & not merely in degree” (CN V 6124). These two truths appear throughout Coleridge’s comments on the two creation narratives of Genesis 1–3. After briefly highlighting the spiritual meaning of the first creation account, Coleridge quickly proceeds to consider the same passage according to its literary meaning, which he denominates the meaning according to the senses or the “Appearances of Things.” Coleridge was aware of the various popular Ancient Near Eastern traditions of cosmogony, including Zoroastrianism (CN V 6125 and n.).9 He posits that the first account “looks like intended Science,” yet he notes that “I have long believed that very profound Truths of Physiogony are at the ground.” While he entertains the possibility of an historical sense in the first creation account, some form of “revealed” science (thus his conjecture in April 1824 that the first account may present readers with a direct revelation of “certain Truths a priori . . . which could have been ascertained by no lower authority”),10 he believes that the passage is “addressed to Men in the Childhood of Thought” (CN V 6124). Coleridge offers not a modern affront on an earlier age, but a supposition that the text presents a literal description of the sciences—the origin of the physical creation—in the language of appearances according to the age. After grounding his interpretation in careful study of the historical– literary sense of the passage, Coleridge methodically returns to the spiritual sense of the text. He concludes that the first creation account is a “Morning Hymn” (elsewhere he calls it a “divine” and “sublime” hymn), “the true meaning of which is that in the same harmonious Order and Succession, in which every Dawn re-creates the World to us, it was created by God” (CN V 6124). The first creation account thereby repels both atheism and pantheism as it reveals a deep philosophical truth, namely that God is “the absolute Beginner of all things, not of their form, and relations alone, but of their very Being” (CN III 4418). Moreover, since God is the true cause of all, the universe shows signs of development and growth, even as both the created order and the Bible reveal that the universe is not eternal. The growth of the universe, at once a sensible and philosophical truth, may also be known by observing the research of geologists; and what

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is true of plants and animals “is equally true of the Planet. It has had & is still undergoing a process of Growth, thro’ many & various Epochs of evolution from the less to the more perfect—nor can any reason be adduced why that which holds good of each Body of the Solar System should not be true of the System itself ” (CN V 5555). This sensible truth may also be regarded as a philosophical one, especially insofar as it indicates that creation is neither static nor an emanation. Creation is not eternal and there could not have been, Coleridge claims, “myriads of ages” of humanity prior to the Mosaic era.11 Thus, his interpretation of the spiritual sense of the first creation account in Genesis is keenly mystical, with resonances of Jakob Böhme, the great Jewish– Platonist Philo, and the Cabbalist readings of Scripture he encountered in Tennemann, Eichhorn, and Henry More.12 He infuses his interpretation with the language of Light and Darkness, symbolism, and Logos philosophy.13 Unlike the first creation account of Genesis 1:1–2:3, however, Coleridge finds the literary sense of the second creation account of Genesis 2:4ff far more difficult to reconcile with either science or history. Coleridge follows Eichhorn in dating the second creation story earlier than the first, having been written, “in Egypt before the Exodus of the Hebrews, or translated from Egyptian Hieroglyphics” (CN V 6127).14 The account of the rivers, the “wholly different and utterly unscientific account of the time, occasion and cause of the formation of the Animals” compared to Genesis 1, and the strong moral sentiment derived from the use of “therefore” in Genesis 2:24 (pointing to the lesson to be derived from the account of the formation of Eve from Adam’s rib) all provide valid reasons for a predominantly spiritual reading of the pericope.15 Coleridge concludes that Genesis 1:1–2:3 is a literal account of the creation that contains a clear spiritual or philosophical meaning, whereas Genesis 2 is a moral account of the creation: “the formation of the Humanity.—and the institutions arising out of it, with the moral cause, the spiritual process of the Fall, the Centaurization of Man . . . the whole is symbolic or allegorical” (CN V 6129).16 The names of created things further require a symbolic reading by the interpreter. The naming of Eve, “[s]he shall be called Isha, because she was taken out of Ish,” points to the rationality of humanity, corroborated by language. On its own, the passage appears “at first sight . . . puerile,” but when examined in the context of its spiritual sense, the verses “assume a higher character” (CN V 6131).17 Coleridge believes that names signify a deeper lesson that the text repeats throughout the second creation account: the formation of a

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moral, human society. The first rational humans became aware of the existence of God, the creator of all, who is the source of the moral law. Because society requires language for its existence, Coleridge maintains that God is a “Father and a Tutor.” Sociality emerged in humanity in the distinct moment that God taught the first parents (CN V 6131).18 Divine revelation taught humans to know “that in the Almighty Creator Infinite Intelligence was one with Absolute Will . . . that in Man there was a Light of Reason . . . & that Reason was the universal Principle of his Being, and the indispensible condition of his Personality” (CN V 5555).19 All of this took place through the actuating work of God in human Reason, which served to “induct and inaugurate it to it’s legislative capacity & office.” The proper response is an act of faith in the reader. Still, Coleridge’s reflections on Genesis 2 are not strictly limited to the language of ontology, despite his emphasis on the formation of language and the moral law. As noted, one of the key clues to the symbolic meaning of the passage is the “therefore” of Genesis 2:24: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” Coleridge’s interpretation of the verse is decisive for his conception of the relational nature of humanity: on a literary level alone, the passage seems to contradict Gen. 1:27, but read spiritually the passage presents the grounds of marriage itself and its authority ascends dramatically.20 The Fall of Genesis 3, part of the story of the second creation account, shares in the symbolic language Coleridge discerns in Genesis 2. Genesis 1:25 (“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed”)—a verse that “requires much delicacy to explain and set forth the moral truth, the sense & beauty of this”— prefigures Genesis 3:10–11, where Adam and Eve first become aware of their nakedness. For Coleridge, the passage conveys the distinction between love and lust, as sensations become “the direct object of consciousness” and are “desired for themselves.” Shame results as the finite being inevitably recognizes that one has “preferred the baser” portion of the finite nature (CN V 6133). Likewise, death in Genesis 3 is not the “extinction of all Being in him” but the “[d]escent into a lower Being” and a “suffocation of his proper Humanity—the loss of the Divine Idea, the Image of God, which constituted it” (CN V 6134).21 Coleridge’s interpretation of Genesis 1–10 displays his characteristic willingness to grapple with the twofold character of Scripture. He looks throughout these difficult passages for the plain, literary sense of the text while remaining fully open to the possibility of a philosophical or spiritual meaning that clarifies seemingly illogical passages.

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Coleridge has difficulty interpreting the Noachic Flood as history, other than “as records of the Fact as it appeared to the Arkites themselves,” since it is “inconceivable” that “40 days continued Rain should have been the principal cause of Waters five miles high over the whole Earth.”22 Coleridge finds no sound reason to wholly doubt the historical truth of the narrative. But the inconsistencies of the two creation accounts lead Coleridge to propose a series of questions to determine whether the narrative may be received as wholly historical, wholly mythical, or “partly mythical, partly historical—the historical facts having been employed as Symbols” (CN V 6145).23 Coleridge is certain of the manner of inspiration: “[r]evealed in the sense of verbal dictation, or miraculously infused or communicated information they cannot have been” (CN V 6136). The truth of Genesis 1–10 as a whole remains intact, however, since all “the great Facts, in which Religion has an interest” remain true: It is, I hope and believe, scarcely possible that any man of active intellect, who loves Truth for it’s own sake and is besides strong in the faith that Truth . . . can never be separated from the Good, much less adverse to it . . . can more earnestly desire than I do, to find the first ten Chapters of the Book of Genesis true, historically or symbolically / either as narrating past Facts or conveying perpetual truths. Accordingly, no man has labored with more zeal and perseverance to find or to recognize truth, scientific, religious and anthropological in these Chapters—and, I humbly thank the Father of Lights! not in vain. (CN V 6147)

Coleridge’s interpretation of the twofold sense of the opening chapters of Genesis corroborates his hope. The remainder of Genesis interests Coleridge immensely. He frequently wonders at its compositional beauty, noting how so many of its narratives have served as the subject of some of the greatest artistic masterpieces in history.24 He believes the text is rooted in history, whether an oral or written one, and records the great traditions of a family ancestry.25 Coleridge thereby compares Genesis to a chain. The chain has “massive and bright Staple Rings” that are “connected by a multitude of small-links” (CN V 6173). Genesis views the chain from a distance, which keeps the smaller links from being easily distinguished. This explains why Jacob, “by his two Wives and the two Proxies,” appears to have only one girl and many boys, the others “omitted” save the one because of a memorable incident (CN V 6201). The chain links a literal history, told from the perspective of true humanity, while often neglecting the necessary connectional

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qualities that might otherwise be expected from genealogies of a modern history.26 The compositional history is a matter of regular comment as well. Coleridge writes in contact with numerous biblical commentators— including Eichhorn, Thomas Scot, and Mendelssohn—and often highlights passages that appear to be constructed from different documents. He notes possible solutions to documentary problems, too. The repetition of Abraham’s attempt to pass off his wife Sarah as a sister in both Genesis 12 and 20, for example, leads to Coleridge’s attempt to discern “whether it be a continuous narrative founded on a single line of Tradition, oral or documental; or whether a compilation of sundry fragmentary documents from different sources” (CN V 6165).27 Coleridge remarks on the appearance of the same account (though now with Isaac, in Genesis 26:7–11): “Singular co-incidence! This is the third—edition of the same Story? or—recurrence of the same event?” (CN V 6179). He methodically entertains the full spectrum of critical inquiry. The capacity of Genesis to reflect the deep emotions of human experience attracts Coleridge’s interest. Coleridge flinches at Thomas Scot’s commentary on Lot’s daughters in Genesis 19 (“31And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth: 32Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father”). Scot condemned the daughters’ blunted shame and unfeeling conscience, declaring that “[n]o sufficient excuse can be made for them,” but Coleridge counters with what amounts to a decisive indicator of his biblical hermeneutic. The passage provides a striking portrait of the “fear & horror” that must have resulted from their barren state—an emotional state that Scot utterly fails to recognize in the biblical text, simplistically reducing them to “the most horrible Monsters of Lust and Sensuality” (CN V 6164 and n.). Coleridge’s interpretation is consistent with that found in Confessions: the text presents revealed truths amidst “examples of obedience and disobedience both in states and individuals, the lives and actions of men eminent under each dispensation, their sentiments, maxims, hymns, and prayers,—their affections, emotions, and conflicts . . .” (CIS 66). Coleridge believes that Genesis presents symbols that communicate the reality of Christ. The covenant of circumcision, a rather “unfine Subject, or image at least” for ascertaining a natural significance, “was instituted before the coming of the Son of the Covenant” as a preparatory rite and symbolizes “a renunciation of ‘the flesh,’ i.e. of Sensuality as

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an end in itself” (CN V 6156). In all theophanies, appearances of God in the Old Testament, Coleridge sees the human presence of the Word, prior to the Incarnation. Thus, when reading how God appeared to Jacob in Genesis 35:9 and renamed him Israel, Coleridge bewails the blindness of contemporary readers: How any Christian professing to ground his theological Belief on the Scriptures can compare these verses with Ch. I. v. 18. of John’s Gospel; and yet deny that the Word, the only-begotten Son . . . who was incarnate in Jesus, is the same Being with the Jehovah, even the God Almighty (v. 11) of the Old Testament, would be to me inconceivable, if I had not learnt, how little experience would allow me to enumerate Consistency among the ingredients common to the composition of all minds. (CN V 6205)28

Coleridge’s interpretation of Genesis—“this most ancient of genuine Histories; and of all, ancient or modern, most important, and most delightful!”—repeatedly draws out the various possible literary meanings in order to fully elucidate its spiritual sense (CN V 6236). He pours over the commentaries, seeking insight and critical tools, but he does not gaze in obeisance at other commentators. With a critical eye, he reprimands Eichhorn for building a scheme based on faulty assumptions about the nature of prophecy—namely, that it “must have been antedated / i.e. forged”—rather than first considering the possibility that the blessing foretold might be in reference to the personal lives of his sons. Coleridge’s willing suspension of unnecessary skepticism peppers the notebooks: “I see many grounds for believing and no reason to doubt” (CN V 6235).29 Exodus Coleridge commenced his reading of Exodus with a solemn pledge: I have imposed the Law on myself, lest I might be tempted by the awe of religion itself into the irreligion of imagining that God can be honored by the suppression of truth, or by the suffocation of any of the means of arriving at it—to put down the reflections and objections which the Scriptures in the instant of the perusal have excited or suggested, either to answer the objections, or in the hope of hereafter answering them. (CN V 6242)

The pledge characterizes Coleridge’s methodical approach to all literature, and takes on special significance with respect to Exodus. He

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is a truly critical and engaged reader, yet almost obsessive in his compulsive attraction to certain peculiarities, passages, and problems. He limits his comments on the Book of Exodus almost wholly to the “life of Moses” that appears in chapters 1–11. Coleridge’s views vary over the course of the series of entries that appear in the notebooks from January to March 1830, but he broadly affirms the authenticity of the narrative as a historical account akin to a “traditional recollection than Contemporary History” written 500–600 years later (CN V 6243).30 Coleridge often doubts the details of the narrative, such as specific miraculous events—though not, as I shall explain momentarily, strictly because of their stupendous character. The narrative could not, therefore, have been written by Moses himself, but rather serves as a biographical preface in the form of a psalm, a “religious Thanksgiving,” or poetic chronicle that was “interposed” when the other Mosaic records were brought together to form a single document, “as a Connection between the Family History of the Israelites closing with the Death of Joseph, and the commencement of the National History in the Passover or Exodus” (CN V 6248).31 The whole maintains a deep simplicity and “truth-character” that is unlike that found in other religions (CN V 6262). Coleridge’s examination of the opening chapters of Exodus brings into focus, as well, his approach to miracles in biblical history. Coleridge’s “literary” approach to the text emphasizes the importance of genre in forming a right understanding of the literal meaning. The plagues relate in poetic form a genuine history: “We readily distinguish an incident poetically narrated from the same incident & fact in the words of a prose chronicle—tho’ we have no difficulty in recognizing the facts in both” (CN V 6249). The specific plagues may be questioned, while not denying the authentic character of the whole. Coleridge does not doubt the work of the divine Will in history—such is the nature of “the Creator of All Creatures.” Though he typically prefers the use of “providential” to “miraculous,” he does not object to the miraculous because “they are stupendous, wonderful & without any parallel in our own or in recorded Experience” (CN V 6249).32 Rather, Coleridge typically objects to the specific details of the events while remaining certain that “the Children of Israel were brought out of Egypt by the most evident manifestations of the Divine Will and Power, by a most aweful [sic] display of Signs and Wonders” (CN V 6249).33 The details, in such a light, are less important and Coleridge sees in the various plagues an attack on the pantheistic philosophy of the Egyptians, which he suspects the Hebrews, with their later veneration of a cow, had taken up in the

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language of a “superficial Theism” (CN V 6253).34 Still, Coleridge wonders how Egyptian chronicles could remain silent on the death of all firstborn men and cattle, “an event which taken in connection with the known clamorous & shrill Yellings & frantic Lamentations of the Egyptians, at the moment of death of any member of the Family, must, one would suppose, have been remembered thro’ all succeeding Generations” (CN V 6264). The miracles are comparable, much as the account of history in Genesis, to the links of a great chain. The natural events may only be explained by means of the inexplicable ones, all of which point to the providential working of God: In short, every point that a Christian needs for the confirmation of his faith, namely, that the Divine Providence was displayed in the whole chain of their History in a manner so different from that of all other nations and so peculiar, as to Constitute for us a difference in kind—for which we have no other word but miraculous.—Whatever each link may have been, the Chain was & remains a Miracle—and one for which no adequate final Cause can be assigned but CHRISTIANITY. (CN V 6263)35

The greatest miracle of all, for Coleridge, is the one interpreters seldom notice: the moral miracle of Pharaoh’s conduct and character following the death of his firstborn son remains “more astonishing than all.” Surprisingly, Coleridge offers very few comments on the laws given by Moses at Sinai (Exodus 19–Number 10). His 1830 treatment of Exodus, part of the extended series of biblical commentaries on which I am focusing in this chapter, almost wholly excludes these legal chapters, save a brief foray into laws of sexual purity.36 His marginalia on the Bible, too, offer only a handful of disparate comments, including two mentions of the timing of the institution of the Sabbath, two obscure references to witchcraft, a comment on Jehovah as the preincarnate person of Christ, and some perplexed notes on the difficulties of dietary laws (CM I 419–20).37 Leviticus Coleridge almost wholly neglects the Book of Leviticus in the late biblical commentaries, save a revealing note that sheds some light on his reticence in commenting on the Law: It is an old maxim of mine, ever to suppose myself ignorant of a Writer’s Understanding where I am unable to understand his Ignorance. In Writers of consecrated Genius, in whose Works whatever we do

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Coleridge’s distinction between the typical, symbolical, or physiological points to his search for a spiritual meaning. The law points to the outward obligations of a perfect standard that may only be fully understood in the context of the grace of Jesus Christ.38

Numbers Coleridge provides an extended collection of notes on the Book of Numbers, particularly those describing the journey from Sinai to Moab. Despite his initial disinterest (“This 4th Book, as far as I at present see, is chiefly interesting to us from it’s want of interest—as in proof, I mean, of the Authenticity of the Pentateuch”), Coleridge persists (CN V 6327). Numerous themes already encountered continue to be of interest and new ones arise—including a right understanding of biblical inspiration, the Sabbath, and the rights of women—still, three pivotal topics appear in a number of entries: the kingly rule of Jehovah, the function of the sacrificial system, and the importance of the distinction between the literary and the spiritual sense.39 Coleridge often identifies the pre-Incarnate humanity of the Word with Jehovah. The death of King George IV, marked by Coleridge on June 26, 1830, likely made the political implications of Numbers all the more viable for him, but Coleridge’s deep interest in the church and state abided throughout his lifetime (CN V 6351).40 He links politics to his conception of the pre-Incarnate Son by proposing that Israel’s rejection of the kingship of Jehovah for an earthly king directly prefigured the Incarnation. The Pentateuch provides direct evidence of the illegitimacy of despotism and “constitutionless Monarchies” (CN V 6338). In the same way that Christ came to lead the spiritual body of the church, Jehovah sought to lead the Hebrews by performing “all the duties and offices of a wise Sovereign” (CN V 6363). Though many who read the books of the Pentateuch fail to grasp this central truth, Coleridge firmly believes that “the Logos had willed to be the Covenanted King of the Hebrew Nation . . . tho’ not yet incarnate” (CN V 6400).41

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The sacrificial system, which Christians often associate with the atoning work of Christ, was a more difficult matter to reconcile. He calls the sacrificial system “a Land of Clouds,” a “terra incognita” (CN V 6345). Early in Numbers, Coleridge wonders if the act of sacrifice carries a sacramental quality, “a type of the transsubstantiation [sic] of the adamic Life and Will into the Life of [the] Son of Man, the Divine Humanity.” But later, having prayed again for Light on the topic,42 Coleridge determines that “[t]he subject of Sacrifice is too protrusive, the sacrificial ordinances occupy too large a space, too prominent a position, in the Canonical Writings, to allow of being passed by . . . with a painless resignation to my darkness” (CN V 6414). In turn, he asserts a relationship between the sacrifice of animals and the individual need to sacrifice the affections of the body, the animal nature (CN V 6414–15).43 Numbers thereby clarifies the paramount importance and difficulty of discerning the spiritual and symbolic senses of the text. Coleridge struggles with Numbers, as he already had with Leviticus, for its emphasis on Law. Ever the student of Luther, Coleridge firmly believed in the priority of grace in Christ and often found it difficult to conceive how obedience to the covenant as expressed in the Law might allow for the work of grace. For Coleridge, John 1:17 proved pivotal for appreciating the occasional command that “revolts our Christian Feelings,” noting that though some commands were “issued under the Dispensation of the Law: Grace and Mercy as well as Truth came by Jesus Christ” (CN V 6420). Coleridge is well aware of the need to simultaneously read for the literary sense of the text, while remaining open to the symbolical meaning. He recommended that ministerial training at Oxford and Cambridge incorporate extensive commentary on the literary meaning of the Bible, “purely grammatical, logical, geographical, historical, phyto- & zoo-logical elucidation” while “excluding all dogmatic theology” (CN V 6371). This advice provides a telling reminder of Coleridge’s interest in grounding the spiritual in the literary (as well as the emphasis he wished the universities would give to biblical study). Yet the exclusivity of his advice for ministerial training—focusing on the literary sense without mention of the spiritual—is curious. Coleridge almost certainly believed that attentive study of the literary sense would clarify the spiritual while excluding dogmatically unbiblical claims. This stance makes sense of his desire to recognize not only the narration of facts, but also the facts narrated and, most importantly, “to retain a spiritual intuition, a perceiving sensation of moral truth” (CN V 6367).44 The act of perception and “inward beholding,”

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especially when dealing with the Law, requires great humility: “A symbolical sense it might not be difficult to invent . . . but the symbolic Sense to discover is not easy” (CN V 6382).45 Deuteronomy Coleridge completed his comments on the last book of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy, prior to his work on Numbers. The most striking feature of the notebook commentaries on Deuteronomy is the absence of explicit discussion of the Law, excepting several discussions of the role of marriage and membership in society. Coleridge devotes a great bulk of his commentary to the exemplary authority of Moses: “Moses was beyond doubt a man of great intellectual powers naturaly [sic], a Man of commanding Genius: and his natural powers & gifts called forth and improved by the highest cultivation known in that age of the World” (CN V 6309). Moses ranks among the greatest religious leaders in the history of the world, a man whose writings remain unique and unparalleled. Moses was so great that surely, Coleridge supposes, “every fragment, from the Lips of the great Legislator was preserved” with “religious care” (CN V 6323).46 Deuteronomy reminds readers that Moses and the Law are both preparatory. Deuteronomy reveals by divine wisdom how Moses, chastised for his sin, was unable to enter the Promised Land. Though Coleridge can hardly discern the reasoning behind God’s judgment, still there must have been a greater purpose signified in the spiritual sense of the text: “I really can understand this only by supposing the typical and spiritual sense to have been the direct final cause of the command itself—the divine Motive” (CN V 6271, 6279).47 The “divine Motive” is a matter “as clear as it is most sublime. For the Law came by Moses, the Grace & Truth thro’ Jesus Christ” (CN V 6278). Coleridge recognizes that difficulties remain only when Reason fails to unveil the symbolic meaning (CN V 6289). Deuteronomy, with its testament to the exemplary life of Moses, renders a clear judgment about the inspiration and authority of the Pentateuch: “the Authenticity of the Pentateuch involves the truth of it’s contents, and the the [sic] truth of the content implies their Divine Origin.—If authentic, then true: if true, then from God. One step farther. If the Pentateuch be of God—then the Gospel (the Christian Dispensation, I mean) must be of God” (CN V 6315). The Pentateuch is a sacred history that required all of Coleridge’s skill as an interpreter.

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The Prophets Prophets are a vital aspect of Coleridge’s system of religion, as I will explain later in connection to Christian preachers. But the books of the Old Testament known as the Prophets did not receive the level of direct commentary in the notebooks that one might expect, particularly when compared to his extensive study of the Pentateuch. In fact, while the late notebooks contain extensive daily commentaries on numerous books of the Bible, none of the Prophets is the subject of an extant, chapter-by-chapter commentary in Coleridge’s notebooks.

Former Prophets The so-called Former Prophets, often identified in recent biblical criticism as the Deuteronomic History—including Joshua, Judges, (1 and 2) Samuel, and (1 and 2) Kings—are only occasionally discussed in Coleridge’s notebooks and marginalia. Coleridge considers the Book of Joshua, for instance, on only two points of discussion: the authenticity of the work and with respect to miracles. In marginal dialogue with Eichhorn’s Introduction to the Old Testament, Coleridge makes claims about the authorship of Joshua that are consistent with his approach to the Pentateuch. While Eichhorn proposes that “it cannot have been written before the division of the Hebrew state into two kingdoms,” Coleridge maintains that Joshua’s “Contents” were “written and placed in the Archives shortly after the death of Joshua.”48 The matter of when these contents were later “edited with explanatory Notes, in the present form, is of little Consequence” for Coleridge, since the integrity of the work remains unaffected by such activity. Coleridge’s consistent preference for an early dating of such works lends itself to a discussion of the miraculous. He argues that the eventual death of “the generation of Eye-witnesses” to the miracles of Moses and Aaron necessitated the firsthand experience of divine agency in the second generation. Thus, Coleridge asserts, the passage through the Jordan in Joshua 3:13–17 marks a key moment in the history of the people: “demonstrating to their senses that the same Being who was present & miraculously evinced his immediate agency in Egypt and Arabia, was now present with them and miraculously interfering in their behalf.”49 Nonetheless, Coleridge allows for miracles outside nature in some instances: he repeatedly mentions the day that the sun stood still (“And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies” [Joshua

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10:13]; CN V 6497). Coleridge believes that much of the Old Testament records providential miracles within the course of nature.50 Coleridge’s favorite passage in Judges is the story of Deborah and the treachery of Jael in Judges 4.51 The case suits Coleridge for its applicability to the formation of a doctrine of Scripture. Commenting on Bunyan’s mention of the story in Pilgrim’s Progress, Coleridge maintains that a vast difference exists between the letter and content of the Bible: “References to the same detestable Murder, by Bunyan and Men like Bunyan[,] good, pious, purely affectioned Disciples of the meek and holy Jesus, yet the erroneous preconception that whatever is uttered by a scripture Personage is in fact uttered by the infallible Spirit of God makes Deboras of them all” (CM I 822–23). Coleridge also develops the case in Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit in order to illustrate precisely how the Bible records the genuine emotions of humanity rather than the infallible words of a divine ventriloquist. Citing Deborah’s song, “Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants therof,” Coleridge reflects on the powerful emotions of Deborah, emphasizing her immediate life-context: Was it that she called to mind any personal wrongs—rapine or insult— that she or the house of Lapidoth had received from Jabin or Sisera? No . . . she was a mother in Israel; and with a mother’s heart, and with the vehemency of a mother’s and a patriot’s love, she had shot the light of love from her eyes, and poured the blessings of love from her lips, on the people that had jeoparded their lives unto the death against the oppressors; and the bitterness, awakened and borne aloft by the same love, she precipitated in curses on the selfish and coward recreants who came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord, against the mighty. (CIS 34)

The misdeeds of Jael, killing Sisera while asleep in her tent, do not create a moral scandal for the Christian since they occurred before the full revelation in Christ.52 Coleridge recommends that Christians not try to explain the text away either, as some attempted (CN IV 4933). The passage serves as a reminder that many acts recorded in Scripture were not commanded by God; rather, “it is only one of the instances, in which a righteous Cause is brought by divine providence to a prosperous conclusion, notwithstanding its commencement in an unrighteous Act” (CM I 422).53 The case of Deborah and Jael reminds readers that Scripture provides great lessons of humility, shame, and faith (CIS 35).54 Coleridge’s interest in history makes the general paucity of commentary on the books of Samuel and Kings astonishing.55 Still, he is

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clearly familiar with these books, and occasionally makes allusions to key passages in other notebook entries.56 While considering the accounts of Elijah and Elisha in I and II Kings, Coleridge rejects, for example, the “Anti-Thaumatists” (“those opposed to a belief in miracles”) among “the followers of Semler, Eichhorn, and Paulus of Jena” (CN V 5665 and n.). Whereas some treat the miracles of Christ and the prophets as mere stories, Coleridge perceives a deeper connection between faith and history. Latter Prophets The Latter Prophets, including Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets, receive greater attention than the Former Prophets, particularly because of their openness to typological interpretation.57 The work of Eichhorn is a strong influence on Coleridge’s literary reading of these books. The history of the oracles interests Coleridge, but he is less attracted to the historical details than with a series of other concerns.58 He frequently worries that the rationalistic use of these books by modern, evidentiary theologians causes more harm than good. Out of his pervasive apologetic interest, Coleridge argues that the use of prophecy as a means of convincing nonChristians, “as coercive proofs to Infidels,” removes the true foundation of the faith. The prophets point to Christianity. But biblical critics now recognize that the Bible only records those prophets whose words contained a depth of insight and intellect, that is, those whose projected judgments came to pass. Evidentiary theologians, with their reliance on miraculous explanations for prophetic activity, have left modern Christianity with a dramatic void. For Coleridge, this shift in biblical studies—particularly with respect to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, three books that Coleridge typically refers to collectively— signals a shift in Christian apologetics: rather than emphasizing the presence of a miraculous few gifted prophets, “now Christianity is the indispensable argument for the truth and authenticity of the Prophecies” (CN V 5520).59 Coleridge’s understanding of prophecy is itself a pivotal theme. While strongly favoring, even against his contemporaries, the notion that dream-states or visions serve as the medium of the prophetic oracles, Coleridge consistently rejects the claim that prophecy is a form of prognostication.60 Rather than foreseeing future events that can be predicted, Coleridge proposes that prophetic discourses are open to fuller, divinely intended applications. The level of specificity in Jeremiah’s words of judgment in Jeremiah 20:7–18 (“therefore my

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persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail: they shall be greatly ashamed; for they shall not prosper” [vs. 11]) troubles Coleridge deeply. While Coleridge could appreciate the Song of Deborah, with its powerful expression of emotions, in Jeremiah one encounters what appears to be a decisive prognostication: “The most extraordinary and perplexing passage of the whole Bible!—Can it be supposed, dare we conjecture, that Jeremiah in the heat of his spirit, and in the natural impatience of unmerited Scoffs, and buffetings had been tempted to assign a determinate time for the arrival of their destroyers?” (CN V 5714). Remarking on the common bond of “inspiration” in Isaiah and “genius” in Shakespeare, Coleridge notes that “their Oracles, their several sentences and clauses, admit of, nay, provoke a manifold yea almost endless application / fulfilling themselves, as by a Protean metempsychosis of the same idea, in an endless succession & multiplication of facts and incidents” (CN V 6811). Such cases are remarkable to Coleridge, since most all prophecies are contingent and open to a fuller interpretation. Against a deterministic philosophy and false presumption of the character of Scripture, Coleridge maintains that the prophets simply present the promises of God: “the authentic Prophecies of the Hebrew Nabim were all conditional, and by no means overrule the moral free agency to good or to evil, or give the least support (as they must have done had they according to too many of our Divines been Prognostications) to the pernicious tenet of Predestination” (CN V 5686).61 Coleridge’s view of biblical prophecy restrained any temptation he may have had to identify messianic prophecies with the life of Jesus Christ too hastily—despite his preference for biblical typology. Much as with his identification of Christ with Jehovah in the Pentateuch, Coleridge worries that the historical sense of the text has been too quickly passed over in favor of a claim to a foreseen messiah. For example, Jeremiah 23:6 (“In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS”) may be, according to Coleridge, “the clearest and most unequivocal prediction of a Messiah, such as the Jews during the interval between Malachi and our Lord imagined & expected; but (God enlighten me if to my blindness or eye-film it be owing!) how it can be appealed to as fulfilled in our blessed Redeemer I can not see!” (CN IV 5384). Coleridge’s claim may be shocking at first glance, but a closer look reveals the consistency of Coleridge’s interpretation. The name itself, “the Lord our Righteousness,” is indeed “very striking.” Yet Coleridge wonders (unlike his interpretation of the second creation account) if such a

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reliance on names does not lead readers astray from the literal sense too quickly: “is it more so than Melchisedec (King of Peace)? Can it be said in any sense not utterly alien from Jeremiah’s meaning, that Judah was saved in the days of Jesus Christ, and that Israel dwelt safely? . . . These bringings forward of Messianic Prophecies, and to confess the whole truth, the application of the term, Messiah, at all to the Redeemer of the World perplex me sadly.” The prophets demonstrate the inspiration of their message by the truth of their claims, particularly with reference to their conditional nature. Yet, once the people established the divine inspiration behind the prophet’s message, an excitement arose to look for greater application and literal fulfillments in later days. Jeremiah 23:5 (“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth”), for example, affords a most striking instance & illustration of the double and typical sense that characterizes the Hebrew Prophecies—the literal fulfilment of which proved their divine origin, yet the inadequacy of the literal fulfilment to the Hopes excited by the prophecy almost forced the pious to an allegoric sense, almost, I say, forced the reflecting believing to anticipate another fulfilment in another sense, commensurate with the Divine Author. (CN V 6718)

In the prophets no less than the Gospels, Scripture is thereby “pregnant” with meaning, but great care must be used to identify the true meaning of every text. Once again, Coleridge looks first to the immediate historical occasion of the text not to supplant a spiritual or philosophical sense, but to provide the historical foundation for the spiritual. Amid Coleridge’s cautions—cautions that illustrate his desire to ground the spiritual sense of Scripture in the literary framework of the text—he frequently finds Christ in the Latter Prophets.62 Coleridge wonders at times whether the typical sense ever arose in the consciousness of the prophets; the distance of time certainly would allow for the “just comparative magnitude” of their words to be recognized (CN V 5694). The biblical use of Jehovah points to Christ, despite— and perhaps necessitated by—the difficulties of language. One prominent case is Isaiah 42:1 (“Behold my servant, whom I uphold, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth”). All agree, Coleridge claims, that the “I” is “Jehovah,” but Christians interpret the “servant” as Christ. Coleridge wonders if a latent ditheism reigns in current interpretations of the passage: “To assert that God the Lord means in this place the

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first as distinguished from the Second Person of the Trinity, the Father in distinction from the Co-equal Son, will go but a little way, & besides involves even greater difficulties that than which it purports to remove” (CN V 5691). The solution depends on an appreciation of polar logic, which recalls the influence of Schelling and the German Idealists: “What is an Idea? Answer. The identity of Object, Light and Eye./ The hidden God, the unutterable in his own superessential absoluteness—Jehova is his Name.—the Name uttered from eternity, the Word that declareth, representeth and is God.—the Jehova Person.” Jehovah is God in action. Jehovah is the Son that speaks and acts in the name of the Father: “The Son is the WORD: and the filial Word (see John’s Gospel) speaks not of himself but ever of the Father. It is ever the WORD that speaks: it is ever the Father that is spoken of” (CN V 6775).63 Isaiah 53, a passage frequently identified with Christ as the “suffering servant,” receives careful scrutiny. Coleridge explains that he has long pondered this famous chapter and “imagined that Hezekiah was the primary intention of the Prophet” (CN V 5704). The problem, to which Eichhorn and others alerted him, was an assertion of a distinction between, as Coleridge understood it, Isaiah 1–39 and those after (“Isaian, but not delivered by Isaiah”). Such a reading “deprives this Hezekiah Hypothesis of all plausibility.” Coleridge also rejects Grotius’ claim that the passage is a reference to the Jewish people as a whole. Coleridge concludes that the only solution is that the literal sense of the passage is a direct reference to the later appearance of Jesus Christ: “I see no other sense but that which the universal Church has ever held—that without any type intervening it is a full & glorious Prophecy of our blessed Redeemer!”64 The one problem Coleridge sees with such a reading is the use of the past tense (e.g., “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” [vs. 4]). The apparent solution rests in a right understanding of the prophetic and historical character of the text: the passage present an “Idea in the form of History, the History, i.e. the manifesting Fact in the ideal form of Prophecy—‘The Lamb sacrificed from the beginning of the World.’” On this basis, Coleridge confidently argues that the text refers to Christ, even while using the past tense, insofar as the sacrifice of Christ is both historical and eternal.65 Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel also bring to light a matter of deep personal interest for Coleridge: the status of the Jewish people. Since Coleridge regards the words of the prophets as conditional promises, they remain in effect today. Old Testament prophecies are conditional and Coleridge believes that many of these prophecies were never

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fulfilled in history. In that moment of recognition, the fuller appreciation of the spiritual meaning and applicability of the text begins: “the true religious Awe & Value of these Books, the more than life-valuing of them, may be said to have commenced from the time that the apparent falsification of their promises, the failure of their literal sense, became evident” (CN V 6069). Coleridge’s deep friendship with Hyman Hurwitz led to an internal struggle over whether or not he ought to engage his friend in an overtly evangelistic effort. He wonders if his “great Objections to the mode in which the conversion of the Jews” has been attempted “acquit me before Christ for my refraining from all endeavor to bring H. H. to the knowledge of the truth? I profess myself his friend. Am I acting like one?” (CN V 5706 ).66 Here Coleridge faces the evangelistic question head on: ought I share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with who has suffered from Christian bigotry? Turning to his Bible, Coleridge appeals to the authority of the text, which points to its own fulfillment, if only one will look: “One would almost think it impossible that so worthy and so sensible a man . . . could meditate on this Chapter, without being made sensible that this prophecy has been fulfilled even to the letter in the present state of the Protestant Church on the one hand, and the history & present condition of the Jewish Nation on the other!” Coleridge’s comment underscores his belief that the Prophets spoke of divine realities fulfilled in Christianity. He sees the need for a critical commentary directly addressed to the interests and mode of biblical interpretation of English Jews.67 Eschatologically, Coleridge envisions the day when “the Gospel will have been offered to all Nations—and that, in all Nations Children will be raised up to Abraham—and that all Israel will be saved” (CN V 6505).68

The Writings Luke 24:44 refers to Christ’s fulfillment of that which was “written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms.” The shape of the Old Testament canon, as Luke indicates, comprises not only the Pentateuch and the Prophets, but also the Writings, which include the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Chronicles. For Coleridge, Wisdom is encountered in the Old Testament Writings, particularly in the Psalms and in Job. Without Wisdom, there is no “hope of a redemption from the grave” (CN V 5818). Yet, as the least authoritative collection of writings in the Hebrew Bible, Coleridge gave the majority of these books relatively scant attention.69 Here,

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I examine the four books on which Coleridge most frequently comments: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, and Daniel. Psalms There is little doubt that Psalms constitutes one of the most important books in Coleridge’s Bible: the Psalms contain all that is necessary for true faith. The prominence of the Psalms in the Book of Common Prayer signals an important reason why—unlike so many other books of the Bible, which frequently appear in clusters of notation— Coleridge’s comments on the Psalms are scattered throughout his late notebooks. Coleridge’s notes on some psalms directly coincide with a psalm’s calendar appearance in the Prayer Book,70 while on other occasions Coleridge appears to be reading randomly through the text (though frequently still for explicitly devotional purposes). One of the fullest accounts of the value of the Psalms for reflection on faith appears in a notebook entry of September 1830: “the Psalms alone would supply all the evidence of the truth of a revealed Religion, that is compatible with the nature of Faith—all that would not preclude duty by rendering the unbelief impossible” (CN V 6446). Even a handful of the Psalms, he declares, surpass the writings of all other ancient literature in their ability to express true religion; such a “superior character” derives not from “intellectual cultivation” but in their unique capacity to convey spiritual truth.71 For example, Coleridge uses one of his favorite biblical passages, Psalm 65:2–3 (“O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come. Iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away”), as the basis for a proposed discourse on prayer, salvation, and the emancipation from sin. The first verse alone contains “the true Ground and condition of all RELIGION” (CN V 6736). The Psalms thereby contain the fundamental truths of faith and, while they ought to be examined in their literary sense as well, the Psalms may be among the most important biblical sources for growth in the life of faith. Despite Coleridge’s tremendous devotion to the Psalms as a source of personal comfort, however, one must remember that the historical–grammatical sense remains the “primary” sense of the Psalms. He is often critical of the headings that are ascribed to each psalm, mentioning that “it is, I believe, prettily generally agreed on among biblical Critics, that no implicit reliance can be placed on the Hebrew Inscriptions to the Psalms” (CN V 5791). He is not entirely consistent in dating individual psalms, however. Though he frequently reflects on the relationship between various chapters and the life of

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David, for example, he finds strong evidence for dates ranging from pre- to postexilic.72 More prominently, Coleridge struggles with the English rendering of the Psalms. In part, this problem is due to the continued use of Miles Coverdale’s sixteenth-century translation of the Psalms in the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer (CM I 429n.371).73 Armed with his ever-improving knowledge of Hebrew, Coleridge regularly highlights passages from the Authorized Version as well, even noting that he “[m]ost often” prefers “the marginal version” of the Authorized translation (CN V 6334).74 Understanding the language of each psalm is essential, since history and powerful emotions are presented in the form of poetry.75 Hurwitz’s conception of the Hebrew language and literature is uniquely relevant. For Hurwitz, the exegete must bear in mind that Hebrew is a living entity of common use: “The attempt to explain every thing on theoretical principles, even to the denial of any anomaly—just as if the Hebrew, granting even its immediate divine origin, had not been for ages the common medium of intercourse between a multitude of frail human beings, whose imaginations neither will, nor can be confined within the narrow limits of theoretical rules—has, in no small degree, continued to entangle the subject, and to retard, if not entirely check, the progress of the learner” (iv–v). For Coleridge, as for Hurwitz, the Old Testament expresses the ideas of the Imagination in the living language of the people. The spiritual meaning and applicability of the Psalms emerges amid an exegete’s attention to the use of language in the text. Hebrew poetry, for Coleridge, cannot be likened to the use of hyperbole found in other literature of the day—“even in an oriental poet” (CN V 5727).76 Instead, there is an “Energy” and a “force and distinctiveness” of writing that exceeds the bounds of any literal hope; so strong is this quality of the text that Coleridge imagines that “both the People and the Poets themselves must have understood them typically” (CN IV 5433; CN V 5727). Under such a form, even David becomes a “complex type,” sometimes signifying “the Church as the mystic Body of Christ” and at others “Christ himself as the Head and Indwelling Principium Vitae of the Mystic Body.”77 The Psalms, like other Old Testament literature, contain a “typical & double sense” (CN V 5728). The ancient writers were fully aware that the historical personages of the literary sense of the text typify “Shiloh, in whom all the Promises were to be fulfilled & consummated” (CN V 5797).78 Still, Coleridge cautions others against the temptation to identify Christ with many of the Psalms traditionally linked to him. Psalm 91:16 (“With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation”)

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provides a helpful example: Coleridge notes that one may be inclined to see the passage as a reference to the “Eternal Word incarnate in Christ Jesus—or even to his everlasting Glory and Beatitude as the God-Man, Jesus” (CN V 6445) While even a Unitarian might “comfortably acquiesce” to such a view, Coleridge challenges this interpretation: “First apply this 91st Psalm to David—all is just, natural, even in detail coincident with his history—and then try to repeat the application to our Lord—& how constrained, how evanishing into vague generalities & figurative expressions!” Despite his caution, however, Coleridge often sees Christ in the references to Jehovah and, even apart from the intention of the author, in words later taken up by Christ himself (such as Jesus’ repetition of Ps. 22 from the cross).79 Coleridge believes that the church is prophetically revealed in the typological sense of the Psalms, though many do not recognize this fact.80 Psalms, more than any other book of the Old Testament, is a book for the church because of its continued applicability in all circumstances. Coleridge recommends the Psalms as an objective revelation of divinity that communicates truth to the soul of the reader. Psalm 23 is a “BURST OF SUNSHINE”; Psalm 25 is a “golden Psalm for a Soul in affliction” and “a full-toned Organ of Prayer”; and Psalm 46, “Luther’s favorite,” provides comfort in times of distress and “revolutionary Epochs” (CN V 6421, 6436, 6364). Coleridge’s use of the Prayer Book taught him the value of the Psalms in times of joy and sorrow alike. He recommends the “habitual practical Reading of the Scriptures, especially the Psalms, in all the different moods and incidents of our Life” because such reading brings before the reader the “permanent worth and interest” of the text (CN V 6424). Just as “Bread, Water, Clothing, Roof” encompass the bodily necessities of the person, so the Psalms provide for the spiritual necessities of the human spirit: This truth a Soul humbled into reflection feels strongly, if only night and morning he prays over (i.e. reads in a spirit of prayer, & with those occasional applications to himself of those verses which he finds especially appropriate to himself, which intermix positive & formal Acts of Prayer with the continuous understrain, the Diapasons of the Feeling of Prayer) the Morning and Evening Psalms of the Day.—How few the Topics of Supplication, & Thanksgiving, how numerous the Repetitions! And yet what does he find wanting? What can he add?— And yet what recurs too often? (CN V 6723)

When read—and prayed—in such a way, even the morally questionable parts of the Psalms, which confirm its humanity, are adapted in spiritual

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terms so that the object of bitterness and hatred is no longer one’s enemies but the inward or potential evil that stands apart from God.81 Though Coleridge wonders if such unabashed devotion crosses the fine line between truth and fanaticism, he remains unwaveringly committed to the Psalms as the “perfect Organ of Devotion.”82 Proverbs Coleridge’s great love for the wisdom of the Psalms raised his expectation for the Book of Proverbs. His series of notebook entries on Proverbs, penned in late 1827, commence with great anticipation; he even shifts to the end of the notebook to write his comments and ceremoniously remarks, “[t]his day I began the Proverbs: and dedicate the remaining pages to the transcribing of those, that may particularly strike me, and to any observations suggested by this astonishing Collection” (CN V 5697). Just four days later, however, Coleridge concludes with words of relative disenchantment: “Saturday Night, 22 Decr 1827—finished the Proverbs. N.b. I looked for what I ought not to have expected—and on the whole have been disappointed” (CN V 5700). Coleridge expected to find in the book a series of moral injunctions—what to “do” in the formal sense of the word “proverb.” Instead, he encountered a series of aphorisms and reflections that “respected manners rather than the great points of Morality & Religion.” Coleridge notes his fondness, however, for its poetic interspersions, such as the portrait of a good wife (ch. 31), “which is a master-piece.” He also highlights the eighth chapter. His notebooks remark simply that Proverbs 8:14–36 may be understood as indicative of either a person or a personification, but the marginalia on these verses in his personal Bible make a far stronger claim to the way in which Wisdom literature, especially Proverbs, often represents divinity through the language of virtue: “Beware, that you do not degrade the latter half of this Ch. from V. 12. by understanding it as a mere allegorical Personification of an Abstract Term—The Son of God is Reason (Logos), the H. Ghost is wisdom—living substantial R[eason] and W[isdom]” (CN V 5697; CM I 432). Quite often, though, Coleridge is perplexed by Proverbs and he questions whether the full psychological context of many verses is apparent to the modern reader. The translation itself, a persistent concern throughout Coleridge’s late biblical commentaries, may detract from the specific import of the text, “[b]ut I have little doubt, that this arises from the reader’s not having entered into the spirit & appropriate mood, the passion, the psychological tune, of Proverbs & Proverbialists” (CN V 5698).83

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Job Coleridge’s deep reverence for the Book of Job is apparent in the Biographia Literaria, where he calls it “the sublimest, and probably the oldest, book on earth” (BL I 202). Around March 1828, Coleridge turns to the pages of Job and devotes the bulk of his attention to ascertaining the right sense of the text. His dissatisfaction with the Authorized Version is again and again apparent and he frequently looks to S. J. Cohen’s German translation of the Bible for a more readable text.84 Coleridge agrees with Eichhorn’s view that this “great Epic Drama” was written not in the postexilic period, as recent scholarship contends, but in the age of Abraham, “between the times of Joseph and Moses” (CM II 896, 414). The book has a poetic and instructive purpose, since, at that time, “[h]istory was for instruction—no such cold Divisions then existed” (CM II 1053). Further, Job is an excellent case study for recognizing the error of bibliolatry. The Prologue of Job (chapters 1–2), which relates Job’s wealth and a dramatic scene in heaven, sets itself against the notion that every expression of Scripture is the dictated words of God: “This is one among many reasons, why I set myself against the self-interpreting Bible Plan” (CN V 5801). More surprising, in my view, is how infrequently Coleridge reflects on the nature of suffering—a topic no stranger to Coleridge’s notebooks—through the lens of Job. When he does—on rare occasions—Coleridge reacts with self-repugnance. For example, Coleridge’s remorseful reflections on his lifelong addiction to opium (and worry that he would never see his daughter again before his death, exclaiming “O my poor Sara!”) led to a “providential” application of Job that is recorded in one July 1826 notebook entry: “Musing on this, I say, I got out of bed, and took the Bible with an intention of reading the Epistle to the Romans and the Ep. to the Galatians—but I opened the Book on the 17th Chapter of Job, my eye falling on the first verse—[‘]My Spirit is spent, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me[’]—and then in the last line of Verse the 5th—‘even the eyes of his children shall fail.’—and it alarms & humiliates me to be forced to confess to myself, that this accident troubled me—Alas! to what depths of folly & imbecility do we not sink if for a moment God’s grace be withdrawn—even to the Sortes Biblicæ” (CN IV 5419).85 Bibliomancy—part of the superstitious bane identified in Confessions—is not the source of Coleridge’s trouble, but his forgetfulness of God’s grace. The example, nonetheless, highlights the incisive power of the Bible to effect change in readers, Coleridge among them.

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Daniel The spiritual meaning and philosophical applicability that Coleridge cherished in the Psalms, Proverbs, and at times even in Job remains almost wholly foreign to his discussions of the Book of Daniel. The text is difficult to place. The Hebrew Bible includes Daniel with the Hagiographa, the Writings; the Septuagint (and the Vulgate following), by contrast, situates Daniel with the Prophets. Had Coleridge formed a canon of his own, the text would sit somewhere between the Prophets and the Apocrypha, leaning visibly toward the latter. He openly exclaims his discontent: “The state of the English Church is likewise heavy upon me!—that Book of Daniel, which every learned Christian ought to have conspired to [have] removed from the sacred Canon” (CN V 6026).86 In reading Coleridge’s comments on Daniel, one encounters a restless criticism unlike his handling of any other biblical book. The matter of historical authenticity troubles Coleridge most of all. Following Eichhorn and others, Coleridge divides Daniel into two segments: a biographical Preface (chapters 1–6) and a series of prophetic oracles (chapters 7–12).87 There are numerous problems with the text—especially the former half—that lead to its discredit: language, “slip-slop” style, imagery, and context all indicate that the prophet Daniel did not write the work, but another individual in a later age.88 The biographical preface is the product of an “ignorant Jew of Palestine” writing “after the time of Antiochus Epiphanes” (CN V 6544).89 Daniel was a real person (though he might more plausibly be identified with the author of Isaiah 40ff),90 but the book most likely results from “floating Traditions of Daniel” and “vivid recollections of and a taste for allegoric Sculptures” (CM II 410; CN V 6532). “[S]ome Man of Genius,” for whom the use of symbols was apparently a point of interest, likely wrote the latter half of the book (CN V 6544).91 The contemporary problem, mentioned prominently in Confessions, is that Daniel serves as a source of criticism for skeptics of Christianity, while the orthodox rationalists, reliant on an evidentiary theology of fulfilled prophecy, place an equal—if opposite—weight on the book.92 This contemporary difficulty, a problem inherent to Coleridge’s social and intellectual context, is the best explanation for the stark contrast in his handling of Daniel compared to the rest of the Old Testament. In so many other books, Coleridge willingly embraces the veracity of the text by looking for the deeper, spiritual meaning. Even in Job, where Coleridge could embrace the ancient drama despite its historical

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difficulties, the problem remains a literary one. But, to my knowledge, Coleridge never fully develops the spiritual meaning of Daniel.93 Whether this failure to develop the twofold character of Daniel results from the fact that he was deeply vexed by the difficulties of the underlying history or from the tacit assumption that no such inspired ideas could be found, he remained fixated by its inauthentic origin and problematic status as canonical throughout his life. For this reason, Coleridge’s interlocutors play a far more prominent role in most of his comments on Daniel than one typically encounters in his late notebooks on Scripture. Coleridge uses a commentator’s notations on Daniel as a biblical litmus test, and, worse, a means of ascertaining whether or not one accepts true religion: “I value not at a farthing the faith of the man who can believe them” (CN IV 5260). Coleridge often mentions the strictures against “the great” Richard Bentley, who “wished the church were fairly rid” of Daniel (CM III 421).94 Elsewhere, Coleridge claims that those who cannot see the problems in the text lack “Historic sense” (CN V 5833). Coleridge even looks askance at Milman’s literary treatment of Daniel in the History of the Jews: “I scarcely know whether I ought to pity Millman [sic], or to regard it as a sort of dramatic Justice, that he has betrayed Light enough to ruin his episcopal prospects, and too anile an adhesion to the Darkness to win either thanks or Credit as a religious Philosopher” (CN V 6544).95 Coleridge reserves the worst criticism for Johannes Jahn, author of the Appendix Hermeneuticae, who fails to question the authenticity of the prayer of Daniel in 9:24–27: And JOHN JAHN professes to believe, bonâ fide, this to have been a genuine Prayer! of an inspired Prophet! and that Prophet the great DANIEL!!—Nay, John Jahn! by thy own sound and extensive Learning, and by all the flashings of shrewd Sense, that break forth from thy Comments, I profess, that I am hard of belief in this thy profession!—but I am fully persuaded, that thou art or wert, [Professor of] Philos. et Theol. &c. &c &c &c &c &c &c &c &c &c &c &c &c &c &c at VIENNA!! (CM III 103)96

Coleridge doubted whether Jesus ever referred to the Book of Daniel (as recorded in Matthew 24:15) and notes that, if he did, it must surely have only been to speak “in an intelligible manner” of “an historic fact, the profanation of the Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes” (CN V 5752).97 In sum, the historical difficulties of the Book of Daniel and the contemporary struggle between skepticism and evidentiary theology proved an incendiary combination. Coleridge’s charitable stance toward so many other biblical books contrasts dramatically with his

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carping over Daniel. Yet, he claims, long before he was ever aware of the biblical criticism that raised questions about the origins of Daniel, he intuited its inauthenticity, “I always felt it” (CN V 6870). For this reason, Coleridge takes on the words of Melchior Canus as his own: “It is more dangerous . . . to the Church to accept an apocryphal book for Canonical, than to reject a canonical book as apocryphal” (CN V 6625).

The Old Testament Apocrypha While Coleridge takes a largely antagonistic stance toward some of the Writings, most notably Daniel, his attitude about apocryphal literature is characteristically Anglican. The Apocrypha—which comprises books such as Tobit, Judith, and 1 and 2 Maccabees—includes texts whose authority had been questioned, particularly in the Reformation era, on the grounds that they were not a part of the original Hebrew Scriptures.98 Roman Catholics in England viewed these works as doctrinally authoritative in spite of the Protestant attempt to undermine their authority. The use of the Apocrypha persisted, however, long after the Reformation among some English Protestants. Coverdale, for example, included the Apocrypha between the Old and New Testaments in his 1535 translation of the Bible. Though some English divines in later generations, especially among the Puritans, opposed the authority of the Apocrypha in any theological context, the Thirty-Nine Articles take a characteristically moderate stance toward these works by proclaiming that “the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine” (article 6). The Authorized Version (1611), as with its popular predecessor the Geneva Bible (1560), included the Apocrypha until the economics of mass-publication practices discouraged their inclusion in early-nineteenth-century Bibles (McGrath 222–28). Coleridge does not view the Apocrypha as canonical, even though he often alludes to its legitimate inclusion in Bibles. One statement on scriptural authority reveals Coleridge’s deep-seated Protestantism: “the Bible, exclusive of the Apocrypha, is alone the foundation, the necessary ground, the infallible Determinant and the sole and sufficient Rule of our Faith” (CN V 5792).99 Occasionally one encounters notes with disparaging remarks about the Apocrypha: it is “so much popery” (CN V 5525), Judith is “of no more worth than a Romance,” and the Book of Daniel is better grouped with the “blind stories of Susannah & the Elders [and] Bel and the Dragon” of the Apocrypha. More typically, Coleridge interprets such texts as

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uninspired examples of Jewish writings just before the time of Christ (CN IV 4871, 5287).100 Coleridge’s Confessions provides an ironic, yet apt, illustration of his views. His famous phrase, “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.),” openly relies on a quote from the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon (CIS 10). His use of the text is initially ambiguous, signaling either an appeal to biblical authority or a mere literary flourish. Ironically, however, in the following sentence—immediately after his employment of an apocryphal text—Coleridge condemns the Roman Catholic Church for its inclusion of the Apocrypha in the canon of Scripture. Coleridge claims that he stands with the churches of the Reformation and the councils, “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” (CIS 10–11). This confirms his other statements on the biblical canon and indicates that quotes from the Apocrypha in Coleridge’s writings ought to be treated not as sources of revealed wisdom, but as writings on par with other literary authorities.101 The twofold character of Scripture is the defining feature of Coleridge’s notebook commentaries on the Old Testament. The Old Testament mirrors the soul as revelation unfolds before the reader: “The Christian, like the Poet, finds a perpetual novelty in the Old/Why? The Christian contemplates Life in growth—im Werden. Not the thing but the product of that thing on his own & others’ Souls” (CN IV 5316). At times, Coleridge’s philosophical concerns predominate, such as in his reflections on the true meaning of the Law and his work to unravel the creation accounts of Genesis. Yet, elsewhere, Coleridge’s historical concerns and vast reading in biblical criticism, particularly Eichhorn, remind readers of his desire to ground all meaning in the historical, literary sense of the original audience. While there is certainly a critical tone throughout Coleridge’s comments on the Old Testament (with Daniel, his doubts pile high), such comments are vastly outnumbered by constructive attempts to develop a theological method—a system of religion. Thus, while Coleridge was undoubtedly one of the most well-read students of biblical criticism in early-nineteenth-century England, his commentaries on the Old Testament indicate that he not only asked difficult questions but also attempted to construct meaningful answers—answers inspired by wisdom drawn from the New Testament.

Chapter 5

The Scriptures: The I nterpretation of the N ew Testament

For a very long time . . . my head was with Spinoza, though my whole heart remained with Paul and John. S. T. Coleridge (BL I 201)

The New Testament filled Coleridge’s heart and mind during the

last decades of his life. By 1829, Coleridge devoted the last two hours of every day to biblical study (CL VI 784). The New Testament provided Coleridge with an objective vehicle of revelation, reflecting the interior knowledge of the soul—as a mirror—and completing the Old Testament through a divine disclosure of the Logos. Schematically, Coleridge divides the New Testament canon in four parts: (1) the “Evangelical Triad,” or “Recollections of the Sermons and Discourses of the Eye-witnesses,” (2) the Gospel of John, the “Acts and Discourses of the Incarnate Word,” (3) the Epistles, “as the Application of the latter to the establishment and confirmation of the former in its integral parts,” and (4) the Apocalypse, “or Christ as the fulfilment of all the Prophecies respecting his Royalty” (CN IV 5323).1 These four divisions underscore the centrality of the Word, Jesus Christ, in the New Testament. Coleridge distinguishes between the so-called Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and the Gospel of John without fail—unlike many of his contemporaries, whose harmonies of the four Gospels reduced them to a single unit. The first three Gospels, written “according to the flesh,” are

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broadly reliable records; they are artistic, literary accounts of the life of Christ that provide an early demonstration of Christianity to the Jews. John, the Gospel “according to the Spirit,” preserves the only true eyewitness account by one of Jesus’ original apostles. John explicates Christianity for Christians and reveals the redemptive work of the Word made flesh. The Epistles provide insight into the teachings of the apostles—especially Paul, whose memoirs comprise the majority of the Book of Acts and whose authentic writings present truths that complement the Gospel of John. Finally, the Apocalypse (the Book of Revelation)—a work of lifelong interest—requires an interpreter who is uniquely skilled with both the literary and philosophical senses of the Bible.

The Synoptic Gospels Coleridge’s study of German biblical critics such as Lessing, Eichhorn, and Schleiermacher (via Thirlwall) motivated him to scrutinize the first three Gospels with a critical eye (CN IV 5323). Although his heart was with the wisdom of John and Paul, his notes indicate an increasing preoccupation with the compositional origins, authority, and authenticity of the Synoptics during the mid-1820s. In Coleridge’s view, a single Apostolic kerygma informs the first three Gospels.2 Yet, each of the Gospels has a specific purpose and audience. One long marginal note in his personal copy of the Bible effectively summarizes the object of each: His Jewels were all precious Stones—i.e. real facts—not factitious diamonds &c—but in the Setting he was determined by the Object, he had in view—The object of the first Evangelist (as the Gospels now stand) was evidently to bring the facts into a striking reference to & connection with, the Sacred Books of the Hebrews—that of Luke, to inform the Italian Converts of the Facts themselves, in order of place & hour, as far as he had been able to ascertain—that of Mark, to combine the two purposes—his Gospel being written . . . to Jews settled in foreign Lands. (CM I 446–47)3

All three share a common object: “to bring forward just those facts and just so many of those Facts from the Sayings, Doings and Befalments of our Saviour, [as] might induce a born Hebrew to believe, that the most remarkable Prophecies respecting the Messiah had been fulfilled in Jesus” (CN V 5557). Since the apostles pulled many of the sayings of Christ out of their original context (“DOCTRINE not Biography made up the main

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contents of their Preaching & Discourses”), the chronology and setting varies between Gospel accounts (CN V 5599).4 Unlike modern histories, in which “independent value is attached to facts as facts, and the fact of the exact time, place, succession &c of the facts,” ancient histories allowed for greater freedom in the formation and explication of a narrative, while remaining true: “Three Writers working on the same stock of facts would, each arrange them differently, according to the purpose, for which he brought them together” (CN V 6063).5 Modern readers need to reevaluate their conception of the “facts.” The facts of the apostles are not mere times and places, but Ideas and spiritual truths: “The Substance is fact; but the form is the Historian’s work as an Artist” (CM I 448).6 Biblical critics must be able to capture both the literary and spiritual senses of Scripture.7 Luke Coleridge believes that the Gospel according to St. Luke was not only the first to preserve and collect the sayings and parables of Christ, but also the chief Gospel “according to the flesh.”8 Written for an Italian audience of Jewish and Gentile converts, Luke differs from Matthew and Mark in the “vast superiority” of its quality “as an authentic History written with historical purposes” (CN V 5611).9 Though not an eyewitness, Coleridge imagines that Luke took up the role of the historian with great vigor, proposing for himself no other aim or object but what he himself states—namely, the desire to give a matter of fact consecutive Detail of what our Lord did, said and suffered, with the occasions on which, and the places at which the discourses were delivered . . . by consulting the Eye-witnesses that were yet alive and probably by visiting the places in person for the purpose of acquiring, correcting and confirming information. (CN V 5542)10

Luke is a reliable account, one that “soon rose into high repute.” Coleridge wonders if any real damage to Christianity would result from the loss of Matthew and Mark, as with other biographies of Christ that were once in circulation (CN V 5543). Certainly, he concludes, the loss of apparent contradictions between the Synoptics would only help the cause of Christianity and “greatly diminish, tho’ not entirely remove, the perplexity occasioned in the minds of thoughtful Readers by the striking diversity of John’s Gospel” (CN V 5611).11 Luke also authored the central historical work of the New Testament, the Acts of the apostles, which Coleridge likely commented

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on between February 1828 and January–February 1829. Luke’s account of the earliest apostolic activity is not only important for his treatment of Paul (see “Epistles” later), but also for his account of the ascension.12 At the close of his studies, Coleridge offers a series of remarks on the composition of the text: I have now finished the Acts of the Apostles—and on reviewing my thoughts I am strongly inclined to conjecture, that the Work as originally written, was intended, as it’s principal Object, to give the history of Paul, as the Apostle of the Gentiles—and that no other Praxeis of the other Apostles were related but what was necessary to introduce the great Apostle. (CN V 5942)

Acts fits the pattern of the Gospels “according to the flesh” as a relatively faithful compilation of the early activity of the apostles, though its focus on Paul leads him to suspect that the book is actually a blended text derived from two prior writings. From Acts 1:1–2:5, Coleridge perceives a Lukan quality—“a natural Connection with Luke’s former Work” that serves as an introduction to the remainder, “no less proper and necessary to a narrative of the Gentile Mission than to a History of the first Preachers of the Gospel collectively” (CN V 5943). But, departing from Eichhorn’s unified theory of the text, Coleridge claims that another individual, who utilized Luke’s introduction and original title, likely interposed the intervening stories of Peter, John, and the early converts in Acts 2–6 (a section he calls the “Acts of the Apostles at Jerusalem”) (CN V 5943).13 The intervening material thereby fails to perpetuate the larger theme of the Acts narrative: the spread of the Gospel to the Gentiles by Paul.14 Mark Coleridge seldom comments on the Gospel according to St. Mark, a book that biblical scholars since Coleridge’s time have widely accepted as the major documentary source for both Matthew and Luke. His early writings routinely quote Mark 9:24 (“Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief”): the passage epitomizes Coleridge’s struggle with faith and knowledge.15 Later, as his interest in textual authenticity and composition ascends, Mark appears more frequently. He typically places Mark second in chronological treatments of the composition of the Gospels, following and relying on Luke during the apostolic age, while predating the final form of Matthew.16 Yet, since most all of Mark appears in Luke, his references to the Gospel are frequently limited to comparisons and allusions rather than substantial notations.17

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Matthew Coleridge maintains that the Gospel according to St. Matthew is the latest chronologically, though scholars traditionally claimed that Matthew is the earliest of the four. Matthew, a post-apostolic text, presents a number of ambiguities to the careful reader.18 A Hebrew or Syro-chaldaic Gospel appeared shortly after Luke’s Gospel. The former differs substantially from the current Greek text, since even Jewish readers would have been proficient in Greek more than Hebrew.19 The “Greek Matthew,” as Coleridge often refers to it, relied on Luke and Mark as textual sources.20 Since the Greek version of Matthew was “intended to circulate in the very scene of our Lord’s Mission & the general outline of the history known to all, the order of time was of less importance” (CN V 5543). The audience knew the facts of the history, but a fuller explication of the manner in which the life of Christ served as a fulfillment of prophecy remained.21 The temporal distance between the original events and the later compilation, however, allowed the ancient propensity for amplification to take root in the text. In the third century, the Gospel took the name “Matthew” in order to bolster its authoritative status (not unlike the manner in which proponents identified the Epistle to the Hebrews with Paul).22 Matthew’s compositional origin concerns Coleridge most of all, but he also devotes substantial attention to the content of the Gospel and comments on a number of striking passages.23 Comparing Luke, Mark, and Matthew clarifies Coleridge’s interpretation of the Synoptic Gospels. The Synoptics each contain spurious passages that subsequent writers have falsely attributed to the original apostolic witness. Coleridge is confident that both Luke and the earliest version of Matthew had no infancy narratives—each, as with Mark, originally began with the baptism of Jesus by John. Coleridge’s obsession with the infancy narratives parallels his fixation on Daniel 1–6.24 The infancy narratives have an analogue in the biographical prefaces of Exodus and Daniel and may constitute the one major challenge biblical criticism presents to the universal creed of Christendom (the Apostles’ Creed) (CN IV 4897, 5075).25 Yet Coleridge’s acquaintance with biblical criticism is surely not the only source for his views. His wide reading in the Jewish Cabbalist tradition also provided a foundation for such conclusions.26 Coleridge cites a rabbinic belief (one that he regarded as pre-apostolic, though scholars now date such literature to the Middle Ages) that the promised one could be born of natural means, connecting this with Eve’s expectation that either Cain or Seth could have fulfilled the promised

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reconciliation of Genesis 3:15.27 The narratives may be the result of popular traditions or “symbolic Hymns—or impersonations, allegorical Substantiations, as it were, of the various passages in the Psalms, and the Prophets, that were considered as Messianic, or to be interpreted of Christ” (CN V 5570).28 Matthew, an inferior Gospel, utterly lacks the “original hymno-prophetic & poetic character” that Luke maintains; Matthew is “like a rude tale in an old chronicle” when compared with the same material “worked up into a splendid Poem” by a modern author such as Southey (CN III 4402; CN V 5543).29 Nonetheless, Coleridge insists that the rejection of the infancy narratives does not signal a rejection of the divinity of Christ by the earliest Christians. Two Christological options existed in the early church: (1) “they might have supposed the Logos to have assumed the human Nature in Christ at the moment of his Baptism” or (2) they might have believed that the Spirit worked in both Joseph and Mary together: “If the ovaries and uterus of Mary could have been the materials and instrument of the Holy Spirit, for what reason are we not to believe the same concerning Joseph’s seed?” (CN V 5538 and n.).30 Coleridge’s use of Latin to conceal the statement is a telling indication that he recognizes the unorthodoxy of his position. Ultimately, that Paul knows nothing about these narratives is decisive: “what occurred previously to the descent of the Spirit” was merely according to the flesh (CN V 5569).31 While Mark alone remains free from an infancy narrative, the final chapter of Mark’s Gospel has been altered, too, with the addition of twelve verses (Mark 16:9–20). In fact, the closing verses of Mark are among the few substantial references to the Gospel that Coleridge makes in the late notebooks. Coleridge’s study of Mark revealed that the oldest available manuscripts did not contain the final verses of the chapter: “Here in the judgement of the best biblical Critics the Gospel according to St Mark ended. The twelve last verses are not to be found in some, & are marked with asterisks as spurious or doubtful in others of the eldest MSS.—Providentially so: for these 12 verses contain difficulties that have never been fairly explained” (CM I 455). Coleridge rejected the ending, containing a final appearance of Christ following his resurrection, despite Eichhorn’s defense of it (“Eichhorn wants to be always original”) (CN V 5558). For Coleridge, only a bibliolatrous doctrine of inspiration hinders the recognition that the passage is of spurious origin.32 In some ways, the text is rather innocuous: Jesus eats with the disciples and commands them to “preach the gospel to every creature.” But the concomitant promise of distinct signs, including exorcisms, speaking in “new tongues,” and taking up serpents

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in vv. 17–18 is problematic. While Coleridge rejects such signs—they are more likely a result of later, third-century traditions—he insists that his rejection of these verses is not based on their miraculous character (CM II 1159).33 There is good reason to believe him. As Coleridge interprets the miraculous in the Old Testament, so also in the New: he critically weighs each miraculous account and often rails against critics who meekly reject a narrative for its miraculous character alone.34 Coleridge shows his frustration with Eichhorn’s interpretation of the Disciples, claiming that Eichhorn ought to be made to “give an hypothetical history of the Life of Christ from his Baptism to the Day of Pentecost, in which there shall be no miracle, and yet the facts introduced without the popular Notion about them” (CN V 5559). Could Eichhorn, under such circumstances, provide a fitting representation of the awe and confidence of the Disciples without encroaching on their honesty? For Coleridge, the Gospel accounts of miracles substantiate two key principles: (1) one cannot use miracles to determine the moral worth of an individual and (2) miracles are “exactly proportional to the purposes, for which they were worked” (CN V 5610).35 The true purpose of miracles is not to authenticate Christ through “wonders of power,” but to identify Christ with the expected Messiah and to give “to Christianity an historical and objective ground.” Miracles in the Gospels are part of a broader collation in the first three Gospels of the fulfillment of Old Testament hope in Christ, rather than “proofs” of Jesus’ divine mission (CM II 462). The best example is the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Although Coleridge clearly prefers John’s account of the event (6:1–15), he often turns to the miracle and affirms its authenticity, despite the challenging nature of the Synoptic accounts (CN V 5582).36 In principle, no middle ground exists for Coleridge: “Truth! The whole Truth! Nothing but the Truth! This is the only foundation on which my Religion can stand” (CM II 194). Reconciling the secretive nature of Jesus’ mission in Luke and Matthew, especially the peculiar injunction of silence that often follows Jesus’ miracles, is a peculiar difficulty for Coleridge. Reflecting on Luke 5:14 (where Jesus commands the leper “to tell no man: but go, and shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them”), Coleridge asks: “What was our Lord’s Motive in this and sundry other miraculous acts and incidents for enjoining a silence which (he must, according to the received opinion, have foreknown) would not be observed” (CN V 5603). The comment illumines Coleridge’s hermeneutic—the

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question is not simply a rhetorical device, for after the close of the entry, he adds: “I really do ask the above . . . because I am not [able] to suggest a satisfactory answer.” Coleridge also recalls Jesus’ injunction in Luke 5:14 in relation to other chapters in both Luke and Matthew.37 Luke 8 presents the same difficulty. Jesus orders the parents of the girl raised from the dead to remain quiet (8:56). But earlier in the same chapter, Jesus expressly instructs the Demoniac to “‘[r]eturn to thine own house, and shew how great things God hath done unto thee.’ And he went his own way, and published throughout the whole city how great things Jesus had done unto him” (Luke 8:39). Coleridge can only guess, and he errs on the side of trust. He suspects that one could solve the exception, at least in the case of the Demoniac, if one understood the motive for laying injunctions that Jesus knew “would not be complied with” (CN V 5609, 5582). These cases demonstrate Coleridge’s simultaneous interest in and frustration with the Synoptics and Acts. At times, Coleridge wondered why he even bothered to trouble himself with the first three Gospels. He had all he needed with John and Paul and, if any other Gospel were necessary to know “Christ according to the flesh” (2 Corinthians 5:16), Luke surely would have sufficed. At worst, these Gospels contain “current reports of the common people . . . with some later interpolations.” By contrast, John and Paul “seem a Looking-glass to me in which I recognize the . . . same truths, as the reflected Images of my Ideas—and when I begin with meditative Reading of these divine Writings, then they become the Objective[,] completing and guaranteeing the reality of the subjective Truths in myself” (CN V 5624).

The Gospel of John Without question, John is the single most important book of the New Testament for Coleridge. His study of the Synoptics was “a duty of Love and Charity,” but jubilation accompanied his return to the Gospel of John: “What a relief it is, from doubts & difficulties respecting the early Records of the circumstances & incidents of the first Promulgation of Christianity . . . what a relief in turning from these to Christianity itself! From the nominal Matt. and Mark to John and Paul!” (CN V 5583). Coleridge’s praise for John, typically mentioned in the same breath as Paul, is consistent and lofty. He advises others to “[s]tudy John and Paul, and when you have learnt from them what Christ was, and Christianity is, then read Matthew, Mark and Luke to know, what the first Jewish Converts thought, fancied and reported of

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him” (CN V 6555). John’s Gospel “alone [is] for the Church Universal of all ages” and “is precious in my eyes beyond all price” (CM I 447; CN V 5731). John is the one book of the Bible that can stand alone without loss to the Christian faith (CN V 6496). If all that remained of the Apostolic Age was John and Paul, “we should still be rich; and all the Books in the World could not repay the loss of Paul and John” (CN V 6046).38 Coleridge believes that John is the one Gospel written by a direct eyewitness to the life and ministry of Christ. Unlike Matthew, whose apostolic authorship is a later appellation, John may be attributed to the Beloved Apostle with conviction.39 Coleridge confidently asserts John’s apostolic authority, by historical and “internal” evidence (CN V 6077). Unlike other disciples of Jesus, who often appear to misunderstand Christ’s basic teachings with an “obtuse literality,” John writes with clarity and an understanding of truth (CN V 6499).40 Recent biblical scholarship, which dated the Gospel to late in the first century, did not disturb Coleridge’s admiration, either. Instead, Coleridge insists on the greater maturity of the man, noting how “the St John of the year 80 was a greatly improved man as compared with the John of the Acts of the Apostles—& of St Paul’s Epistles” (CN V 5976). The intervening years allowed John to see what he could not have known had he written immediately after Christ’s resurrection: everything necessary appears in John.41 His eyewitness account of Christ leaves few if any difficulties and the whole is “dignified, consistent, and probable” (CM I 447).42 John’s Gospel is a “superior” account that can correct the difficulties of the other three (CN V 5487).43 John certainly contains difficult passages,44 but one can usually garner the spiritual meaning of the text when one interprets the Gospel in an attitude of prayer. Writing in his copy of the Prayer Book, Coleridge recommends a course of spiritual discipline in order to fellowship with the divine: “The best preparation for taking the sacrament, and better than any or all of the Books and Tracts composed for this end, is, first to read over and over again, and often on your knees, at all events with a kneeling and praying heart, the Gospel according to St. John, till your mind is familiarized to the contemplation of Christ, the Redeemer and Mediator of Mankind . . .” (CM I 712). The twofold character of John emerges when the reader approaches the Gospel in an attitude of prayer. As with the first three Gospels, John contains a historical sense that records the sayings and activities of Jesus. More frequently than the others, however, John’s Gospel also communicates spiritual truths through symbolical language. John builds the spiritual sense into the text through Greek philosophy that

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parallels the Hebrew Scriptures (as in John 1).45 Coleridge’s commitment to the spiritual or philosophical sense in John recalls his allegiance to the balance of faith and reason encapsulated in the proverb “His Heart sets his Head right” (CM I 123).46 John’s object is to reveal the personëity of the Word in Christ and the regeneration of humanity through the work of redemption.47 The Logos theology of John 1 provides the foundation for Coleridge’s entire religious system, the so-called Logosophia.48 Irenaeus famously compared Word and Spirit to the two hands of God at work in the world. Similarly, Coleridge maintains that the Word acts as God’s presence in the world, “whose Will from all eternity goeth forth in the Word which it begetteth and in the Spirit ever proceeding—and whose WORD is substantial, [being], self-subsisting tho’ not selforiginated—and whose spirit is the Spirit of Truth, very power, very act” (CN IV 5270).49 John 1 reveals the Logos by focusing readers’ attention on images of life and light. John 1:1, 4, and 9, which Coleridge frequently cites in the notebooks, encapsulate John’s vital philosophical system: 1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 4

In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

9

That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

Each verse reminds Coleridge of the “immanent Life in the communicative Logos,” which enlivens the individual as “a Spirit of Intelligence” (CN V 5673).50 Christianity proclaims the necessity of the regeneration of the fallen will. Because of spiritual apostasy, humanity must be reconciled to the Will of God by grace through faith. Humanity remains in a state of despair that only the life-giving Word can cure. For Coleridge, the “Logos, the Eternal Reason, is” and thereby provides the power of life and the solution to the human condition: Thus substantiality, this living and personal Being of the Co-eternal Son of God, that He is the Truth, and that Truth is in Him / And that he is the Light, which enlighteneth every man /—the submission of every individual Will to which is the condition of all Salvation, and the identification of the Will wherewith is it’s completion / this, the alone rightful Sovereignty, of which all Kings, Presidents, Legislatures are but the Shrines and Symbols—this, I say, is the Answer. (CN V 6622)

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The individual exists in a state of potentiality without divine light. The symbolic language of John 10:9 (“I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved”) also explains how Christ is the path to Truth insofar as Christ is not merely the source of knowledge, but Life. Christ makes divine knowledge possible as Reason, “the Entrance-way of Ideas” (CN IV 5393). In the light, Coleridge avers, the individual grows spiritually by means of the power of the name of the Son of God. John 3:18 (“He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God”) contains “a germ, out of which the whole Tree of Christian Truth with all it’s healing fruits might be evolved!” (CN V 6495). Spiritual growth by the power of the name cannot be measured quantitatively; spirituality, at its root, is a qualitative matter. The conscience, everywhere essential to Coleridge’s explication of religion,51 grows in relation to the state of the will: “The more advanced in the Life spiritual, the more perfectly the Will of the Individual is self-subjected to the Divine Light and Word” (CN IV 5377).52 What is necessary, in the words of John’s Gospel, is the “Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” The Logos came to redeem all who believe, not merely to provide an example. Though both Jesus and John the Baptist were sent from God, John was not the Light since “[t]he Word was not made Flesh in him” (CN V 6482). Coleridge expressly distinguishes between Christ and that which may be realized in all believers because of Christ. John 17:19 (“And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth”) signifies the reality and effect of the coming of the Logos: “What an awefully pregnant verse is this! The mystery of the incarnation, by which the Divine Humanity assumed individual Manhood—and the Son of God, the eternal Word, became a Man!” (CN V 6600).53 Herein lies Coleridge’s frequent complaint against Unitarianism. Unitarians erroneously treat John 1:1–14 as a personification (CN V 5814) and thereby mistake Christ for a mere man. On the contrary, Coleridge maintains that John’s Logos is “a personal Reason” and “the Person of the Eternal Father.”54 Coleridge’s complex description of the redemptive work of the Logos as life and light in John 1 sets the stage for a topic that nearly dominates the late notebook commentaries on the Gospel of John: the relationship between faith and belief as exemplified in Jesus’ miracles. A “connecting purpose” characterizes the first three chapters of John, which distinguish between “the contingent occasion of a

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Believer’s Faith” and “the proper Ground of the Faith” (CN V 6493). The former is insufficient and hollow, except when considered “in union with the latter.” Coleridge insists on this grammar of faith in his discussion of miracles in John: miracles are not the cause of true faith but rather faith provides a proper context for and actuates belief in the miraculous. Faith “existed potentially in the predisposition.” Thus, miracles have an “eminently subjective” character.55 Yet, while Coleridge distinguishes between the objective and subjective character of the miraculous events, he persistently rejects rationalistic attempts to “demiraculize” accounts such as the miracle at Cana or the various feedings of the multitudes (CN V 5977).56 Miracles are historical and spiritual events, just as Christianity is necessarily historical and spiritual. The polarity of objective and subjective is paramount. The case of the nobleman’s son (John 4:46–54) provides a key illustration: John 4 supplies “a sufficient confutation of the Zoo-magnetist Visionaries,” since faith is not the “co-efficient cause” of the miracle (namely, the faith is in the father rather than the son) (CN V 6524). Though Coleridge recalls a time when he believed that miracles were “Anticipations for mankind of a power potentially existing in all men, & requiring only an emancipation of the Will from the captivity of the Flesh and the Mind of the Flesh, to become actual,” he now maintains that the faith of the individual merely provides the context in which the “established order of Cause & Fact” may be disturbed. Faith is the precondition for a disturbance of law. Without such a condition, the miracle remains outward and fails to achieve its proper, symbolic function: the indwelling work of Christ in the individual soul. Thus, Jesus used miracles as occasions to present true doctrine rather than the means to prove his divinity (CM II 462).57 Miracles serve as symbols of divine truth in John. The healing of the blind man in John 9 provides an excellent example of a symbolic miracle. In the story, Christ passes by a man who had been blind from birth (v. 1). The disciples ask Jesus, “who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” (v. 2). Jesus responds that neither had sinned, only that the work of God would “be made manifest in him” (v. 3). Then, Jesus, taking a most unusual step, “spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay” (v. 6), instructing the man to wash in the pool of Siloam. Coleridge believes that the story is unquestionably “a symbolic Action throughout” (CN V 5743). Elsewhere, in a move that obscures his standard definition of the symbol (LS 29–30), Coleridge calls the passage “one of the most exact and significant

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allegories, I ever remember to have read—& thus confirmative of the (at the time) secondary but now & in their prospective intentions primary Purpose of the Miracles in general—symbols namely of the everlasting Good Tidings” (CN V 4611). As symbol, the miracle event moves beyond allegory as the actions realize truth: “The Mouth of Christ was symbolically (not merely metaphorically) Divine Philosophy, in our Lord’s own words—The Way and the Truth, the means, the method and the End itself—it is the way to the Truth but being the true way it is itself a portion of the Truth—or even the form, in which the Truth itself is partaken of by finite spirits.” The words of truth pass through the one who is the way. Similarly, the means of the miracle actuate another spiritual reality: “The Spittle the lower, and instrumental Excretion of Philosophy, by which it assists in first dividing (masticating, ruminating) then consimilating, and lastly assimilating the earthly food (facts of the senses) to its own higher Life—namely, Logic, which like Geometry, and common Arithmetic, had its source in the highest Philosophy, and could never have been derived from the empirical life.” Coleridge’s anti-empiricism informs his interpretation of the event as symbol: the senses are imperfect and the individual requires divine light from the Logos to perceive truth. Coleridge continues his attack on sensualism by relating the spittle to logic: This Logic applied by a Master’s Hand to the commonest, most incoherent, sand-like facts of the senses whose lapse merely fills up and measures the vacuous flux of mortal Time, will communicate a coherency to the same, & give it virtues capable of opening the eyes of the Blind, provided there be a passive Resignation of the Will—and provided, the Blind Person proceeds & washes himself in the waters of the Sent.

The passage elucidates two pivotal aspects of Coleridge’s philosophical theology. First, truth comes not from the outward senses but from the interior knowledge of the soul. This interior prompting is “analogous to instinct,” but might also be called, in the language of the church, the prevening grace of God that awakens the individual to truths beyond the self.58 Second, the passage recalls the inevitability of action. The healer may apply spittle in the dirt to the eyes, but the recipient must still go down to the pool in order to realize the miracle. Likewise, the philosopher may explain great truths by means of the most common examples (consider the parables), but the hearer, once awakened, must still act on these aids to reflection: “that done, the next step is—Try therefore—it has been demonstrated that a, b, c, d,

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are not and cannot be the road to the Temple or the Oracle—that e is the only remaining Road—try it therefore, travel along it, trust in it and obey in all respecting the various guide-posts both at its entrance & those which you will find along it.”59 The pool recalls not only the work of the individual philosopher, but also the quality of a “reservoir” or enclosed “Collection of Water” in the form of “a Church, or positive Religion.” Coleridge’s interpretation of the healing of the blind man in John 9 exemplifies his biblical understanding of the error of evidentiary theology. Miracles are occasions for teaching true doctrine. They do not prove the Christian faith, but provide occasions for the expression of the true ground of faith.60 When one considers the prominence of miracles in Coleridge’s notebook commentaries on John, the paucity of direct analysis of the resurrection of Christ (in either John or the Synoptics) is all the more conspicuous. Coleridge largely confines his treatment of the resurrection to the literary sense of the text, only occasionally mentioning this decisive event when adjudicating the authenticity of the four Gospels. The Gospel accounts of the resurrection provide a clear case against the legitimacy of biblical harmonies: “if we confine ourselves to the facts recorded, it will be found impossible not only to reconcile the apparent variations, but even to render them conceivable on the hypothesis of the Authors’ being both Eye-witnesses” (CN III 3879).61 When Coleridge compares the Gospels of Matthew and John, he finds that the character of John’s writing is “exactly such as we should expect from John, & seems to explain the fact of his being the beloved Friend of Christ . . .” Coleridge distrusts the logic his contemporaries use to defend the resurrection accounts and subjects both critical and evidential treatments of the resurrection to stinging critique.62 He believes that the idea of the resurrection requires greater elucidation than Christians have devoted to it. Moreover, the event cannot be appealed to as the only demonstration of Christianity: neither “St Paul nor any other ever did state the Resurrection of Christ as a proof” of either the “Being of a God” or “the immortality of Man” (CN III 3581).63 By comparison, the ascension of Christ is an event that Coleridge discusses frequently.64 The ascension creates unique, spatial— geographical difficulties for the reader. Coleridge resolves these difficulties by treating the event as an “article of implicit faith” since “we cannot believe in the Death and Resurrection of our Lord without believing that on his last communion with his Disciples he suddenly, by an act of his divine power, withdrew into the Invisible” (CN V 6032).65 Still, “the vital all including point” of the ascension is

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the resurrection. The mode and “visible circumstance” are less significant than the point that John hopes to make: “John’s Gospel was written not to prove that Jesus was indeed the Christ in order that men might believe, . . . but as an exposition of the truth in Christ for those who already believed in him” (CN V 6031). The ascension directs attention back to the resurrection, which stands as an integral part of the full revelation of communion with Christ and the hope that distinguishes Christianity from other religions: “Without the faith in the resurrection and the life[,] the very grass under my feet would turn black before me” (CN V 6621).66 For Coleridge, all the major themes in John converge in one remarkable chapter: the feeding of the five thousand in John 6. No other passage in the Bible, with the exception of John 1, ranks higher. Coleridge calls John 6 a “most profound Chapter,” one that “contains the very essence, the formative Soul, of the Christian Faith” (CN V 6546). John 6 is Coleridge’s biblical Xanadu, the passage he wishes—above all others—to describe in all its richness. When despair for his life set in, Coleridge turned to John 6 and expressed dejection and the fear that he would never share his insights on this pivotal passage: “Ah! shall it have been vouchsafed in vain, for myself, like a Torch in the hand of the Blind! O! if but for others, that the Time may for a while be deferred when no man worketh! Mercy, Christ! Mercy and Faith!” (CN IV 5235).67 John 6 declares the heart of the Gospel by conveying a symbolic miracle (CN III 3847). Unlike Coleridge’s interpretation of the same event in the Synoptic Gospels, where Coleridge focuses his attention on its miraculous character, his interpretation of John’s account emphasizes both the occasion and the spiritual meaning. People from all around, hearing of Jesus’ reputation, came seeking great miracles and a sign from heaven. Yet their focus on the miracle alone—on evidence—radically missed the point of Jesus’ message.68 In the outward act of breaking bread at the feast, Jesus symbolized the need for inward regeneration: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (John 6:53). One must feed on Christ, the Incarnate Word, in order to participate in his life. The disciples, in their literality, failed to recognize the symbolic act, complaining to one another, “[t]his is an hard saying; who can hear it?” (6:60). In much the same way, Coleridge believed that many sought evidences for the faith in his own day, but failed to commune with the one who gives life. John 6 thereby establishes the pattern for the meaning of the celebration of the sacrament. The feeding of the five thousand was a

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“symbolic” and “stupendous” miracle that provided “an historical Envelope and Conservative of this most vital Doctrine of [Christianity]” (CN IV 5172). John’s account holds more weight than not only Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but even Paul: “As the Mariner’s Compass to the Law and Theory of Magnetism, so the Texts of Institution in Matt. Luke, Paul to the VIth Chapter of the Gospel according to John” (CN IV 5272).69 Many, including Irenaeus, erred by attending to the Eucharistic act “exclusively” when the sacrament is better regarded as “the Symbol of the Consubstantiation of the Ground of personal identity with the divine Life.” Coleridge appeals elsewhere to the language of the Eucharist as a symbol for spiritual renewal and regeneration. The Eucharist recalls the “whole Work of Redemption in the Redeemed[,] which is the same as or consists in Regeneration, is a Process of spiritual Transsubstantion—a daily Eucharist” (CN V 6484). When Coleridge received the sacrament on Christmas Day, 1827, “the first time since my first year at Jesus College,” his notebook entry centers on John 6 (CN V 5703). He expresses admiration for the liturgy of the English Church, noting its “solemn and affecting” qualities and how it is preferable to both the Roman Catholic treatment of the Eucharist, “which may excite awe & wonder in such as believe the real transmutation of the Bread & Wine, but assuredly no individual comfort or support,” and the practice of the Dissenters, whose own teachings are not dissimilar to that which “the great majority of our own Clergymen teach . . . cold and flat the ceremonial is . . . when the Eucharist is considered as a mere and very forced visual metaphor for the mere purpose of reminding the Partakers of a single event, the sensible crucifixion of Jesus.” The Eucharist directs disciples not to the blood shed on the cross, but rather to shared communion in the spiritual life: “The redeeming Blood is here stated not as that which Jesus was to shed but that which we are to drink, and of which whosoever drinketh not cannot be saved—and this, he explained, was a spiritual Substance” (CN IV 4909). As a symbol of regeneration, John 6 moves the celebration of the Eucharist away from the difficulties he encountered in the language of sacrificial atonement and toward an experiential understanding of communion with the divine.70 John 6 provides an extraordinary summary of the message proclaimed by the Beloved Apostle: “He is at once the Teacher and the Doctrine, the Giver and the Gift—yea, and if Scripture do not mock our common sense . . . he is at once (he, not merely his moral precepts)[,] he is at once the Feast and the Master of the Feast” (CN III 3847).71

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Nearing death, Coleridge penned a notebook entry that reminds others of the pivotal importance of John’s Gospel for a right conception of true religion: O grace of God! if only a believing Mind were thoroughly purged from the refracting film of Nominalism; if it could indeed be possessed by, and possess, the full Idea of the Reality of the Absolute Will, the Good!—tho yet—higher shall I see or deeper than reality, the Will as the Ground essentially causative of all real Being, and therefore essentially of it’s own Being—the Will super-personal, and transcending all relation, and by an eternal Act affirming it’s own Being, eternally selfpersoned, the I AM . . . if in short, the Idea, the Mystery of the Trinity, the Mystery of absolute Light save in the beams of which all else would struggle in the Mystery of hopeless Darkness & Contradiction, were present to him—O with what deep devotion of Delight, Awe & Thanksgiving would he read every sentence of the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, & 17th Chapters of St John’s Gospel!!—S.T.C. (CN V 6918)

To the end, the Gospel of John was a source of fully Christian reflection for Coleridge. References to the Gospel fill the notebooks; he comments on John more than any other book of the Bible.72 Though he admits, at times, that an attack on its authenticity would present serious obstacles to the objectivity of the historic revelation of Christianity, his persistent attention to the twofold character of the text would inevitably have served as an insulator against further attacks on John’s literary and compositional background: “Let what will come of the remaining Books, let my continued researches raise or lower them in my judgement, my faith moves onward in panoply” (CN V 5759).73 Bolstered by this Gospel “according to the Spirit,” Coleridge recognized the presence of the Logos in John unlike any other book: “It is I; be not afraid” (John 6:20).

The Epistles Paul Coleridge’s study of the New Testament epistles is almost exclusively on Pauline literature. The common witness of John and Paul provides the foundation for all other inquiries into the Christian faith. “Must not the Light,” Coleridge comments in 1828, “be made outward and collected into a Sun; before Sight is called into Act?—A Church was to be formed & collected—& God provided the Preachers, according to the needs of the times—and two at least to be Preachers for all times, John & Paul” (CN V 5844). Luke so valued the life and teachings

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of Paul that his memoirs dominate the so-called Acts of the Apostles.74 John’s Gospel finds a powerful corroboration in Paul’s writings: “The coincidence substantively with the ideas of John under so marked a diversity of Genius and Color of Thought is one among the really weighty arguments in support of the divine Origin of the Revelation in Jesus” (CN V 5839). The difference between Paul and John lies not in the content of their doctrine, but rather in the “different drapery & mode of communicating it” (CN V 6010). Though John’s philosophical sense and ability to describe the relationship between the Word, light, and life finds no comparison, Paul deserves “the honor due to him[,] viz. the first who had FULLY comprehended Christ” (CN V 5976). John and Paul are, for Coleridge, the two foremost authorities in Scripture.75 Paul is “the enduring Oracle of the pure Faith” and an exemplar of the Christian life (CN IV 5426). He is “the very Model and realized Idea of a Gentleman” (CN V 5874)76; a man whose dealings with the other apostles and churches reveal the character of a true genius. But Coleridge also complains that Paul is sometimes difficult to understand. While Paul’s reasoning and logic are “deep” and “accurate,” to call him “luminous” is “raving Bigotry” (CN III 3903).77 The account of Paul’s conversion in Acts 9—called into question by Coleridge’s favorite biblical scholar, Eichhorn—is a credible one that describes Paul’s miraculous calling in the presence of Christ—not merely the psychological aftershocks of a bolt of lightning, as Eichhorn asserted: can we rationally refuse our assent to the Apostle’s own inward Assurance and persistent Assertion of its miraculous—i.e. supernatural, origin? If St Paul might have been deceived, yet [Ananias] must have been a Liar, or Luke must have invented the story (i.e. been a Liar) or have suffered himself to be imposed on by Liars—Now the absence of all motive and object for a miraculous interposition must be very evident, before we could be justified in making any one of these harsh conclusions—/More shocking still will the wantonness and the uncharitableness of such an assertion appear when we advert to the very great probability that St Luke had received his information from St Paul’s own Mouth. (CN IV 5426)78

The startling conversion, confirmed by the dream of Ananias, provided Paul with the objective ground of his mission (CN IV 5426 and n.; CN V 5936).79 The account of the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 proves Paul’s sincerity in preaching the Gospel of Christ to the Gentiles. The passage, “rightly held of inestimable value by all

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sound and sober-minded Protestant Scholars, as furnishing the only authentic data for the Commencing Period of Eccles. History,” does not idealize the early history of Christianity (CN V 5856). Rather, Paul and Peter engage in a contentious altercation, though they are “two men equally partakers of the Holy Ghost” (CN V 5857). The solution, “a compromise,” reminds readers of the tolerant attitude of those who sought the same goal: “the advancement of the Kingdom of Heaven, to the glory of God, in the Salvation of Souls.”80 Throughout Acts, Luke portrays Paul as a man of tremendous humility and love who preached faith in Christ through the “unfolding” and “defending” of true religion (CN V 5858, 5937).81 Romans Coleridge treats the biographical account of Paul’s journeys in Acts as a preface to the Pauline epistles; his notes on Acts immediately precede his study of Paul’s writings. Coleridge begins with Romans, a work that he first studied years earlier. Now, amidst Coleridge’s expansive study of the Bible, Romans takes on fresh importance as the centerpiece of a formal exposition of the Pauline corpus.82 Coleridge begins with a consideration of the literary sense of the text. He follows Eichhorn, explaining that Paul wrote Romans in 60 AD and composed the epistle for those who might be swayed by the Judaizing Christians of the day. Judaizers followed Paul and “pretended to have been sent as missionaries accredited for the purpose of enforcing the necessity of Circumcision &c in order to Salvation, by the Mother Church at Jerusalem” (CN V 6002, 6003 and n.).83 Coleridge identifies the philosophical or spiritual sense of the text as a gradual exposition of truth in which Paul takes his readers through a progressive argument. Christians too often mistake the literary sense of single parts of Romans (and other epistles) for the whole argument, a “Summa Theologiæ Christianæ” (CN V 6007). Coleridge opposes the typical approach of biblical scholars, who think “exclusively of Paul, and not at all of St Paul’s Readers” and thereby ignore his acute sensitivity to the varying “capacity & receptivity” of his audience: the mode of doctrinal elucidation is not the unveiled, “compendiary shower-bath way,” but rather “like the cinque-spotted Insect up the Stream” (CN V 6008).84 Coleridge’s late commentary on the philosophical sense of Romans is a subtle exposition of chapters 1–7 that captures the regeneration of the fallen Will through faith in Christ. Paul’s description of Christ in Romans 1 as “made of the seed of David according to the flesh” and

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“declared to be the Son of God with power . . . by the resurrection from the dead” (vv. 3–4) provides a clear corroboration of Coleridge’s doubts about the virgin birth of Jesus while simultaneously reinforcing the centrality of Jesus’ resurrection—the event that confirmed his divinity (CN V 5955).85 Coleridge then describes the condemnation of the Law, “taken by Paul in the widest & most philosophical sense— the Law of Right Reason applied to the Will by the Conscience” (CN V 6006). Nearly twenty years earlier, Coleridge struggled with Paul’s use of the Law in Romans and concluded that “the Moral Law, & the positive Mosaic Code of Laws are comprehended, as species under one genus” (CN III 3903). In 1829, Coleridge develops the sense of the passage with the further claim that Paul’s rhetoric required the turn to the Mosaic Law as a means of inviting his audience into a fuller recognition of the centrality of the moral law within. Conscience “makes” sin, though the conscience remains unable to will its own redemption. In Adam, all of humanity finds its “psychical archetype,” since “Adam must be contemplated as a representative Man virtually containing all men” (CN V 6010). Analogously, in Christ, all “the spiritual Humanity” may be found; Christ is “not only . . . a spiritual divine Man,” but also “the essential Divine Humanity.” Thus, even as Adam “was not only Man but Mankind,” so, too, Christ “who dwelt among men for a short time DWELLETH IN the elect always.”86 One’s identification with Christ, however, only occurs as a result of the free gift of God’s grace, “by a divine righteousness applied to us by faith in Christ” (CN V 6006). Paul’s exposition of Christ’s redemption of the fallen Will in Romans irritates Coleridge, who had a lifelong anxiety about the doctrine of propitiatory atonement. Coleridge calls Romans 3:24–28, “the most clouded & perplexed passage in the Epistles.” He wonders if Romans 3:25 (“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God”) might not be better regarded as a sentence that Paul’s amanuensis inadvertently forgot to cancel: the verse “at first sight reads almost as tho’ the Apostle had dictated a sentence, but dissatisfied with it had substituted another, and that the Amanuensis had put down both.” What follows is a long attempt to work out Paul’s method of theological explication in order to avoid a literal interpretation of Christ’s sacrificial atonement. Coleridge maintains that “great universal (philosophic) ideas [are] conveyed in the husk of Judaic Analogies.” Coleridge, who ever finds consonance in John and Paul, proposes that “[i]f St Paul held the belief of St John respecting the nature of Christ, he must have held

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likewise the Consequences of that belief—i.e. a renewal of the divine image by being born again in Christ, or by the birth of the Christ the divine Humanity in us.” Paul’s solution, according to Coleridge, was to represent the consequence through the imagery of sacrifice and the Law. Once completed, “one step gained,” the rite itself could be recognized as a “type” of “the redemptive power of Christ.” Finally, “a third step,” the type is called a “shadow,” which lacks “operative or substantive force” and contains “only a declarative or suggestive Significancy.” Christ thereby represents true humanity, since Christ alone resisted sin by “the free determinations of the responsible Will” (CN V 6011). The commentary is a fascinating explication of Romans, to wit one of the most profound summations of Coleridge’s philosophical theology. Paul’s doctrine, powerfully expressed in Romans 6:3 (“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?”), points readers to the communion between believers and the Father by means of the mediatorial work of the Son. Reconciliation is not accomplished by means of the blood of Christ, but by the individual repetition of Christ’s realization of true humanity. What Christ accomplished in his death, throwing off mortality, may now be repeated by all. By participating in Christ’s suffering, each individual enacts “a temporal deed,” symbolically participating in “a perpetual timeless act” (CN V 6011). Setting out from Romans 7, Coleridge contrasts the powerlessness of the finite Will with the light and life available through Christ: the end of Redemption is to give birth to a Spiritual Life as the Base or Supposition of the Self-conscious Will—and . . . during the Process the Holy Spirit acts, as it were vicariously, in administering the impulses, supports, comforts, sense of reality; i.e. Faith the Substance or subsistence of Things hoped for, the evidence (not merely the conviction of the certainty) of things not seen—which the spiritual or heavenly Life, in its full development & maturity would have done,—and . . . this new & spiritual Life is [of the same kind] with the Life of Christ, the Mediator. (CN IV 5243)

Paul thereby represented the efficacious death of the incarnate Logos in a manner that was appropriate to the times, while remaining wholly consonant with John’s Platonic language of redemption through the renewal of the divine image (CN V 6012).87 For Coleridge, the language of Law, faith, death, and life in Romans clearly encompasses the heart of Paul’s theology. Still, as he progresses through other Pauline epistles, he encounters a series of

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difficulties that serve as a perpetual reminder of his ostensibly brittle faith. He follows his commentary on Romans with a turn to 1 Thessalonians, a work that he only occasionally mentions in his notebooks.88 But, before he writes a full commentary on the epistle, Coleridge stalls after reading the account of the second coming of Christ in 1 Thessalonians 4:15–18 (“16For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord”). Whether from fear of illness that leads to death (a worry that peppers his late writings) or his recurring distaste for apocalyptic literature, Coleridge never completed his notes on either 1 or 2 Thessalonians, meekly noting that 1 Thessalonians 4:15–18 is “the passage that almost alone in St Paul’s Writings strikes doubt & fear into my heart respecting the nature of my own faith” and claiming that he must first “try to prepare myself by prayerful meditation on the essentials of Faith, or at least the belief and trust in Authority indispensable in order to Christian Faith” (CN V 6014). Intimate passages such as this magnify Coleridge’s sincere reverence for the Bible even as they reveal a man who sometimes harbored doubts about his own tenuous faith. 1 and 2 Corinthians Coleridge hoped that the epistles to the Corinthians would solidify his thoughts on Paul’s philosophy. But the 1829 commentaries seldom proceed beyond the literary sense of the text, as a great deal in 1 and 2 Corinthians perplexes him.89 His discussion of death and the “Universal unbending Law” shifts to a fuller inquiry into the second coming of the Lord based on 1 Corinthians (CN V 6015).90 Coleridge entertains the possibility that “some great Revolution awaits the World” and that “our Lord . . . will again be revealed in his personality.” But Coleridge also recognizes that the timing of such events is unknown, even as the apostles remained uninformed (CN V 6016). He frequently complains about the language of the Authorized Version in 1 and 2 Corinthians, as with many other New Testament books, and laments the difficulties the translation occasions for the contemporary reader. For instance, Coleridge proposes “lovingkindness” as a more appropriate word than “charity” (agape-caritas) in 1 Corithians 13.91 Doctrinally, passages on the gifts of the spirit— especially glossolalia or “speaking in tongues” in 1 Corinthians 12 and

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14—redouble Coleridge’s prior rejection of the supposedly miraculous gifts bestowed on the disciples at Pentecost and throughout the Book of Acts.92 Coleridge repeatedly rejects “the absurd but universal notion” that “tongues” ought to be understood as speaking in a foreign language (CN V 5842). The practice more likely refers to a form of witness in ecstatic speech. Although he considers the possibility “that the first Preachers of his Gospel received superhuman powers with the receiving of the Spirit,” he theorizes that a false understanding of Acts 2 led to a mistranslation of these practices elsewhere (CN V 6019).93 Galatians Though 1 and 2 Corinthians failed to bolster Coleridge’s faith, his turn to four favorite epistles cheered his spirit: Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians. Despite Coleridge’s difficulty with other Pauline writings, these four epistles secure Paul’s privileged place in the biblical canon (“all the Books in the World could not repay the loss of Paul and John”) (CN V 6046).94 Coleridge, as usual, follows Eichhorn on the compositional origins and historical setting of the epistles, noting, for example, that “to the Ephesians” is “demonstrably an interpolation.” The spiritual sense is persistently Christocentric: the epistles speak throughout of Christ, whom Paul presents as “the living objective Idea in which from the beginning God contemplated the Elect, as perfected thro’ their assumption into and union with the Divine Idea, or the Word that containeth every word that proceeded from the mouth of God” (CM I 463–64).95 Paul’s message of freedom through the redemptive work of Christ is richly harmonious with John. Galatians requires that readers place Paul’s words in the context of his ministry. Paul received his knowledge of the Gospel through an objective revelation—a vision—during his conversion on the road to Damascus. But his doctrinal account of that revelation came “directly from the Lord during the study of the written Word” (CN V 6055). Coleridge claims that too many readers mistake ad hominem arguments for the convictions of the apostle himself. He recommends that readers always entertain the notion while reading that a point has simply been made for rhetorical purposes.96 Galatians provides such a case in Paul’s treatment of the Law. Though Paul appears to depreciate the Law, Coleridge maintains that one must understand the text in light of Paul’s other writings and a right understanding of the Law itself, since “it is impossible to read either the Books of Moses, the

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Psalms or the Prophets without finding the strongest invitations to repentance & promises of forgiveness” (CN V 6057). Coleridge argues that Paul understood the Law not only as the Jewish Law but even “the whole Moral Law, or Law of Works.” Christ fulfilled the Law in a manner frequently overlooked by critics and professors of Christianity alike: the mission of Christ was not a teaching or revelation. Deists, for example, could rightly claim that Christianity seemed as old as creation insofar as Reason could access many of the truths of Christianity. Yet a difference remains that requires the “greatest effort of courage to interpret aright.” The mission of Christ “was a doing, a series of redemptive Acts realizing the doctrines long anticipated by faith.” Paul’s letter to the Galatians, then, reminds readers that Christ’s crucifixion is a shadow of the true liberation from the condemnation of the Law by grace.97 Ephesians Ephesians, which Coleridge read first of the four epistles in the late notebook commentaries, is a “Circular Charge to all the Churches that had been gathered by St Paul’s Scholars, whom he had not himself seen but whom he considered as parts of his spiritual Diocese.” As a circular letter, Ephesians is “elaborate & highly finished” and provides a fitting counterpart to the Gospel of John (CM I 465, 459; CN V 6048). Ephesians 2:14–16, on the mediatorial work of Christ, is a praiseworthy passage. The text is “transparent” for those who see by the light of the “baptismal water of the Spirit,” but its “plentitude of profound truths, the fundamental mysteries of the Life of Faith,” remain veiled for all others (CM I 464; CN V 6047).98 Colossians Coleridge links Colossians with Ephesians. Colossians is but “an echo” of Ephesians, but likewise useful as a work that provides a helpful interpretation of Ephesians (CM I 465). Colossians was “dictated by the Apostle while his mind was yet warm with the recollections of the former elaborate Composition, to which he had given the whole force of his rich and vigorous intellect” (CN V 6046).99 Philippians Coleridge’s notes on Philippians reinforce the Christological tenor of his biblical commentaries.100 The most significant section is Philippians

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2:6–11, the often controversial passage on the humility of Christ. Coleridge calls it a “very difficult passage,” one that presents “a distinction, tho’ without division, of the Jesus from the Logos” (CN V 6051). He proposes that the phrase “in the form of God” (v. 2) refers to Jesus’ “unition” with the Logos. Against this view, however, he recognizes that “the becoming a man is the act of humility pointed out by the Apostle.” Despite his own struggle to interpret the passage, Coleridge declares with conviction that the text is “utterly irreconcileable with the Socinian Scheme—The reward of a mere man for simply not having done what none but a mad man could have thought of doing (v. 9, 10, 11) is too extravagant.”101 Paul’s message in Philippians is consistent with the language of the rest of the New Testament: Christ has accomplished what no other could in the “detachment and deradication of the human Princ[ipium] Ind[ividualitatis] [i.e., ‘principle of individuation’] from the Ground . . . and it’s transplantation into the Substance (or divine ground) of the Logos” (CN V 6054). Thus, as with Coleridge’s exposition of other New Testament writings, Christ accomplished in an eternal act what each individual (the Elect) must do “in time and numerically.” Christ’s work was a real redemption, but requires the active participation of the individual. Pastoral Epistles The four Pauline writings that remain—1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Hebrews—are all of questionable composition.102 Late in life, Coleridge calls the three Pastoral epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus “Paul-like epistles.” These writings share a common goal: “to declare and establish the right constitution of a Christian Church” (CM I 467; CN IV 5169).103 Early in life, Coleridge affirmed the Pauline composition of the Pastorals, but he eventually yielded to the critique of both Eichhorn, whom he once criticized as relying on “Feather and Snowflake” reasoning, and Schleiermacher, whose writing on Timothy he annotated (CM II 471–72).104 Coleridge’s difficulties with these books are minor (“little potatoes, which, it is well known, are no great things”), but his conclusion has far-reaching consequences: if the writings are not authentically Pauline, then passages that appear to contradict other Pauline writings may be more easily be handled. “[T]he Hypothesis,” he claims, “has its advantages” (CN IV 5312). Hebrews The Authorized Version names Hebrews “The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews.” Coleridge follows Luther, though, in

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ascribing the work to Apollos. Commenting on Acts 18:24–28, Coleridge notes that “I have never ceased to think Luther’s conjecture that the Epistle to the Hebrews was written by [Apollos], highly probably & eminently happy” (CN V 5876). Coleridge’s frequently draws comparisons between Hebrews and the later Epistle of Barnabas (typically numbered with the so-called Apostolic Fathers of the earliest Christian writings). In one note, Coleridge calls Barnabas “too philo-judaic, alexandrine, edging on the fantastical—but more so, et magis et alio genere ac Epist. ad Hebræos [both more and in another kind than the Epistle to the Hebrews]?” (CN IV 5353).105 The reference is helpful in reconstructing the chief elements of Coleridge’s logic. Some two years later, Coleridge describes Apollos as an Alexandrian, not improbably a friend, perhaps, scholar and auditor of Philo Judæus. His discourses were in the spirit of his Birth-place— allegorical, spiritualizing . . . Doubtless, his Preaching up to this time had been to prepare the minds of the Jews for the advent of the Messiah by contending for a spiritual interpretation of the Prophets and for the spiritual office and character of the expected Christ. (CN V 5876)106

These peculiar characteristics make Apollos an excellent candidate for the authorship of Hebrews. As a text, Hebrews requires the full capacity of the biblical interpreter. Writing in the margins of Edward Irving’s (1792–1834) sermons on the Incarnation, Coleridge claims that no other book of the New Testament “demands on the part of the Commentator and Interpreter the union of Sound Learning, sober Judgement, and that rare Gift of imagination which enables the possessor to think, feel, and reason in the form and character of a distant Age under circumstances the most diverse from his own” (CM III 19–20). In the same way that an artist painting a self-portrait must continually look in the mirror in order to capture “the total impression of the Countenance” though working on a single feature, so, too, the reader of Hebrews must “ever and anon refresh his mind by contemplating the Synopsis of the whole faith in Christ in the Mirror of the Idea.” Coleridge’s portrait of the interpreter provides yet another glimpse of his method: Hebrews, more than many other books, requires the reader to attend to both the literary and the spiritual senses of the text. Although Coleridge’s interest in “faith” led him to cite Hebrews 11:1 (“faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”) in numerous contexts (most notably, the “Essay on Faith” in the so-called Opus Maximum),107 Christology is the central

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theme of Coleridge’s notebook commentaries on Hebrews. As early as June 1810, Coleridge argued against the compatibility of the Christ of the New Testament and Unitarian theology: “It has struck me as an unanswerable Argument against the Socinian Scheme, that the Epistle to the Hebrews whether written by Paul or not, is beyond all contradiction of the apostolic age, and evidently the work of a native Jew deeply versed in the opinions and prejudices of his Countrymen” (CN III 3870). Hebrews, a work “beyond all contradiction of the apostolic age,” shares with the Gospel of John and the Apocalypse (the Book of Revelation) a single object: “to establish the superiority in kind of Christ, the Son of the Living God, to all the Prophets from Abraham to Moses, and from Moses to John” (CN IV 5228). Hebrews provides a striking example of the symbiotic revelation of divine truths through the appeal to inspired Scripture (here, the Old Testament) and Reason. Coleridge also finds a rich philosophical harmony between Hebrews and John, even proposing that Hebrews 3:14 (“For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end”) might be related “to the mysterious doctrine delivered in the Gospel of John C. VI . . . the beginning of that Substratum spirituale, into which we seek to be come transsubstantiated and of which the Eucharist is the Symbol” (CM I 469). Christ, the High Priest of humanity, brings about the required reconciliation.108 Hebrews is thereby irreconcilable with the low Christology of a Priestley or Belsham: first . . . a Jew holding the same faith concerning the humanity of the Messiah as the Jews at present or the Unitarians, could not possibly have used the Language, of this Epistle/for no unitarian ever has used such language, and no Jew ancient or modern, in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin; Old Test. New Test.—Talmud, or any other book, has ever held similar Language of Moses—not only in degree, but not in kind. 2. That no Hebrew deriving his first acquaintance with the doctrine from immediate Inspiration, and conscious that all his Countrymen and all his & their forefathers who had not been inspired with this particular Knowledge, thought the contrary, could have used such arguments/a doctrine quite new, so closely bordering on Idolatry as it has always appeared to all Non-Trinitarians, and so especially abhorrent to the Jews, with whom the Unity of God was the Beginning, Middle, and End—and yet, no concession, no anticipation of the shock, which the first Hearing would of necessity occasion/none of all this! (CN III 3870)

Elsewhere, Coleridge recognizes the shrouded character of Hebrews. In late December 1830, for example, he notes that the first impression

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of a reader of the first chapter of Hebrews must be “a clear acknowledgement of our Lord’s super-creaturely Nature, but a confused, at least indistinct conception of his Deity—/This latter I find in John and Paul only. May I express it thus?—A clear sense of our Lord’s Divinity, with an implied assumption of it’s difference from the Deity, without any distinct notion wherein the difference consisted” (CN V 6587).109 The note shows that Coleridge always raised questions, even if his proposals intimated unorthodoxy. Treating speculative notes as firm positions that either corroborate or contradict other writings would mistake the tentative nature of such notebook entries for a finished product. Instead, the notebook commentaries exhibit Coleridge’s hermeneutic: he rarely glosses the surface of text, but persistently questions his subject, plumbing the depths of a work, and typically attempts at least some answer, no matter how tentative. General Epistles Extended commentaries on the so-called General or Catholic Epistles of James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, and Jude (named after their authors rather than the addressees) rarely arise in Coleridge’s late notebooks—except in passing, sometimes poignant, references. One notable exception is 1 and 2 Peter. Coleridge’s notes during the 1820s cast doubt on Petrine authorship, arguing that “[w]ith all due respect for Papias, Polycarp, Irenæus, Origen, Eusebius and the Tradition of the Church, I must confess, that my Judgement inclines to the opinion, that even the first Epistle of Peter was composed after Peter’s Death, by some one of his Scholars” (CM II 502).110 While only a handful of notebook entries discuss these epistles, Coleridge’s marginalia on Robert Leighton’s Works provide an extensive record of his comments on 1 Peter as mediated by the Archbishop.111 Coleridge drew numerous aphorisms for his remarkable Aids to Reflection from Leighton’s Works.112 In one 1822 notebook entry, Coleridge claims that “[n]ext to the inspired Scriptures, yea, and as the vibration of that once struck Hour remaining on the Air, stands Archb. Leighton’s Commentary on the 1 Ep. of Peter” (CN IV 4867).113 Coleridge’s marginalia on Leighton’s commentary on 1 Peter provide an important source for his view of the spiritual meaning of the text. Unlike the predominantly historical–critical marginalia on Eichhorn—which also provide “second-hand” treatments of biblical passages—the marginalia on Leighton almost always center on the distinctly theological meaning of Scripture. The marginalia on Leighton’s exposition of 1 Peter also reveal a familiar but surprisingly uninhibited view of the

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intersection between biblical study and personal piety. “Bless God O my soul!,” “I believe enough to fear—O grant me the Belief that brings sweet Hope,” and “Father in Heaven have mercy on me!” are phrases that could equally appear in other notebook commentaries written by Coleridge, but Leighton’s Works expose a side of Coleridge’s biblical interest that is fundamentally private. Coleridge is no less critical as a reader.114 Other General Epistles also appear in the notebooks, even if with less frequency than one might expect. Coleridge’s favorite verse in James is 1:25: “But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” The text not only appears in the notebooks and marginalia, but also serves a key note in Aids to Reflection. The individual must look within—an act of reflection—to the law of liberty or freedom that is found in the will and conscience as the source of the “Mystery of the Faith.” The law of liberty signals the complete redemption from the sensual and the ground of the “substance and life of all other knowledge” (AR 30*). James 1:25 presents “the great fundamental Article of Christian Faith” (CN III 3743).115 Coleridge even deviates from Luther’s hasty judgment on James, writing in one 1829 notebook entry, “[b]y the bye, Luther’s Rejection of James’s Epistle is the only instance in which this great mind was wholly mistaken / But his passionate Love of Paul had rapt him into jealousy—and in the over-haste of resentment he misunderstood this Letter, which is in fact a most valuable commentary on Paul’s Doctrines for the benefit of weaker Christian’s” (CN V 6048). A similar critique of Luther’s view of Jude follows (in the same note), though written in less obstinate terms: Of Jude’s Epistle I think far more favorably than Luther did—but yet I cannot deny that it consists of coarser materials than one wishes to find in the writing of a Brother of the Lord according to the Flesh, and the reference to fabulous and apocryphal Legends doubtless offended Luther, as it has since put meaner minds to their shifts, the      [the many], I mean, who mistake inspired writings for words miraculously dictated.

Coleridge believes that the inclusion of popular traditions such as the battle between Michael and the Devil over the body of Moses (Jude 9) and the introduction of Enochic literature in the predicted judgment in Jude 14–15 present further evidence of the insufficiency of the popular conception of plenary inspiration. Yet Coleridge shows

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restraint, particularly insofar as he distinguishes between his objections to the text and his willingness to listen for the teaching: “I confess, these allusions in Jude offend my taste rather than my judgement. They are evidently introduced as mere illustrations, & not for their own sake as facts. I read them in the same spirit as if the Writer had reminded his Flock of what the Wolf said to the Lamb—or to any other well-known & familiar Apologue.”116 Most all the comments on the Epistles of John are on 1 John. The longest notes attempt to resolve the controverted passage in 1 John 5:7 (“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one”). Coleridge maintains that the passage is post-Nicene in origin, likely arising from a gloss of Augustine, “who supposed the formula of the Trinity which it took the Church three Centuries to bring to its final perfection, to have been as explicit and as familiar & upper-most in the Mind of the Apostle as in his own” (CN IV 5301). Based on extant manuscript evidence and the philosophical sense of the text, Coleridge rejects the passage as an “intruder.” Too often, commentators misunderstand the apostle’s reasoning (Coleridge believes that John wrote these three Epistles) and invariably neglect the prominent place of the Trinity in the text. The gloss, despite controversy, “is almost necessary for the maintenance of its Truth—against the learned Heretics.”117

Apocalypse While Coleridge willingly affirmed the apostle John’s authorship of both the Gospel and the three Epistles that bear his name, but the numerous difficulties surrounding the final book of the New Testament—the Apocalypse or Book of Revelation—opened a Pandora’s Box from which he could not so easily disentangle himself. The language and thought of the Apocalypse conflicted with the philosophical beauties he encountered in the John’s Gospel of the Spirit.118 Despite these difficulties, he maintained a lifelong interest in the text. Early in his career, Coleridge proposed to write a poem on the “Destruction of Jerusalem” (CN I 1646).119 In 1817, Coleridge writes in the second “Lay Sermon” of his ongoing fascination with “this sublime and magnificent drama” and his yet unfulfilled dream (“long and fondly cherished”) of translating the canonical book into verse “as a Poem, holding a mid-place between the Epic Narrative and the Choral Drama: and to have annexed a Commentary in Prose”

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(LS 147*). His tendency to interpret the text through a primarily literary hermeneutic continued in later years, as well. In 1833, Coleridge still hoped to produce a “metrical translation” and wished to decipher the symbolic prophecies of the text, “an instance of a Poem on the Destinies of [Christianity],” within their original historical context (CL VI 967; CN IV 5075).120 For many years, Coleridge struggled with the Book of Revelation’s impenetrable apocalyptic language as well as the inability of scholars to appreciate both the poetic (literary) and philosophic (spiritual) senses of the text. Coleridge wonders why the earliest Christians, who surely knew of John’s work, did not take the time to write an authoritative aid that explains the meaning of the text (CN III 3966). Due to their omission, second-generation Christians erroneously “made the figures of speech” and spiritual truths clothed in metaphorical language into “a component part of the truth itself” (CN IV 5421). Coleridge counteracts this alleged tendency by focusing on the historical events of the period as the proper locus of interpretation. Coleridge comments on the number of the beast of Revelation 13 more than any other passage and, without fail, he claims that the solution to the riddle hangs on ascertaining the historical dates referred to.121 Unlike many of his contemporaries (and Christians across the centuries, for that matter), Coleridge regards the apocalyptic language of Revelation as a literary reflection of the concerns of persecuted Christians. The text was not written in advance of certain events (as prognostications), but at a later period following the persecutions of Emperor Domitian (AD 51–96), even as late as the first or second decade of the second century.122 In the later 1820s, however, Coleridge became convinced that he needed to attend to the prophetic character of Revelation, which balanced his long-standing interest in the Apocalypse as a drama. Coleridge’s friendship with the Scottish divine Edward Irving encouraged this effort more than any other influence. Irving was the minister at the Caledonian Chapel in Hatton Garden, London, from 1822 until his excommunication from the London presbytery in 1830 (ODCC 848). Prompted by Irving’s well-known millenarianism (“his long Orations on the Millennium, the expulsion of the Gentiles from the Church analogous to that of the Jews, the collection of Gentile False-Believers in Armageddon—& what not of the Faber Insomnia” [CN IV 5323]), Coleridge reluctantly turned to Revelation with renewed vigor and fresh eyes, even if the task was against his “inclinations & cravings.” Writing on Good Friday 1827,

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Coleridge praises the style, language, and rhythm of Irving’s Coming of the Messiah and notes that Irving’s work has led him to reevaluate his own confession: My Conscience pleads guilty to the Charge, that I have year after year repeated the Clause in the Apostles’ Creed “whence He shall come again to judge both the Quick and the Dead” without any steady sense attached by me to the words; and that it has been only within the last 12 or 18 months that I have seriously [with full exertion of my powers] expanded the clause in our Lord’s Prayer (Thy Kingdom come!) into a full and fixed Object of meditation—and up to this very day have passed by a fact, of which I could not be ignorant—viz. that these words of our blessed Redeemer’s must inevitably (and he must have been aware that they assuredly would) be connected in the mind of his Hearers, i.e. in the mind of every Jew, with the tradition & belief of the Millennium. (CN V 5486)

The note reveals Irving’s tremendous influence on Coleridge. Coleridge welcomed Irving’s thought with guardedly open arms, and claimed (with at least a hint of wit) that “I will certainly therefore, God permitting, seat myself at my friend’s feet with as submiss and docile a mind as any the humblest Lamb of his Flock.” Irving clearly impacted Coleridge’s growing appreciation of the philosophical sense of the Apocalypse.123 Coleridge’s late study of Revelation generated new ideas that even shaped his conception of the New Testament canon: Equally or even more unexpected have been the enlightening & enlarging Insights obtained by the study of the Apocalypse—which now for the first time I perceive to be an important and even necessary Supplement of the Gospels according to the Flesh, the Gospel according to the Spirit, with the Epistles—the Apocalypse uniting both & at the same time crowing the whole. In short, it is the Supplement to the New Testament and the Complement of the Christian Faith.

By the late 1820s, Coleridge refers to the Apocalypse not only as a poem and drama, but also as an inspired work that contains a spiritual meaning. He summarizes the text with direct reference to its Christological importance: “The Apocalypse—or Christ as the fulfillment of all the Prophecies respecting his Royalty—(even as the Gospels of all respecting his humiliation—Christ in his Spiritual Realm but yet not subjectively acting but objectively, as King, Conqueror, Avenger, Recompencer, Judge, to whom all Power is

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given in heaven & in earth—.” Coleridge’s description evokes his reliance on the typological method when interpreting the Old Testament Prophets and the Law. In sum, two principles of interpretation emerge from Coleridge’s study of the Apocalypse. First, the orthodoxy of an individual could not be made to stand or fall on the acceptance of the divine origin of Revelation.124 Second, Coleridge’s study of Revelation convinced him that a right understanding of the text, as with so much of the Bible, required attention not only to the literary sense of the book (a recognition of its poetic form), but also to the spiritual meaning of the metaphorical language. His critique of the commentators on Revelation thereby serves as a fitting summary of his approach to biblical exegesis generally: “It would be difficult, nay, rather impossible to determine, whether the Commentators on the Apocalypse hitherto have failed, more from the want of poetic Sight or of philosophic Insight. For both are alike indispensable conditions of a right understanding and making understood this sublime Poem” (CN V 6822). For Coleridge, the late 1820s were a period of highly productive study and careful inquiry into the twofold character of the biblical text. Coleridge devoted each day to studying the literary sense of the text through an examination of original languages and key translations, frequently consulting Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and German texts in juxtaposition with the Authorized translation of 1611. Yet Coleridge persistently keeps before the reader his commitment to the spiritual character of the Bible—its philosophical meaning, which often forms the central line of commentary in his many notebook entries and marginalia. Despite the worries of Coleridge’s “orthodox” contemporaries, the results of his literary inquiry did relatively little damage to the orthodox beliefs affirmed by Coleridge in his pursuit of the spiritual sense of the text (though his discontent with the virgin birth provides an obvious exception). Coleridge sees the two senses as complementary: the literary–historical–grammatical sense of the text guides the interpreter through legitimate lines of inquiry, closing avenues of consideration before abstract flights of fancy illegitimately derail interpretation, while the spiritual or philosophical sense of the books of Scripture provide a sense of the whole. The attitude of the reader is paramount. Again and again, Coleridge recommends prayer as the formal basis of the Christian study of Scripture. As the letters of Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit make clear, Coleridge refuses to allow difficulties with the Bible to transform into genuine doubts about Christianity. Coleridge recommends that inquirers and believers alike “fear not the result.” One’s

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confidence in the twofold character of the text will only grow with time. Yet Coleridge moderates the turn to the reader with a striking overture. As the “Pentad of Operative Christianity” illustrates, “revealed” religion may be known not only through Scripture—the “mirror of the Spirit”—but also the teachings of the church.

Chapter 6

The Church: Tradition as the Master-K ey of Interpretation

[T]he authority of the Church is nominally admitted, with the object of pulling down that of the Bible . . . “Confessions of an [I]nquiring Spirit,” teaches the very same principles which have enabled all the worst and most outrageous of the German Rationalists to get rid of every fact and doctrine which displeases them in the Bible . . . According to them, you may expunge from the Bible, as uninspired, whatever does not “find” you, or commend itself to your judgment as true or good. Review of Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (English Review 258, 262)

A History of Conflict Authority. A single word encapsulates theological controversy in the nineteenth century. Who collected the books of Scripture? Who has the right to interpret these books? What doctrines are legitimately derived from the Bible? These questions bring to light the challenge facing the churches in England. Many Christians looked to the infallible teachings of the Bible as the sole authority for Christian doctrine. But questions Coleridge willingly entertained about the Bible—the compositional origins of the Pentateuch and the first three Gospels, for example—proved scandalous for those who associated biblical criticism with German infidelity. Some feared that undermining the

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Bible’s far-reaching authority would remove the only adequate source of true doctrine and that the loss of a strong view of biblical inspiration, in Coleridge’s words, “would deprive the Christian world of its only infallible arbiter in questions of Faith and Duty, suppress the only common and inappellable tribunal” (CIS 50). Others looked to the far-reaching authority of the church. John Henry Newman, the famous leader of the Oxford Movement, shocked England just a decade after Coleridge’s death when he converted to Roman Catholicism, an act that appeared to signal Newman’s allegiance to the teachings of the pope in Rome rather than to the pure Word of God. Coleridge maintains a balance between these two tendencies, claiming that the traditions of the church provide a necessary aid for rightly interpreting the spiritual sense of Scripture. As the preceding chapters demonstrate, Coleridge recognized an unprecedented, divine witness in the Bible, describing Scripture as a light (recalling John’s Gospel) and emphasizing its inimitable capacity to provide “words for my inmost thoughts” and “songs for my joy” (CIS 10). Coleridge makes room for the role of the individual subject who engages the written, objective text in an intimate communion. Coleridge’s tone rises in a powerful turn of phrase, resolutely affirming how the Spirit mediates the reader’s encounter with Scripture: “In short whatever finds me, bears witness for itself that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit.” However, Coleridge does not end with the individual. He cautions the reader that “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.” In this famous declaration of the capacity of Scripture to speak to the individual, Coleridge warns that the individual must temper feeling and private belief with the broader community of faith.1 Recovering Coleridge’s view of the church counters the belief that he advocates a view of the Bible akin to some extreme versions of reader-response criticism: rather than claiming that the individual stands only upon those truths in Scripture that create an emotional connection, some existential bond, Coleridge recommends the authority of the church as part of a symbiotic system of “revealed” religion.2 In the “Pentad of Operative Christianity,” Coleridge describes Scripture and the church as two “poles” of religion, “Thesis and Antithesis” (CIS x). In a marginal note on John Donne, Coleridge explains the use and abuse of these two poles of the Pentad: “The Papacy elevated the Church to the virtual exclusion or suppression of

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the Scriptures; the modern Church of England, since Chillingworth, have so raised up the Scriptures as to annul the Church—both alike have quenched the Holy Spirit” (CM II 290).3 Other reflections on the Pentad clarify Coleridge’s recognition that the debate over Scripture and the church was one of long-standing significance in England. Two parties struggled to identify the locus of Christian faith and practice: One party, the more faithful and less modified Disciples of the first Reformers, were afraid of bringing any thing into even the semblance of a co-ordination with the Scriptures—and with the terriculum [bugbear] of Popery ever before their eyes, timidly and sparingly allowed to the Church any even subordinate power beyond that of interpreting the Scriptures—i.e. of finding the Ordinances of the Church implicitly contained in the Ordinances of the inspired Writers. (CM I 805)

On the other hand, while not wholly turning to Rome, others embraced the witness of church traditions as a separate deposit of divine disclosure: The opposite party (Laud[,] Taylor &c) with a sufficient dislike of the Pope (i.e. at Rome) and of the grosser theological corruptions of the Romish Church . . . sought to maintain their ordinances by appeals to the Fathers, to the recorded Traditions and Doctrine of the Catholic Priesthood during the first 5 or 6 centuries—and contended for so much, that virtually the Scriptures were subordinated to the Church.4

Coleridge recognizes the magnitude of centuries of debate in England over the relationship between the Bible and the church. In the late Middle Ages, the legitimacy of translating the Bible into the vernacular was a sharply contested question in England. The Constitution of Oxford (1408) forbade biblical translations with the threat of excommunication, except when undertaken with the permission of a bishop. When William Tyndale (ca.1494–1536) asked for permission to translate the Bible, “[n]o bishop lifted his finger, none went even so far as to say that it was desirable that an official version be made” (Mozley 29). In September 1538 the government mandated, under Thomas Cromwell (ca. 1485–1540) that every English parish should obtain an English Bible for the instruction of the people (Neill 55; ODCC 753). Ultimately, an event outside of England framed subsequent Protestant–Roman Catholic polemics over the Bible: the Council of Trent (1545–63).5 Many Roman Catholic

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bishops hoped to respond to the surging cries of sola Scriptura from Germany with a clarion announcement of the dual authority of sacred Scripture and church tradition. Trent not only declared that the Gospel is “contained in the written books and in the unwritten traditions, which, received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself, or from the apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down to us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand,” but also claimed that both Scripture and church traditions stood with equal authority: “[the church] receives and venerates with [an equal] feeling of piety and reverence all the books both of the Old and New Testaments, since one God is the author of both; also the traditions, whether they relate to faith or to morals, as having been dictated either orally by Christ or by the Holy Ghost, and preserved in the Catholic Church in unbroken succession.”6 The bishops maintained that both Scripture and church traditions convey distinct contents of divine revelation.7 Against the backdrop of Trent, the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (1571) affirmed the authority and perspicuity of Scripture: “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.” In a charged environment of rigorous and often scathing polemics (catch phrases such as “private interpretation” and “papistical images” loom large in these writings), the Thirty-Nine Articles did not end fractious debate. Roman Catholics in England pressed Trent’s declaration to the fullest. Recusant Jesuit James Sharpe’s (1577?–1630) The Triall of the Protestant Private Spirit (1630) argues that the Bible is too difficult and diverse for readers to adequately understand the infallible words of God: “we speak not of the sense and interpretation which is only probable and credible, but of that which is certain, and infallible” (115). On the other end of the spectrum, English divines such as the Presbyterian Puritan William Fulke (1538–89) claimed that the sixth article differentiates the sole sufficiency of Scripture to the near exclusion of other sources of divine knowledge. Fulke’s Defense of the Sincere and True Translations of the Holy Scriptures into the English Tongue, Against the Cavils of Gregory Martin (1583), for example, denies the possibility that unwritten traditions might contain anything necessary to salvation. Against his Roman Catholic opponents, Fulke claims that no divinely revealed tradition exists except those that appear in Scripture: “because the word ‘traditions’ is by you papists taken to signify a doctrine secretly delivered by word of mouth, without authority of the holy scriptures, we do willingly avoid

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the word in our translations, where the simple might be deceived” (165). Richard Hooker (ca. 1554–1600) established the pattern for the Anglican “middle way” between Roman Catholicism and Puritanism. Hooker claims, against the Catholics, that Scripture is fully sufficient in matters of doctrine. Yet, Hooker concedes the need for an adequate pedagogical tool, such as the Apostles’ Creed, to assist in biblical interpretation. Against the Puritans, Hooker verifies that the doctrines of the Trinity, the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and the duties of infant baptism are all necessary theological claims that cannot easily be comprehended in the plain text of Scripture (I 126). Hooker’s influence established the Anglican reliance on church traditions as an interpretive lens for the Bible. While these early modern polemical distinctions may appear to be nugatory on the surface, one cannot conceptualize Coleridge’s theology of revealed religion without attuning one’s ear to the substantial differences between these schools of thought. A doctrine of tradition cuts to the heart of biblical hermeneutics and religious epistemology. Coleridge, a student of ecclesiastical history, wrote his system of religion in dialogue with English divines. The rejection of tradition by the Puritans reflects a belief in the perspicuity of the Bible and its capacity to provide clear doctrinal teaching without any interpretive aid. Tradition, in the sense used at Trent and by Roman Catholics in England, implies that special knowledge about God (“revelation”) was not limited to the Bible, but may also be known through the divinely ordained teachings of the church, councils, liturgy, and creeds, which pass on an oral deposit first given by Christ to the apostles.8 Thus, when Coleridge invokes the term “coordinate” to describe the relationship between the Bible and the church, he knows that he has entered turbulent waters. Coleridge admits that “he who should now venture to assert this truth, or even, as I in my letters on the religious & superstitious veneration of the Scriptures have done, contended for a co-ordinateness of the Church and the Written Word, must bear to be thought a Semi-papist, an Ultra-HighChurchman. Still the Truth is the Truth” (CM II 289). Coleridge rejects the claim that Scripture alone is the religion of Protestants. He looks to the apostolic witness—especially John and Paul—on all matters of faith. But the study of Scripture alone risks a myopic conception of Christianity. The early church was responsible to bring together the books of the canon, and did so based on their apostolicity and “their consonance with the rule, and according to the analogy, of Faith” (CIS 73).9 Since the written words and sentences of Scripture are not properly equated with the Word of God, Coleridge focuses his

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attention on the content of the Gospel. The “inward Word” precedes the words of the text and finds expression in the teachings of the church: “[I] shrink from all question respecting the comparative worth and efficacy of the written Word as weighed against the preaching of the Gospel, the discipline of the Churches, the continued succession of the Ministry, and the communion of Saints, lest by comparing them I should seem to detach them” (CIS 52–53; emphasis added).10 Coleridge affirms the place of Scripture within the Christian church when he claims that “[t]he Bible is the appointed conservatory, an indispensable criterion, and a continual source and support of true Belief” (CIS 51). However, he is unwilling to take this affirmation as far as some of his Protestant contemporaries and stops short of individualism with a calculated turn toward the necessity of the rule of faith as an interpretive device. He refuses to claim that “the Bible is the sole source; that it not only contains, but constitutes, the Christian Religion; that it is, in short, a Creed, consisting wholly of articles of Faith; that consequently we need no rule, help, or guide, spiritual or historical, to teach us what parts are and what are not articles of Faith.” Coleridge’s view of tradition coincides with Hooker’s. Those who affirm a verbally inspired text wrongly assume that the “unlearned” parishioner requires no aid to understanding (CIS–CC 1164). Coleridge argues that the average Protestant in England, influenced by various Bible societies, comes to the text with a firm belief that “every man that can but read is to sit down to the consecutive and connected perusal of the Bible under the expectation and assurance that the whole is within his comprehension” (CIS 85).11 The only way to rectify this problem is to place the text back within the bounds of the church. Rather than maintaining that the text may be read, “unaided by note or comment, catechism or liturgical preparation,” Coleridge maintains the authority of church traditions as the necessary aid to spiritual reflection. Though the individual “has found it in his Bible” and claims, with Chillingworth, that “the Bible is the Religion of Protestants,” interpretation of the spiritual sense requires the assistance of spiritual and doctrinal instruction from the church. Coleridge’s theology of church traditions reflects a public controversy that erupted in Cambridge more than a decade earlier. The 1804 formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) is an oftoverlooked moment in the history of English theology, but its rapid expansion and influence provided an important link between many churches in England. The fundamental rule of the BFBS, advanced since its original formation, was simple: “the circulation of the

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Scriptures, and of the Scriptures only, without note or comment” (Canton I 17).12 Whereas the older Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), founded on the eve of the eighteenth century, aimed to reach others as a voluntary but decidedly Anglican society, the BFBS sought to propagate Christian truth apart from what it perceived to be divisive doctrinal distinctions. Thus, when Captain Norton produced a Mohawk-English translation of the Gospel of John—the first application of Society resources for a foreign version of Scripture—the Society maintained the founding rule of producing Bibles “without note or comment” (Canton I 25). Although Norton originally prefixed the text with “a spirited address to the Six Nations,” his address was ordered to be withdrawn on account of the guiding rule of the Society. Historians of the society have persistently envisioned its work as that of the unified, visible church: “It is not a Methodist Bible, or an Anglican Bible, or a Baptist Bible; it is the Bible. All branches of the Church working in the area use it, teach it” (E. Smith 20). When Herbert Marsh, the noted biblical scholar and Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, opposed the formation of an auxiliary branch of the BFBS in Cambridge, controversy ensued. Marsh commenced the dispute—one followed with great interest in surrounding regions—with his “Address to the Senate of the University of Cambridge” (1811).13 Marsh maintains that the inclusion of the Prayer Book by the SPCK was not a signal that Scripture lacked anything necessary to salvation, but that, without an interpretive aid to the text, individuals would incorrectly discern the meaning of the Bible: “for though in the spirit of true Protestantism it acknowledges the Bible as the only fountain of religious truth, yet, it knows from the experience of all ages, that the waters of that fountain will be clear or turbid, according to the channel into which they are drawn” (84).14 Marsh expanded his comments in An Inquiry into the Consequences of Neglecting to Give the Prayer Book with the Bible (1812). Fully aware that his comments were suspected “to savour of Popery,” Marsh frames the debate in terms of the long-standing tension over Scripture and church traditions: “I ask the Churchman, whether it is not useful, when we give away a Bible, to give also the Book of Common Prayer, not as a Corrective . . . but as a proper Companion for the Bible” (8, 4). The growth across Britain of “illiterate teachers” (presumably, Methodist itinerant preachers) in almost every town and village necessitates that “a safeguard” be provided “against the delusions of false interpretation” (5). Marsh’s public opposition to the BFBS marks the moment when “without note or comment” became the catchphrase of theological controversy in England.

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Thus, when Coleridge protests that a Protestant in England reads the Bible with “the expectation and assurance that the whole is within his comprehension, and that, unaided by note or comment, catechism or liturgical preparation, he is to find out for himself what he is bound to believe and practise,” he is taking a distinct and revealing stand on the Cambridge BFBS controversy (CIS 85; emphasis added). When the controversy first spread, Coleridge worried that Marsh gave too much ground to the Roman Catholics: “From some late controversies I confess some alarm lest Victories disgraceful alike to Protestantism & Reason should be atchieved—at least pronounced to be atchieved— by the Papists in consequence of this neglect—Would Dr M. in the days of Chillingworth have dared write as he has written—& been declared the Conqueror too?” (CN III 4140). But Coleridge also knew that he could not easily dismiss the epistemological issue at hand. Coleridge writes shortly thereafter that while the “Criterion is the Bible . . . still we are afloat again—for Interpretations will differ, and have differed in the most important points” (CN III 4143).15 Coleridge recognizes the inherent difficulty with the BFBS position. Against a radical, individualistic notion of Scripture, Coleridge occasionally writes of the “Chillingworthian Touch.”16 Chillingworth’s The Religion of Protestants, a Safe Way to Salvation (1638) argued, against the Roman Catholics, that the Bible is the true religion of Protestantism. Chillingworth exemplified the error of a radical Protestantism that the Anglican Church needs to avoid in order to trace a middle way between the subordination of the church by Protestants and repression of the Bible by Roman Catholicism. Coleridge writes in shock and amazement after reading Chillingworth’s assertion that “a Writing may be so perfect a Rule, as to need neither Addition nor Interpretation.” In response, Coleridge queries, What? A Book in two dead languages not need a translation to those that understand neither? And must not such a Translation either be or require an interpretation, according as it is equivalent or literal? Oh! this strange Bibliolatry of the Protestants is a superstition scarcely less depressive of Gospel Liberty, scarcely less suffocative of Gospel Light and the Life of Faith, than the Hagiolatry and Papodûly of the Romanists! (CM II 37–38)

The sentiment gave rise to the “Chillingworthian Touch,” which Coleridge uses to identify those who uphold the belief in a selfinterpreting text. Coleridge defines the phrase in one notebook entry from March 1810: “the Chillingsworthian [sic] Touch, that the whole Religion of Protestants not only is the Bible, but is capable of being

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demonstrated from it, without assistance of Tradition, or the writings of the Fathers” (CN III 3743). In a notebook entry dated just a few months later, Coleridge again refers to the views of Chillingworth and maintains that the Church of England has preserved a mean between the Roman Catholic and the “Chillingworthian Divines”: “The opin. of the Romanists that not only is Tradition necessary as an auxiliary, but sufficient as a Principal, & may & does authorize articles of Faith as well as Usages not found in Scripture” (CN III 3812).17 By contrast, Coleridge insists upon the close relationship between Scripture and church traditions, calling the “Tradition of the first 3 or 4 Centuries . . . an important auxiliary to the right interpretation of Scripture.” Coleridge distinguishes between the sacramentality of baptism and the Eucharist compared to the practice of washing feet. Tradition is useful to Christianity insofar “as it ascertains the sense of Scripture in passages which otherwise might be doubtful.”18 Despite his earlier concerns about Marsh, Coleridge’s late works favor the High Church position. He remains astonished at the state of the church, still embroiled in controversy: “about Bibles!—not concerning the Bible; but all about Bibles” (CN V 5607).19 In consonance with his claims about tradition in Confessions, Coleridge finds biblical support against the BFBS, further indicating his alliance with Marsh’s position. On Acts 8:30–31 (“Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me?”), Coleridge writes, “[e]xcellent for quoting against the B. and F. Bible Society” (CN V 5837). Church traditions stand in a coordinate relationship with the Bible.

The Sources of Tradition What constitutes church tradition? What are the limits of the use of traditions? For Coleridge, the testimony of the church may be known through creeds, the church fathers, and the Liturgy.20 The creeds, “the summary not of the whole Christian Doctrine, but of all its fundamental and universally necessary articles of Faith,” play a vital role in Coleridge’s conception of church traditions (CN III 3964). His “outward” creed, following the eighth Article of Religion, is “the Apostles’ as expanded in the Nicene” (CN IV 5243).21 One of the most powerful statements Coleridge makes about the Apostles’ Creed is found in Confessions. The Apostles’ Creed is that “which, according to my scheme, every Christian born in Church-membership ought to bring with him to the study of the sacred Scriptures as the master-key of interpretation” (CIS 53). The Creed offers a catechetical guide to

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the faith, and contains the fundamental teachings of Christianity. Still, it is not a replacement for Scripture: “the difference between the Bible and the Creed being this, that the clauses of the latter are all unconditionally necessary to salvation, but those of the former conditionally so, that is, as soon as the words are known to exist in any one of the canonical Books” (CIS 51–52). Coleridge knows that his recognition of tradition as the “master-key of interpretation” will evoke a strong response in readers. So, he opens the fifth letter with a confirmation of his intentions: “Yes! my dear Friend, it is my conviction that in all ordinary cases the knowledge and belief of the Christian Religion should precede the study of the Hebrew Canon. Indeed, with regard to both Testaments, I consider oral and catechetical instruction as the preparative provided by Christ himself in the establishment of a visible Church” (CIS 63). He recognizes that the apostles did not write the Apostles’ Creed, but he still regards it as an important source of the universal belief of Christians.22 He does not, however, confuse the universality of the Creed with unanimity of belief. Lessing claimed in Axiomata that “just as only that is valid against Christianity which neither Catholic nor Protestant can refute, so only that ought to belong to Christianity which Catholic and Protestant have in common.” Coleridge remonstrates against Lessing with vocal opposition: “God forbid! . . . that that which is common to both (and if to two, then to all other denominations of Christians) is alone essential Christianity, [this] is tantamount to the assertion that the only true Christian is he who believes the least, as long as he believes any thing that other Christians profess!” (CM III 669). In order to avoid unnecessary conflict between the universal Christian faith and private opinions, Coleridge distinguishes between “outward” and “inward” creeds. He typically uses a characteristic, philosophical idiom to express the latter. One of the best examples of an “inward creed” appears in the first letter of Coleridge’s Confessions.23 Although Coleridge’s description does not directly conform to either the Apostles’ or the Nicene creeds, it participates in a long-standing Christian practice. Theologians such as Augustine and many church councils frequently begin theological expositions with a creedal affirmation of faith. Coleridge’s inward creed participates in the ongoing recollection of Christian faith; the inward creed is actually less individualistic than it appears. He does not whitewash his opinions, however. Coleridge’s biblical studies, as I have already shown, cast doubt on at least one major tenet of the Creed: “born of the Virgin Mary,” a teaching that Coleridge regards as a post-apostolic myth. Coleridge freely expresses his difficulties and even doubts, but

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typically places his own opinions in juxtaposition with the broader Christian assent to the Creed. On the virgin birth, Coleridge concedes that though “there is not even an allusion to any such Belief as taught or required by the Apostles in any part of the New Testament . . . I receive it as a point of assent on the authority of the Church” (CN IV 5243).24 The authority of the early church also comes under Coleridge’s purview. Although Coleridge looks to the early church in the Confessions, asking “[w]hat did the Churches of the first four centuries hold on this point?,” he believes that early church writings contain both truth and error. Their writings, though valuable, are like sheaves of wheat, “depreciated indeed, more or less, with tares” (CIS 78). In contrast to many who favored the authority of the church in England (such as the Oxford Movement of the 1830s), Coleridge often expresses distrust mixed with praise for the earliest centuries of the church. A series of notes written while Coleridge studied Claude Fleury’s Ecclesiastical History reveals that he seriously entertained the notion that early Christians slowly compromised the teachings of John and Paul in favor of excessive moralizing.25 In his heavily annotated edition of Richard Field’s Of the Church, Coleridge calls the “too great Reverence of the first 4 Centuries” the “great fault of the early Divines” (CM II 684). Elsewhere, Coleridge criticizes “the stultifying[,] nugifying effect of the Study of the Fathers, and the prepossession in favor of Patristic Authorities, on the Minds of our Church Dignitaries in general, in the reign of Charles I” (CM II 925).26 Despite these reservations, Coleridge’s view of the ongoing, revelatory work of the Spirit in the church allows him to appreciate the views of many early Christians. The Spirit teaches believers throughout Christian history by writing truth on their hearts. He also claims that “the Spirit of the Word being clear, the Church is authorized to supply the Letter” (CN V 6766).27 In Confessions, Coleridge quotes from Irenaeus’ Against Heresies, a passage he derived from his reading of Lessing, to emphasize the importance of the oral tradition passed over from the apostles to the churches. The rule of faith is that which “we should have been bound to follow” even if the Scriptures had not been written by the apostles (CIS 80).28 When Coleridge’s use of this quote is compared to Irenaeus’ original argument (which he had not likely read), an interesting line of argumentation emerges. For Irenaeus, the emphasis on tradition points to both the authority of the written word and the integrity of apostolic succession as an expression of that deposit. Coleridge’s quote from Irenaeus, divorced from its original context, emphasizes the work of the Spirit throughout

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history in the hearts of all believers. Coleridge’s broad view of the church highlights not merely the handing over of truths through apostolic succession, but the enduring work of the Spirit, even apart from the Bible. A striking portrait of the community of faith emerges from this analysis. The individual does not stand alone, but as a part of the community that discerns the truth of the faith in previous times and passes it over to each generation through catechetical training. Coleridge holds the teachings of the Reformers, especially Luther, in high regard. The Roman Catholic position—with its emphasis on the presence of Christ in the Church “as a living power”—has a theoretical advantage over the Protestant approach (CN V 5628). In language that echoes Edward Hawkins’s controversial A Dissertation Upon the Use and Importance of Unauthoritative Tradition (1818), Coleridge indicates that Scripture favors the Roman Catholic view of the church, since the canonical writings almost presuppose “a previous communication of the Scheme, and the constituent Articles of faith, that formed it’s exposition.”29 But ecclesiastical history does not confirm the Catholic view; the facts of history fail to corroborate the Catholic position. For this reason, Coleridge confidently recommends the writings of the Reformers as an authoritative exposition of Scripture. The Reformers were “literally Reformers, & in no respect Innovators or Subverters” (CN IV 5202). While the earliest centuries of the church slowly drifted away from the Gospel at key points, men such as Luther and Calvin “interpreted the sacred Scriptures, as those had done who lived nearest the time of Men who taught their true meaning by an infallible Light . . . to the Books in dispute they both gave and denied exactly what the best informed of the first ages of the Church, and the Church (i.e. Christians collectively) were unanimous in giving or denying.” Luther was a “mighty minister of truth” (Op Max 102), who recognized that the church had often invoked the authority of tradition in order to twist Scripture for its own purposes. The Reformation identified a series of abuses that needed to be rooted out of the church, since by a “strange mosaic, Scripture texts have been worked up into passable likenesses of Purgatory, Popery, the Inquisition, and other monstrous abuses” (CIS 49).30 Coleridge typically links his rejection of Roman Catholicism to the papacy.31 In his notes on Lacunza’s The Coming of Messiah, Coleridge lays out his difficulties with Roman “popery” with direct reference to its lack of biblical foundation: If I were asked to select the most impudent pretension, that had come to my knowledge, it would be this of founding the whole enormous

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powers and prerogatives of the Bishop of Rome on the two texts, Matt. xvi. 18: and Luke xxii. 32./ or (more correctly) on the unproved and improbable Tradition, by which the Texts are rendered applicable to the Papacy, of St Peter’s having been Bishop of Rome, or in any special apostolic Relation to the Roman Christians. What? the whole Basis of the Faith? What? the only Gate to the Temple? What? the one and only Key to the Door of Salvation? on a Tradition, a vague, not to say contradictory, Rumor—and not one word in Scripture, not a hint from any Apostle, confirming the same, or informing Christians of so momentous a point, a point according to the Pope’s own teaching, essentially, indispensably necessary to Salvation. (CM III 458)

For Coleridge, the authority of the pope cannot rest on a vague tradition alone. Coleridge distrusts the weak testimony of Matthew, “a most difficult book,” and he wonders why Mark and Luke omit the commission of Matthew 16:17–19 (“And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” [v. 18]). He suspects that Matthew includes the commission either because Matthew was the last Gospel written or because the writer of the Syro-chaldaic Gospel of the Jewish Christians wished to oppose the leadership of Peter to that of Paul (CN V 5524).32 Coleridge also holds suspect the language of the English translation. For greater gravity and accuracy, Coleridge proposes in its place: “Thou art the Man of the Rock: and on this rock &c” (CN V 5918). Yet even if the passage does refer to Peter, Coleridge wonders why the text does not also include a claim to the perpetuity of the office: “how easy, & how necessary, to have added, ‘the Bishops of Rome: for they shall be Peter’s Successors, and in them his privileges & functions shall survive’” (CM III 458). Coleridge sees no documentary evidence that Peter “bequeathed this Universal Pastorate to St Clement” (CN V 5527). He maintains that Christ never intended to establish a tradition of church authority, vested in the Bishop of Rome. The true “rock” of Matthew 16:18 is Peter’s reply in v. 16: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God”; Peter’s reply was “indeed well worthy to be the Rock, on which and out of which the Church of Faith was to be built” (CN IV 5335). Christians should also look to church councils with a measure of criticism. He believes that early Christians convoked the councils not to legislate dogma, but to bear witness to truth: “not to decide what ought to be believed but to shew what had been” (CN V 5636). Writing against Roman Catholic views of conciliar authority, Coleridge recalls how the history of many church councils reveals the considerable disagreement on matters of sacred doctrine: “A general Council of

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300 Bishops, not under the guidance of the Holy Ghost; but after the most indecent Clamours & disgusting Intrigues 170 decide  a, & 130  a/. The former Decision is inspired by the Divine Spirit & infallible; consequently the 130 must have been inspired by the Evil Spirit: for what is contrary & in active oppugnancy to the Good, must be evil” (CN IV 5224).33 The diverse and contentious nature of early Christian history argues against the popular English reliance on the Vincentian Canon, which directs that one must believe that which has been held “everywhere, always, and by all.”34 Despite Coleridge’s distrust for the papacy and judicious criticism of early church councils, he maintains a tempered view of Protestantism. When writing of the invisible church, Coleridge strides along the perilous crest between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Protestantism was “necessary to the restoration of Health, and a sanative Counter-excitement, [but] not the Health of the Church” (CN V 5735).35 Protestantism is neither a deviation nor a diminution of Roman Catholicism. Both movements stem from the same river that ran through the history of the Western church until it hit “a Rock, (Luther & compeers) and after violent impetus split into two streams” (CN IV 4802). Protestantism is neither medicine nor food, “it is medicated Food.” It finds its origins in the same history, traditions, and work of the Spirit as the so-called Catholics: “Where was your River before [the] Rock [?] . . . Why, where yours was, to be sure.”36 The Roman Catholic Church is not the source of Protestantism, but actually began at Trent and, thus, it is better to call it the “Roman Tridentine Church” (CN III 3964). One of the most important aspects of Coleridge’s use of “The Church” in the Pentad is the “all but inspired Liturgy” of the Church of England (CN V 6658). When naming his “Confession of Belief” in one 1817 manuscript, Coleridge claims that next “to the holy Scriptures I revere the Liturgy, Articles, and Homilies of the Established Church: and hold the doctrines therein expressly contained” (SW&F I 570). The liturgy presents the truths of faith in the language of poetic feeling. Unlike the scientific language of the creeds, the liturgy speaks “in the language of Love & Holy Emotion” (CN IV 5400). Since the liturgy relies on accommodated language, there is always the risk that its emotive images will pass into the realm of doctrine. Yet, despite this risk, Coleridge affirms the centrality of the Book of Common Prayer because it is a public or common document. The strength of the Prayer Book rests not on its exactitude, but its ability to relate “psychologically, or as a grand composition of devotional music, gradually attuning, preparing, animating, and working

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up, the feelings of men to public and common prayer” (CM I 260). Though no less a man than Baxter found many aspects of the Prayer Book “tedious,” Coleridge counters with reference to its unique ability to rouse “a promiscuous audience” and “the inattentive as often as possible; and to provide something that will suit each; some particularly, and which yet all, in a spiritual sense at least, may use pertinently” (CM I 261). The liturgy provides not only the best available test for ministers, but also, as “perhaps the only efficient Preservative of her Faith,” an effective shelter from Christological unorthodoxy: “But for our blessed and truly apostolic & scriptural Liturgy, our Churches Pews would long ago have been filled by Arians and Socinians, as too many of their Desks and Pulpits already are” (CM I 343).37 The Thirty-Nine Articles and the Homilies, which were often bound with the Prayer Book, further affirm that the church is the rightful interpreter of Scripture.38 Coleridge wrestles with the doctrinal statements in the Articles, especially in comparison to the limited scope of the Apostles’ Creed. As late as 1827, Coleridge argues that there ought to be no “necessity” for clergy to confess them, “which not one in a thousand professes (to his own mind) to believe” (CN V 5617).39 His problem with the Articles does not appear to be based on any one statement of belief, but on the notion of required subscription. He compares the present state of the English clergy to the biblical story of Jonah and the whale: “It is to be feared that in the subscription of the 39 Articles too many Clergymen imitate Jonah’s Whale & swallow what they cannot digest. In one sad point, however, worse off than their great Prototype, they gulp down what they are unable to digest yet not permitted to throw up” (CN IV 4986). Still, despite these difficulties, Coleridge notes that they are “as good as thirty nine Articles compiled before the birth or even the conception of biblical Criticism, can well be.” His position was not set in stone; he later subscribes to the Articles, writing in his copy of the Prayer Book in September 1831, “Well, I could most sincerely subscribe to all these articles” (CM I 711). There is also evidence that, by the final years of his life, Coleridge sought insight from the Homilies of the Church of England as well and looked to the three for insight on the spiritual truths of Scripture.40 Together, the three were not infallible sources of revealed religion, but could still be compared to the brightest orb in the sky: “I believe . . . the Church of England to be the most Apostolic Church; that its doctrines and ceremonies contain nothing dangerous to Righteousness or Salvation; and that the imperfections in its Liturgy are spots indeed, but spots on the sun, which

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impede neither its Light nor its Heat, so as to prevent the good seed from growing in a good soil and producing fruits of Redemption” (CM VI 43). Coleridge’s assertion of the authority of church traditions was not a symptom of declining health and old age, the decline of a once radical soul. He did come to regret that for too long he had been a “Churchless Christian,” whose beliefs coincided with the Church of England even while he remained separate from its communion.41 Late in life, Coleridge continues to prioritize the freedom of the individual against an overly dogmatic and rigid church. He charges theologians and laity to read the Bible with diligence as a part of a broader community of faith. Church tradition is the “master-key” of biblical interpretation. As such, interpretation should be guided by dialogue with an ecclesial community committed to the truth, in dialogue with great saints of the past, searching in faithfulness rather than fear.42 Too often, tradition becomes a “shield,” “pretext” and “sanction” for infidelity among those who begin “by denying their own reason” (Op Max 183).43 Coleridge casts a different vision of Christianity, looking to 1 John 4:18 for clues to the relationship between the church and the work of the Spirit in the individual: Coleridge confesses with John that “[t]here is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” Fear flourished with misdirected love.44 But the pursuit of truth, Coleridge’s lifelong goal, required one to act in faith: “He, who begins with loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all” (AR 107).45 The final phrase—“loving himself better than all”—warns against the error of relying to heavily on Coleridge’s famous phrase, “whatever finds me,” as a tidy summary of Coleridge’s view of biblical inspiration. The reader will encounter “the sweetness, the preciousness, the inestimable Value, the incomparable Worth, of the Sacred Scriptures” (CN V 5496), but only when approached under the guidance of the same Spirit that, as the next chapter explains, reveals truth to the faithful in every generation.

Chapter 7

The H oly Spirit: Reason and the Divine I mage

[A]s you read the recorded workings of the Word and the Spirit in the minds, lives, and hearts of spiritual men, the influence of the same Spirit on your own being, and the conflicts of grace and infirmity in your own soul, will enable you to discern and to know in and by what spirit they spake and acted,—as far at least as shall be needful for you, and in the times of your need. S. T. Coleridge (CIS 61)

The Spirit of Truth The Holy Spirit is the mediator of Coleridge’s system of “revealed” religion. In the “Pentad of Operative Christianity,” Coleridge places the Spirit between the coordinate authority of Scripture and the church. Coleridge’s placement of the Spirit as “mesothesis” or the point of “indifference” in the Pentad echoes his Trinitarian scheme (typically explicated in the form of the tetractys), where he describes the Spirit as the “correlatively Subjective-Objective” (CN V 6320).1 Augustine’s Trinitarian model provides the pattern: the Spirit is the source of community, uniting the persons of the Father and the Son (de Trinitate XV.xvii.27–xviii.32). In Trinitarian terms, the Spirit is not only “Life” and “Love,” but also the source of “the unity of Ideas” (CN V 5515). The soul intuits divine ideas, “not simply knowledge or perception as distinguished from the thing perceived: it is a realizing knowledge, a knowledge causative of its own reality” (Op Max 223). In the Pentad, the Spirit mediates the Word

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(the prothesis) to the world through the objective revelation of Scripture, the traditions of the church, and the synthetic activity of the preacher (whose pivotal role in Coleridge’s system will be examined in the next chapter). Without the work of the Holy Spirit, Scripture and tradition remain wholly objective receptacles of divine ideas. But the Spirit brings these sources to life, allows outward objects to speak to the soul, and presents divine instruments as mirrors to the interior sense of the heart. The liturgy of the church, for example, provides a powerful and necessary interpretive key to Scripture. But the liturgy is a medium; it requires the active participation of the individual. The subject must pray the prayers and confess the creeds in order to realize the liturgy. The polarity of objective and subjective applies to the Bible, too. Scripture provides an objective content, but the work of the Holy Spirit allows the individual reader to understand the spiritual sense of the text. Writing in the margins of Jakob Böhme’s Mysterium Magnum, Coleridge distinguishes between two predominant views of the revelatory work of the Spirit. On one hand, some (such as the Socinians and the Quakers) argue that the work of the Spirit is only a mode of “self-magnetizing” or the “means by which the individual excites and abstracts his own intellective faculty thro’ the agency of the feelings and imagination” (CM I 674). On the other, some claim that the Spirit actually influences individuals, “but yet reveals no truth in the mind but merely enables it to read the Scriptures intelligently— the Mind being exclusively and solely the Eye, the Spirit the Sunshine, and the Scriptures the Dial.” Luther, Calvin, and many Presbyterian divines hold the latter position. Insofar as the latter is positive, Coleridge agrees with them: he believes that the Spirit enables the individual to understand Scripture. But Coleridge also wants to push the Reformers further, claiming that the Spirit not only enables understanding, but also reveals knowledge. Bolstered by the results of biblical criticism and attention to the literary sense of the Bible, the rationalist loses sight of the spiritual character of the Bible and denies the revelatory work of the Spirit in the mind of the subject. The omission creates a formidable philosophical divide: “My Brother! What has all this to do with the truth and the worth of Christianity?,” Coleridge asks. “If you reject a priori all communion with the Holy Spirit, there is indeed a chasm between us, over which we cannot even make our voices intelligible to each other” (CIS 54–55). By locating the work of the Spirit in the interior sense of the soul, Coleridge follows the Neoplatonic tradition of the Cambridge

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Platonists.2 Coleridge’s view is similar to that of Benjamin Whichcote (1609–83), who describes Scripture as an instrument of divine insight that confirms the interior knowledge of the soul: “To the Christian World, there is God’s superadded Instrument, the Scripture; which contains Matters of Revelation from God; whereby, also, the natural Notices of God, are awaken’d, and inliven’d” (Patrides 60). Scripture comes in pursuance of the soul, “to repeat and reinforce” the “Impressions of the Divine Wisdom throughout the Creation.” In a sermon on Philippians 3:15–16, Whichcote claims that the truths of Scripture are plain because of the work of the Spirit in all people: “Since all things that are necessary to Salvation are delivered plainly in the Holy Scriptures; we may resolve, that none but those who are gross Neglecters, do err dangerously . . . The Points of Christian Faith are as clearly intelligible to all Capacities, as they are clearly necessary to be believed by all Men” (Patrides 82). Similarly, Henry More (1614–87) affirms the plain sense of Scripture, but also distinguishes the true word, or “Verbum mentis, That which God conceives within himself,” from the written word and the spoken word, which remain “but dead signs or shadows of it, differing as much from this, as a picture of a man from a living man” (Patrides 208). By comparison, the empirical tradition of Locke provides a rather different conception of the role of the Spirit in a system of religion. In John Locke’s (1632–1704) The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures (1695), part of a series of works on the Bible written late in Locke’s career (Drury calls them “a legacy to New Testament criticism as powerful as Albert Schweitzer’s” in the twentieth century [16]), reason is the foremost tool in biblical interpretation. For Locke, reason is neither abstract intellectualism nor, as in the Cambridge Platonists, a work of the Divine in the soul. Rather, reason bolsters belief. The miracles of Christ, for example, prove that Jesus was the expected Messiah in whom they should believe: “their assent to, or not assenting to this, made them to be, or not to be of his Church; believers, or not believers” (33). Miracles are a sign of divine providence and wisdom that “never were, nor could be denied by any of the enemies or opposers of Christianity” (57). Information that is accessible to all members of society grounds the belief of Jesus’ contemporaries and, by implication, that of subsequent generations: “The healing of the sick, the restoring sight to the blind by a word, the raising, and being raised from the dead, are matters of fact, which they can without difficulty conceive . . . These things lie level to the ordinariest apprehension; he that can distinguish between sick and well, lame and sound, dead and alive, is capable of this doctrine” (67).

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Locke’s use of miracles exemplifies the rationalist turn many Christians made during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Lockean empiricist tradition contributed to the rise of early Unitarianism in England, especially in the writings of Joseph Priestley and Thomas Belsham (1750–1829).3 Priestley’s theology relies on an empiricist philosophy of the senses. Scripture provides information about Christ that serves as outward, rational evidence, as Wilbur explains: “Hence the visible miracles of Jesus, and his resurrection from the dead, as revealed to us in the Scriptures, are to be accepted as evidence that his teachings are true” (313–14). For Priestley, individual liberty requires the rejection of church tradition as a guide to interpretation. Priestley’s An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782), for example, claims that the apostle Paul merely submits his arguments for the consideration of others; Paul did not define doctrine dogmatically, since no one has “dominion over the faith of their fellow Christians” (II 416). Priestley maintains that Paul, writing as any other author, “must, therefore, have supposed that they would think themselves at liberty to judge for themselves; and that, as he submitted his reasoning to their examination, they would decide for or against him, according as his arguments should appear to them conclusive or inconclusive” (365–66). Peter, too, did not assert “that what he did was by express direction from heaven,” but only provided a “simple narrative of facts, from which they might themselves judge, that what he had done was not without sufficient authority” (367). Thomas Belsham (1750–1829), the exemplar of Unitarian exegesis (LS 181–82*), also offers a rationalist, evidentiary approach to Christianity.4 Belsham’s A Summary View of the Evidence and Practical Importance of the Christian Revelation (1807) defines miracles as facts that may be “distinguished from other unusual and extraordinary events”; miracles are “provable by human testimony” (10, 16). Miracles and fulfilled prophecies in the Bible provide clear and reliable testimony of the outward evidences of the faith. Thus, there is no need for a revelation of the Spirit in the individual subject. True revelation illumines the darkness through reason, which grounds religion “upon an immoveable foundation” (201). The contrast between these two philosophical traditions clarifies Coleridge’s use of reason as a source of revealed religion. Coleridge aligns with Whichcote and More, rather than with Locke, Priestley, and Belsham. He distinguishes his position from the empiricism of Locke with a nod toward the vitality of the Spirit: “Tho’ we should reject the opinion, that the mind at our coming into the world is a blank Sheet of Paper; we must at all events admit that whatever

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characters may have been impressed on the sheet, are written in Sympathetic Ink, and need an exciting cause to render them apparent” (CN V 5530). The Holy Spirit is the “exciting cause” of revelation. Yet Coleridge recognizes that not all individuals discern the interior sense alike. He maintains that there are “degrees of actuation” not only according to each individual, but also “in the same Individual in different stages of his moral and intellectual Development.” Despite such variances, Coleridge insists that the nature of religion requires the twofold character of revelation. Divine disclosure comes inwardly in the soul, but finds an outward confirmation and completion in the external, historical revelation (CN V 5751). The Spirit of Truth works through all, even as John records the Spirit’s work in the individual and the historical: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning” (John 15:26–27). While Coleridge’s religious system depends on the active work of the Spirit, his notebooks indicate that he struggled to develop a correspondingly robust pneumatology. In the mid-1820s, Coleridge confesses that he has difficulty discovering “the distinct personal Subsistence of the Holy Ghost.” Christians often mistake the Holy Spirit “for a feeling,” as they often do with the conscience (CN V 5972). His biblical commentaries address the problem from many angles. He wonders, for example, if the New Testament compares the Holy Spirit to a mere power. Writing on Acts 8:14–20 (where Simon attempts to purchase the Spirit and requests that the apostles “[g]ive me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost”), Coleridge observes: “Most important as determining if not the sense yet the then diagnosis of the Holy Ghost.—It certainly does seem the most natural sense—that of the H. G. being a [divine power], not a [god]” (CN V 5837). Coleridge finds further evidence of the relationship between the Spirit and power when considering the various accounts of conversions in Acts. In Acts, the power of the Spirit often accompanies conversion, which places the book in conformity with the teachings of John and Paul. Though Coleridge harbored a number of concerns about the gift of tongues (a gift that would later accompany the churches associated with Coleridge’s friend Edward Irving), there was little doubt in his mind that the Spirit acted publicly among the first Christian converts: the first Converts who believed immediately on the Hearing of the Word and the Beholding the works, the Holy Ghost is recorded to have

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been simultaneously given—and doubtless in proportion to the Truth taught, and the Profession of which were the condition of their initiation, or admission into the Church—and St John accordingly assures us, that without the Spirit no man could call Jesus Lord or Christ—this being the Symbolum Portæ, or Ticket of Admission demanded at the Outward Gate—I believe in my heart and confess with my Mouth, that Jesus of Nazareth, who died on the cross and rose again on the third day, is the Christ: and I receive him as Christ and Lord. (CN V 5613)

Coleridge identifies the work of the Spirit with the grace of salvation. The Spirit brings new life in John, but Acts emphasizes the reception of knowledge, an empowerment to testify of the Son of God. Coleridge also believes that the books of the Old Testament explain the nature of the Trinity, with numerous references to the Spirit. Old Testament passages such as Numbers 27:18 (“And the Lord said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay thine hand upon him”) may provide a stronger foundation for a doctrine of the Spirit than the New Testament, at least in terms of “the Distinctity” or “the personal Being” of the Spirit (CN V 6406). Coleridge asserts that God intended the frequent use of the Spirit in the Old Testament—he singles out “the Spirit of Jehovah” and “Ruach”—to prepare the Jews for the advent of the Spirit announced in the Gospels. Still, Coleridge cannot imagine that the earliest Christians ever believed in God’s Spirit as “personal” and “absolute” (CN V 5927).5 Studying the Gospel of John helped Coleridge to reconcile himself with the teachings of the church. John 14:26 (“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you”) contains the “strongest Scripture authority for the personëity, and distinct personëity of the Holy Ghost” (CN V 6574). The Trinitarian affirmation of God as one and three, however, remained a difficulty. If the Spirit is “distinct” from the Son, why does Scripture often identify the Spirit with Christ? Coleridge reminds readers that Christ attributes all acts to the Father, “as the true Author & Originator.” The act of sending the Spirit is necessarily a work of the Triune God, since “to send the H. S. in the name of the God-man, the Theanthropic Logos, is the proceeding of the Spirit from the Father thro’ the Son, as the Spirit of the Son— from the Absolute GOOD thro’ the Supreme TRUTH as the Spirit of Truth.—Christ is present in & to us by his Spirit.” The full recognition of the distinct person of the Spirit was gradual, an unfolding of

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revelation. The early church’s recognition of the divinity of the Spirit was not a corruption. The Trinity is “the only possible form, under which the Divinity of the Redeemer could be reconciled with the Unity of the Godhead; and the personality . . . of the Spirit proceeding[,] a necessary term in the Idea of the Trinity” (CN IV 5301).6 When Coleridge discusses the nature of God, he typically begins with the logical (not chronological) priority of God’s unity (the “prothesis”). However, Coleridge privileges God’s diversity, devoting most of his attention to the distinctions between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Reading Didymus the Blind’s De Spiritu Sancto, Coleridge objects to Didymus’ too strong emphasis on the unity of the Godhead. Coleridge protests against Didymus’ belief that the Spirit “reigns inseparably together with the only-begotten Son of God,” because it “proves too much, for it would do away with all distinction of office & character in the Persons of the Trinity” (CN V 5859 and n.). Coleridge’s understanding of divine procession is typical of the West, which adds the filioque to the Nicene Creed. He maintains that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, “for the distinctness of the Father from the Son, and of the Son from the Father, necessarily involves the distinctness of the Spirit from both.” The Pentad illustrates his view of procession by placing the Spirit logically beneath Christ. For Coleridge, the difference between Eastern and Western conceptions of procession lies in the Greek tendency to contemplate the Trinity “chiefly in relation to the World, natural and physical” (CN IV 4907). By contrast, the West focuses on the Spirit “as the Self-manifestation of Deity.” The East presents the image of Mind uttering in a single act both the Word and, simultaneously, Breath. But Coleridge considers the Greek image of Trinitarian relations to be inadequate, since the image fails to distinguish “between filiation & procession” and will not allow for any sense in which “the Spirit proceedeth even thro’ the Son—!” The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. Despite Coleridge’s difficulties with the biblical language of Spirit and his persistent efforts to clarify the language of the Trinity, he nonetheless regarded the Trinity as the true expression of the eternal nature of the Godhead. Because the Spirit is the source of unity, only the Spirit could complete the mediatory work of Christ: “My Father & I will come: & we will dwell in you” (CN IV 5301). While he rejects the ultra-Protestant tendency to degrade the Spirit to a creature, the very denial of the divinity of the Spirit “seems a contradiction in terms”: “Not therefore the Divinity but the distinct Personality of the Holy Ghost, his self-affirmancy as Substantial Energy . . . is the point that required proof, and the

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proving of which would be an important service to the Church” (CN V 5861). The language of the Authorized Version exacerbated the difficulty by treating the Holy Spirit more like a ghost or “unembodied Soul” (CN V 6024). Ultimately, there is but one Holy Spirit, without which no creature can ever be called holy at all (CN V 5860).

The Spirit and Reason Coleridge maintains that Spirit is not an exclusively Christian concept. Coleridge learned from St. John “that there is no true Light, but the living Word, who lighteth every man that cometh into the World[.] And consequently in whatever Man, be it Plato, the evangelizing Philosopher, or John the philosophic Evangelist, the Light of Truth appears, there must the Life of the Word be an indwelling Presence” (CN V 5860). The Spirit allowed the great philosophers to understand divine things. Numerous leaders in the early church, especially the famed Apologists Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria, recognized that the teachings of the philosophers presaged Christianity in their discussion of the Logos of God. Coleridge maintains that the Roman stoic philosophers Seneca (ca. 4 BC–AD 65) and Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (AD 121–80) each espoused doctrines that intimate the truths revealed in John and Paul. In one marginal note discussing matter and form in Being, Coleridge comments that Aurelius’ notions are not unlike those found “in many Texts of St. John’s Gospel” (CM I 178). Elsewhere, on Seneca’s Epistolae morales, Coleridge claims that “[h]e expresses in Platonic Language the same convictions which the Spiritual Christian conveys in the language of John and Paul. He must know, that Reason in this unusual sense is not, and cannot be, a merely speculative or intellective faculty, in distinction from the Will, and active principle” (CN IV 5089).7 The major point of confusion is terminological: that which the philosophers call the higher Reason, Christians call Spirit. Coleridge makes precisely this claim in the Opus Maximum. He first distinguishes between Reason and Understanding, noting that the two terms respectively differentiate the interior knowledge of the soul and empirically derived knowledge. But most Christians do not feel the need to make any such distinction, because they rely on a different vocabulary. Christian theologians attribute “whatever there is in man higher than the understanding to the Spirit, which in their by no means unphilosophic vocabulary is the general term comprehending both the speculative and the practical reason, and the dependence of both on the Omnipresent Spirit, the Supreme Reason, which is One

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with its Eternal Source, the Absolute Will of the Universe” (Op Max 160).8 In Aids to Reflection, Coleridge notes that Reason, “so instructed and so actuated as Taylor requires in the sentences immediately following,” ought to be identified with “what I have called Spirit” (AR 340*). Coleridge claims that his friend Edward Irving (or any other) could easily have adopted his scheme by substituting the theological language of infused grace in place of Reason; for Reason, one may substitute the words, “the human mind in it’s highest efforts, or the mind not regenerated by the Spirit cannot even in the summit of it’s intelligence, &c” (CN V 5493). The same point of clarification appears elsewhere in the notebooks, where Coleridge equates the philosophical concepts of Reason and the Platonic Ideas to the Christian language of “the Spirit” and “Truths spiritually discerned” (CN IV 5089). Though many philosophers would condemn the category of the “Spirit” as “vulgar enthusiasm,” Coleridge recognizes a legitimate parallel between the two. He draws from Seneca’s Epistolae morales in order to demonstrate the link he perceives: “This is what I mean, Lucilius: a holy spirit dwells within us, one who marks our good and bad deeds and is our guardian. As we treat this spirit, so we are treated by it. Indeed, no man can be good without the help of God.” Since there is no other Spirit than the Holy Spirit, Coleridge believes that both philosophers and Christian theologians refer to the same indwelling principle. Thus, Coleridge’s use of “Spirit” in Confessions describes what he more frequently expresses in other philosophical writings as “Reason.” The magnitude of this point can hardly be overemphasized: Coleridge’s invocation of Spirit in the Pentad signals one of the most important concepts in Coleridge’s philosophical theology.9 The distinction between Reason and Understanding is one that Coleridge made numerous times over the course of his career. Among the most noteworthy definitions of these terms appears in The Statesman’s Manual: “Reason is the knowledge of the laws of the WHOLE considered as ONE: and as such it is contradistinguished from the Understanding, which concerns itself exclusively with the quantities, qualities, and relations of particulars in time and space. The UNDERSTANDING, therefore, is the science of phaenomena, and their subsumption under distinct kinds and sorts (genus and species)” (LS 59). Reason is not a faculty of the mind, but the source of ideas; it is “the science of the universal, having the ideas of ONENESS and ALLNESS as its two elements or primary factors” (LS 59–60). Reason approximates Kant’s speculative or theoretic reason. The Appendix to Aids to Reflection, added to the 1831 edition of the work, describes

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the theoretic Reason as a Light: The Practical Reason alone is Reason in the full and substantive sense. It is reason in its own Sphere of perfect freedom; as the source of IDEAS, which Ideas, in their conversion to the responsible Will, become Ultimate Ends. On the other hand, Theoretic Reason, as the ground of the Universal and Absolute in all Logical Conclusion, is rather the Light of Reason in the Understanding, and known to be such by its contrast with the contingency and particularity which characterize all the proper and indigenous growths of the Understanding. (AR 413)10

While the practical reason is primarily concerned with the adjudication of moral choices, theoretical reason knows immediately by intuition. The influence of the Cambridge Platonists once again provides a key to Coleridge’s distinction. In Aids to Reflection, Coleridge quotes John Smith (1618–52) in order to explain that Reason is not a faculty of our own souls, but “far rather a Light, which we enjoy, but the Source of which is not in ourselves, nor rightly by any individual to be denominated mine” (AR 253*).11 For Coleridge, the words of the Wisdom of Solomon are instructive in conceptualizing Reason, which contains the Sense, Understanding, and the Imagination: “one only, yet manifold, overseeing all, and going through all understanding; the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence from the glory of the Almighty; which remaining in itself regenerateth all other powers, and in all ages entering into holy souls maketh them friends of God and prophets.”12 Understanding, by contrast, works on the level of form, “[i]ts functions supply the rules and constitute the possibility of EXPERIENCE” (LS, 59). The Understanding is the “faculty of the finite,” indicating a difference in kind from Reason (Op Max 175). The Understanding, which reduces “the confused impressions of sense to its own essential forms,” makes possible the acts of reflection and ordering of all phenomena that is necessary for intelligible life: “to quantity, quality, relation, and, inclusively, to the forms of action, reaction, cause and effect, etc., etc.” (Op Max 86). Understanding is not a debased faculty, since it enables meaningful existence to take place. Coleridge believes that without the Understanding, “man’s representative power would be a delirium, a mere chaos and scuddingcordage of shapes” (Op Max 86–87). Returning to Coleridge’s Confessions, where the language of Christian theology predominates, one can explain the revelatory work of the Holy Spirit in the individual as an activity of Reason, which acts

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as a divine receptacle or “organ” of sorts: “the Soul can substitute nothing for the truths of Revelation . . . A [Christian] must be made to feel how insufficient his Understanding is in this respect—yea, and that his Reason is but the sensorium, which the Spirit must fill” (CN IV 4840).13 Reason is not the mark of a divine humanity, but the locus of divinity within the human. Reason, “a beholding of truth, an intuitive knowledge,” is not an independent and wholly isolated source of divinity, but a divine gift that remains in a symbiotic and mutually enlightening relationship with other “sources” of divine wisdom. Reason “raises the intellect up to religion” rather than, as the minimifidianistic Unitarians, drawing religion down to the intellect (AR 214). Even the infant at baptism exhibits signs of the activity of the Spirit; the child’s “first smile bespeaks a Reason (the Light from the Life of the Word) as already existent—and where the Word is, there will the Spirit act” (CN V 5845). Divinity acts on the soul through the work of the Spirit since “only thro’ the seed of Christ in us can the Spirit of God be in us; and only by this Spirit can the Universal Spirit which acts on all, Man and Beast, Evil & Good, act in us, act productively / not on the life, but as a Life. For the Spirit acteth on the Spirit, even as the Mind acteth on the Mind—the Mind may indeed causatively act on Matter, but then not as Mind, but as Power” (CN V 6654). Coleridge’s theology of faith corresponds to the teachings of the Protestant Reformers. Faith is truly a gift of God since Reason comes to humanity as a Light from above. The act of faith involves the submission of the individual Will to universal Reason (CN V 6485). Faith is the “offspring” of their union.14 Since faith “subsists in the synthesis of the reason and the individual Will,” it is necessarily the means by which the individual communes with God (Op Max 94). When one obeys the dictates of conscience, one demonstrates faith: “the conscience is the specific witnessing respecting the unity, or harmony, of the will with the reason, effected by the self-subordination of the individual Will as representing the self to the reason or the representative of the Will of God” (Op Max 84). Conscience, as Barth explains, is not only regulative but also constitutive: “It is the faculty which provides the element of ‘ought’ in the acceptance of truth; it is then (to put it chronologically) joined by the action of the will, which chooses to respond to the imperative of conscience by accepting the ideas presented to it by the reason” (Coleridge and Christian Doctrine 28). Faith originates “in the Logos, i.e. in the substantial reason that is co-eternal and one with the Holy Will” (Op Max 95).15 Coleridge captures the unique capacity of Reason as a vehicle of revealed religion in the Opus Maximum. In chapter four of the so-called

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first fragment of the text,16 Coleridge distinguishes between “two possible assertions: ‘such a truth may be known as truth by the light of reason’ and ‘the same truth was discovered, or might have been discovered, by men by means of their reason exclusively’” (Op Max 12). Coleridge makes a pivotal comparison, one that he restates in various other contexts as well, between the eye and the telescope: An object may be placed at so great a distance or so dense an atmosphere may intervene as to render it in the highest degree improbable that it could ever be noticed by persons placed at the given point under the supposed impediment of distance and misty air, which yet may become recognisable without much difficulty by the naked eye after it had been once pointed out and accurately described by others familiar with the object, or by means of a telescope.17

Coleridge’s point is that Reason may allow one to “see” an “object” under consideration, but insight frequently comes through the assistance of other sources of knowledge. The truth may be known by Reason, but it is only recognized as such with the assistance of “others familiar with the object.” Commenting on Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Coleridge makes the same distinction through contrasting statements: “That Reason could have discovered these divine truths, is one thing; that when discovered by Revelation it is capable of apprehending the beauty and excellence of the things revealed, is another. I may believe the latter, while I utterly reject the former” (CM II 1151). Coleridge’s marginal note explains why he claims in the Opus Maximum to “altogether disbelieve” the assertion that truths may be discovered by reason exclusive of other sources of knowledge. An objective source has the capacity to awaken the Reason “to the knowledge and possession of its powers” even as Reason, in turn, makes “indemnification for whatever diminution . . . may be inherent in the nature of all historical testimony by the ravages or even the mere lapse of time” (Op Max 16). Spirit/Reason thereby works in conjunction with the other sources of knowledge, unifying and coordinating the vehicles of revealed religion.

The Spirit and the Scriptures Recognizing the association Coleridge makes between Spirit and Reason allows one to reconceptualize the relationship between the individual subject and the Bible. Rationality cannot replace the work of the Spirit. In the fourth letter of the Confessions, Coleridge maintains

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that the true value of Christianity and the Scriptures comes from the recognition that the Bible speaks directly to the individual: “Friend! The truth revealed through Christ has its evidence in itself, and the proof of its divine authority in its fitness to our nature and needs;—the clearness and cogency of this proof being proportionate to the degree of self-knowledge in each individual hearer” (CIS 60). Scripture commands the attention of the individual, insofar as the individual is willing to read with spiritual discernment. The church does not need an article of faith demanding assent to the Bible, since the individual who comes to Scripture with a pure heart will find the truth of the Gospel. The biblical text not only speaks to the reader out of its objective content, but also responds to the discerning believer: the discovery of truth corresponds to the operation of the Spirit in the soul.18 Coleridge claims that a spirit of fear has too often ruled English theologians rather than faith (CIS 95). Coleridge’s turn to the Spirit allows him to promote the merit of free inquiry among all, especially with reference to the study of Scripture. The individual reading Scripture for truth differs from the skeptic who merely seeks a pretext for unbelief. The pernicious doctrine of verbal inspiration fuels the fire of those who read the Bible in the spirit of skepticism: “with an evil heart of unbelief, and an alien spirit—what boots for them the assertion that every sentence was miraculously communicated to the nominal author by God himself? Will it not rather present additional temptations to the unhappy scoffers, and furnish them with a pretext of self-justification?” (CIS 47). The identical text of Scripture can be read by a believer with vastly different results. To such an individual, Coleridge can comfortably say, “fear not for the result . . . The result will be, a confidence in the judgment and fidelity of the compilers of the Canon increased by the apparent exceptions” (CIS 62). The difference between these readers rests in underlying assumptions about the work of the Spirit. Coleridge’s belief in the actuating work of the Spirit in the biblical authors strengthened his optimistic view of the reader. Although some books such as Daniel troubled Coleridge immensely, he nonetheless believed in the inspiring work of God in the Bible as a whole: the composers . . . were all actuated by a pure and holy Spirit, one and the same—(for is there any spirit pure and holy, and yet not proceeding from God—and yet not proceeding in and with the Holy Spirit?)—one Spirit, working diversely, now awakening strength, and now glorifying itself in weakness, now giving power and direction to knowledge, and now taking away the sting from error! (CIS 32–33)

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Scripture records the thoughts, feelings, and temporal understanding of finite individuals drawing from their natural gifts and abilities under the influence of the Spirit. The writers were “frail and fallible men like ourselves,” but all alike were sanctified as chosen vessels by “one and the same Holy Spirit” (CIS 47). The results of biblical criticism would undoubtedly lead to difficulties, but the Spirit remained active. Expanding on those “frail and fallible men” in a deleted passage of the manuscript copy of the “Letters,” Coleridge claims that “yet even in these, with all their unremoved defects of knowledge and amid the imperfections common to their Age, see how the Light overshines the darkness. What if . . . the stained Glass of studious Research discover here and there in the sacred Volume an unpurged Spot / / when I look at the entire orb, as one that is seeking the Light, I can behold nothing but Light” (CIS–CC 1141). The Spirit of truth communicates the light of the Gospel despite the frailties of the biblical authors. The same Spirit that actuated the authors of Scripture is also the one that allows each successive generation of the church to discern truth.19 The activity of the Spirit in the mind of the reader may be compared to the warmth of the sun, which allows plants to grow and flourish: “Must not the kindly warmth awaken and vivify the seed in order that the stem may spring up and rejoice in the light? As the genial warmth to the informing light, even so is the pre-disposing Spirit to the revealing Word” (CIS 56). The reader participates in an ongoing process of revelation whereby the Spirit enlivens the words of the biblical text. True religion is found in the subject and confirmed through external testimony (CN V 5530, 5769). The reader does not approach the text according to individual fancy, but in conversation with those who also bear witness to the work of the Spirit in the Christian communion. Readers must interpret Scripture according to the same Spirit by which the authors wrote each book, since “[e]very Book worthy of being read at all must be read in and by the same Spirit, as that by which it was written. Who does not do this, reads a Dial by Moonshine” (CM II 561). The text has the capacity to express divine truth, yet, like a seed planted in the ground, it requires the enlivening action of the Spirit in the reader to allow its potential to spring forth and produce fruit. The fruit of the Spirit’s work in the life of the individual is not only knowledge, but action. Coleridge’s goal is not simply a reorientation of epistemology; the goal of revealed religion is fruit and change in daily life. The consequence of the activity of the Spirit, revealing truth in the soul, is likeness to the Divine. Evidentiary theology tried to prove Christianity through a demonstration of Christ’s miracles and

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the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. Coleridge criticizes William Paley and “the prevailing taste” for natural theology not only because such theologies risk collapsing the distinction between God and nature, but also because they fail to fully recognize that redemption effects spiritual change (AR 405; Assertion 178). For Coleridge, the work of the Spirit in the heart conveys ethical demands that rationality alone cannot supply: “Evidences of Christianity! I am weary of the Word. Make a man feel the want of it; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of his need of it; and you may safely trust it to its own Evidence—remembering only the express declaration of Christ himself: No man cometh to me, unless the Father leadeth him!” (AR 405–06). The agent of change is not a knowledge of facts, but the work of the Spirit that leads to moral growth. As Hedley explains, Coleridge hopes to produce, against Paley, “a genuinely spiritual ethics” because “knowledge of God is inextricably linked to spiritual progress . . . accurate vision presupposes the purification of character, and the purging of the soul is the prerequisite of the vision divine” (182, 285). Coleridge’s turn to Spirit is inexorably a movement toward the higher life of love (AR 322). The Spirit, the “mesothesis” of the Pentad, thereby mediates Coleridge’s entire system of revealed religion. Just as the presence of the Word cannot be limited to the finite words of the Bible, so, too, Coleridge’s Confessions reminds readers that Reason in the individual is a Light, “the Source of which is not in ourselves.”20 Although he struggled to explicate some passages of Scripture that describe the personal activity of the Spirit, Coleridge recognized the active hand of God in the world. Through the work of the Spirit in Reason, the individual comes to know divine truth and act. To the question, “[w]herein does Scripture differ from Reason?,” Coleridge answers with words that further illustrate the way in which Scripture is the “mirror of faith”: by being Reason, by acting on the Believer’s mind as Universal Reason . . . It is one with our Reason, but appears as distinct, a power from without, a Law—that which is diffused thro’ all men, retracted, as it were, & presenting itself as a Unity independent of all—the Light beheld as a Sun. Reason essentially objective: but I might fear, that my Reason was merely subjective. Scripture warrants its Objectivity. (CM III 150)21

While Coleridge affirms the light of Reason, he rejects the notion that the individual can rightly interpret Scripture with Chillingworthian

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self-reliance. The Bible is not a text for theologians alone (“Would I then withhold the Bible from the Cottager and the Artisan?—Heaven forefend! [CIS 85–86]), but right interpretation of the Bible only occurs when it is read according to the same Spirit by which it was written. In the next chapter, I explain how the coordinate activity of the Spirit in the Bible, the traditions of the church, and the individual come together in a singular source of Christian faith: the preacher.

Chapter 8

The P reacher: Imagination and the Inspired P rophet

O how heaven-like it is to sit among brethren at the feet of a minister who speaks under the influence of Love and is heard under the same influence! For all abiding and spiritual knowledge, infused into a grateful and affectionate fellow-christian, is as the child of the mind that infuses it. S. T. Coleridge (LS 92)

T

he Scriptures and the church remain silent in the world without the active and enlivening voice of the preacher. Coleridge’s famous lay sermon, The Statesman’s Manual, highlights the preacher’s unique place as one who acts and influences others with the love of God. The preacher labors to assist others in the discovery of truth and life. With Paul in Romans 10:14, Coleridge asks, “how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?” The Christian preacher awakens the soul of the hearer to divine wisdom; the preacher provides aids to spiritual reflection, “that we may seek within us, what we can never find elsewhere, that we may find within us what no words can put there, that one only true religion, which elevateth Knowing into Being, which is at once the Science of Being, the Being and the Life of all genuine Science” (LS 92–93). Throughout this study, I have argued that the “Pentad of Operative Christianity,” which prefaces Coleridge’s Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, comprises his system of “revealed” religion. The

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Pentad, “as the fundamental Form of all Thinking,” visually correlates five aspects of divine revelation, the means by which God communicates His Word of truth to the world (CM I 231). Coleridge’s interest in Scripture, the church, and the work of the Spirit in Reason coincides with the historic Anglican triad of theological reflection. At first glance, Coleridge’s inclusion of the preacher—the “point of junction” between the Bible and the church—appears unnecessary and only muddles a system that already concurs with traditional Anglicanism. Coleridge’s addition of the preacher in the Pentad is all the more perplexing when one reads the Confessions: the letters contain extensive discussion of the vitality of Scripture, the church, and the Spirit, but seldom develop the role of the preacher.1 In this chapter, I explain Coleridge’s interest in the preacher by demonstrating the link between the preacher and the Old Testament prophets. Through a recovery of Reformation views of the preacher and an interest in the unfolding power of Imagination in the visions and dreams of the prophets, Coleridge maintains that the preacher serves the world as an active vehicle of the Word of God.

The Preacher as Divine Herald The schematic arrangement of the Pentad indicates that the preacher’s sermon communicates the Word in a spiritual act. Happel observes that the preacher synthesizes “the conditions into a language which will mediate through the spirit, the one Word” (II 648). The “synthesis” of the Pentad relates grammatically to the participle, a word formed from the “combination of the Noun & Verb,” “a combination of act and being (agens), in something whose proportions of act relative to being vary according to its power” (CL VI 817; Hardy 147).2 The preacher acts as the point of juncture for the Bible and the church. In one of many descriptions of the “Pentad of Operative Christianity,” Coleridge distinguishes the activity of the two poles (thesis and antithesis) by explaining that the preacher declares the written Word (the Bible) while, simultaneously, “representing the Church” (CM II 1202). These elements constitute “[a]ll things in which the Temporal are concerned” and, ultimately, “God’s Hand in the World” (CM I 806; CIS 10).3 The preacher differs from other sources of knowledge by combining inward thought and outward action. A philosopher, for example, conceptualizes ideas, but the truly religious person works in the realm of action and is “capable of an Ideal” (CN IV 4692). Through the Imagination, the preacher realizes the ideal of the religious being by

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not only intuiting divine ideas in the soul, but also fulfilling the inward through outward action. Coleridge visually locates the preacher “in direct line under the Spirit” in the Pentad, because the Spirit enables the preacher to serve as an oracle of God. As with other vehicles of divine ideas, the preacher does not have any inherent power to change the addressees, but relies on the work of the Holy Spirit to enliven divine ideas in the souls of the hearers. The preacher conveys truth through language, but the preacher’s words are only effective insofar as the speaker serves as a means of germinating the seeds that are already present in the hearer. The seeds are inchoate, merely potential, but under the active influence of the spoken Word, they begin to grow. The preacher’s words, in the language of science, aid congregants “even as the Wires on an electrified Rosin-plate aid in giving shape tho’ they cannot determine the shape of the Electric Powders thrown on it’s surface” (CN V 6402). The vital connection between the preacher and the hearer is one of sympathy. In the same way that Scripture mirrors spiritual truths in the soul, the preacher’s words lead to a discovery in the hearer, “that his inward Findings are not phantoms and accidents of his own exclusive individuality.” The preacher provides an outward, objective means of confirming the revelation of truth in the individual soul. For Coleridge, “Ideas are not conceived but contemplated. They may be apprehended but cannot be comprehended” (CN IV 5288). When the preacher speaks, the words act as an exciting cause of interior knowledge. The mind takes up these intuitions and “decomposes” truths into contradictory assertions (i.e., thesis and antithesis). The idea is thereby brought into the sphere of the Understanding. The individual is then able to affirm the whole according to intellect. In this way, the Spirit uses words (as a grace) to animate the interior knowledge of the soul; the words of the preacher “excite the mind to the intuitive act, or produce the inward assurance that the Truth had been contemplated.” In Confessions, Coleridge uses preaching to differentiate between faithless consent and actively engaged belief. He distinguishes between those who substitute “a barren acquiescence in the letter” (an intellectual assent without trust) and “the lively faith that cometh by hearing; even as the hearing is productive of this faith, because it is the word of God that is heard and preached” (CIS 63). The comparison is worth noting, since it points to Coleridge’s understanding of revealed religion. The Bible is authoritative not as a divinely dictated text, but in its ability to convey an objective content: the truths of the Word. The act of preaching, too, is authoritative only insofar as its

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content effectively communicates the Word of God. But it is not enough that the preacher speaks words of truth and life, the listener must also maintain an active disposition and hear. The Spirit aids both the orator, as the Herald of truth, as well as the listener, who needs to receive the preacher’s words according to the same Spirit by which they were spoken. Coleridge’s view of the preacher is consistent with his approach to Scripture and the traditions of the church. He insists on the active role of the Spirit in both the source and the recipient. This is evident in Confessions when he cites Romans 10:8, 17 (“The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach . . . So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”) in order to explain the twofold work of God: the preacher stands as a representative of Christ who speaks the divine Word even as the hearer “reciprocates.” Thus, the preacher, through the activity of the Holy Spirit, becomes a unique link for each generation of the church. The words of Scripture repeatedly come alive through the active presence of the preacher, as he explains in the Confessions: “I mean the written word preserved in the armoury of the Church to be the sword of faith out of the mouth of the preacher, as Christ’s ambassador and representative . . . and out of the heart of the believer, from generation to generation” (CIS 63–64). The preacher, as a conduit of the Spirit, enlivens the biblical text, speaks the Word in action, and awakens the hearer’s soul to the living Word.

The Preacher and the Word Coleridge’s view of the preacher resonates with the history of Christian thought. While instructing clergy on the act of preaching, Augustine explains in De doctrina Christiana that Wisdom came to the world as the Word made flesh. He invokes the idea of the spoken word to describe the communication of the Gospel: It is something like when we talk; in order for what we have in mind to reach the minds of our hearers through their ears of flesh, the word which we have in our thoughts becomes a sound, and is called speech. And yet this does not mean that our thought is turned into that sound, but while remaining undiminished in itself, it takes on the form of a spoken utterance by which to insert itself into their ears, without bearing the stigma of any change in itself. That is how the Word of God was not changed in the least, and yet became flesh in order to dwell amongst us. (Teaching Christianity 111 [I.13])

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Augustine compares preaching to a bandage that binds the wounds of the soul in both a practical and a beautiful manner. Augustine writes in the Neoplatonic tradition, connecting the spoken word to the interior life of the speaker. As Perkins explains, for Augustine, “[n]ot only is all rational discourse dependent on the divine Logos, but this inner activity of grace . . . should be the main focus of attention” (Mary Anne Perkins 35). Preaching continued to be a vital aspect of religious life and thought in the Middle Ages, but several thinkers during the Reformation established preaching as a defining mark of the Christian church. Leading Reformers—including Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin— interpreted the social and theological dimensions of preaching with fresh insight.4 Not only the appearance of modern print technology but also the effective use of the pulpit as a means of communication extended the religious reforms that permeated Europe during the sixteenth century.5 Luther’s influence is paramount. Luther regards the preaching of the Gospel or kerygma as the voice of God. Luther’s Colloquia Mensalia (Table Talk), a work that Coleridge often quotes with fondness, describes the authority of the sermon in language that echoes the inspiration of the Bible: “I am sure and certain (said Luther) when I go up to the pulpit, or to the cathedral to preach or read, that it is not my word which I speak, but my tongue is the pen of a ready writer, as the psalmist saith” (14). So reverently does Luther esteem the preached Word that all who hear “must conclude and say, I hear not St. Paul, St. Peter, or a man speak; but I hear God himself speak . . .” Luther claims that the preacher ought to be esteemed in much the same way as the apostles and prophets, who spoke “as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:21). Despite his striking language, however, Luther certainly did not accept the teaching of every preacher; his theological explanation is at odds with his actual practice. Luther was a staunch critic of the preaching of the so-called radical reformers, the Anabaptists, who believed that the reforms of Luther and others had not gone far enough in ridding the church of the alleged corruptions of Rome. While Luther affirmed the priesthood of all believers, he nonetheless made ordination a necessary qualification for preaching, a measure, in part, designed to counteract the influence of the Anabaptists (Ferry 269). True preaching, for Luther, required divine calling and ordination. Luther bases his identification of the preacher’s words with the divine Word on the Protestant reception of the ex opere operato doctrine (literally, “from the work performed”). In reference to the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, the doctrine implies that the validity of

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the work performed is independent of the moral standing of the one who performs the act. The doctrine differs (due to the Donatist controversy of the fourth century) from a belief in ex opere operantis (literally, “from the one performing the work”), which implies that a sacrament is invalid if an errant administrant performs the act. While both Protestants and Roman Catholics accepted the ex opere operato doctrine, Protestant Reformers added that faith is a requisite accompaniment of true reception. The Reformers thereby rejected the doctrine of ex opere operato that the Council of Trent declared, which implied “a ritual which is supposed to impart grace simply by virtue of its having been properly performed, without reference to any faith or lack of faith on the part of the person for whom it is performed” (Oberman 25). Luther and other Reformers came to associate the administration of the sacrament and the preaching of the Gospel with a doctrine of ex opere operato. Luther could thereby proclaim, “Yes, I hear the sermon; but who is speaking? The minister? No, indeed! You do not hear the minister. True, the voice is his: but my God is speaking the Word which he preaches or speaks” (qtd. in Oberman 26). Luther’s view of the preacher became the standard among Reformed churches. The influential Second Helvetic Confession (1566), written by Zwingli’s successor in Zurich, Henry Bullinger, concretized Luther’s view for the Reformed churches by claiming “praedicatio verbi Dei est verbum Dei” (“the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God”). The Second Helvetic Confession’s opening chapter not only affirms canonical Scripture, but also elevates the authority (and centrality) of preaching: “Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is preached, and received of the faithful.” The Confession relies on a doctrine of ex opere operato when it claims that “the Word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; who, although he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the Word of God abides true and good” (Leith 133).6 The Reformation emphasis on the revelatory capacity of preaching gradually diminished in some Protestant circles during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But the authority and worth of the preacher continued to define Protestant practice.7 In Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection, Leighton’s works provide a key demonstration of the worth of the preacher. Leighton addresses the perplexing irony that a finite individual should be the bearer of the eternal Word of God: And those that hear, should remember this as the end of their hearing, that they may receive spiritual life and strength by the word. For

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though it seems a poor despicable business, that a frail sinful man like yourselves should speak a few words in your hearing, yet, look upon it as the way wherein God communicates happiness to those who believe, and works that believing unto happiness, alters the whole frame of the soul, and makes a new creation, as it begets it again to the inheritance of glory. (AR 102)8

Leighton’s text intimates the message of 1 Corinthians 1:21, “it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” The notion that “a frail sinful man” can participate in the transformation of the souls of those who believe is yet another example of Coleridge’s conviction (with Leighton and others) that God reveals truth by means of finite instruments. Some English churches perpetuated the Reformation interest in preaching by linking preaching to prophetic utterance. English Puritans seized on the association between the two in the practice of “prophesyings”: public preaching or the explication of Scripture to those gathered for exhortation. Puritans based the practice of “prophesying” on Paul’s instruction to the Corinthians that “all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted” (1 Corinthians 14:31).9 The prominence of preaching in Puritan thought accentuates the role of the Spirit in the community. In prophesying, the preacher expounds on the meaning of Scripture and animates the written text by the assistance of the Spirit.10 The Art of Prophesying (1592), by the Cambridge Puritan William Perkins (1558–1602), reflects a Reformed understanding of the Christian preacher. Perkins divides prophecy in two parts, preaching and prayer, and explains that the prophet, as a minister of the Word, acts “in the name and on behalf of Christ. Through preaching those who hear are called into the state of grace, and preserved in it” (7). Perkins denounces the outward display of human wisdom (although the arts and philosophy are necessary aspects of a minister’s preparation), since the act of prophesying, or preaching, is a profession of Christ: “The ‘demonstration of the Spirit’ (1 Cor. 2:4) becomes a reality when, in preaching, the minister of the Word conducts himself in such a way that everyone . . . recognise[s] that it is not so much the preacher who is speaking, but the spirit of God in him and by him” (71–72). Coleridge was unquestionably familiar with the association between prophets and preachers in British theology. One of Coleridge’s favorite Caroline divines, Jeremy Taylor, wrote his Liberty of Prophesying (1647) in order to emphasize the need for greater tolerance in spiritual matters (The Whole Works vol. 5).11 For Taylor,

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liberty of prophesying is a call to freedom, the freedom expound the Scriptures without persecution. Taylor wishes to confront all alleged spiritual error, not corporally as “popery does,” but “by such means as are proper instruments of their suppression,” including “preaching and disputation” (V 354). In one notebook, Coleridge quotes from a section on “Reading or Hearing the Word of God” from Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living (The Whole Works vol. 3) in order to explain the way that the preacher speaks as a representative of the Divine: “the Word of God does not work as a natural agent but as a divine instrument: it does not prevail by the force of deduction and artificial discoursings only but chiefly by way of Blessing in the Ordinance, and in the ministry of an appointed person” (CN IV 4741). Coleridge’s close study of Jeremy Taylor indicates his familiarity with the Protestant ex opere operato tradition and the link between preachers and prophets. As in Luther and William Perkins, so, too, in Leighton, Taylor, and Coleridge: the preacher is the herald of truth.

The Inspiration of the Prophet Coleridge’s recognition of the link between prophets and preachers opens fresh avenues of interpretation. Coleridge associated prophecy and the activities of the prophets with the “manifested spiritual might of Preaching,” maintained a lifelong interest in the prophets, planned a disquisition on “the Hebrew Prophets & the prophetic Gift,” and correlated the act of preaching with the witness of the prophets (CM III 691; CL V 434).12 For Coleridge, to prophesy is “to unroll and draw out the involved consequences[,] be it of a State of things, or of an action or series of actions, or of a truth” (CN V 6028). The work of the prophet, as with the preacher, refers principally to the unfolding of moral laws. Yet, the inspiration of the prophet does not necessarily differ in kind from any other individual. Rather, the prophet bears the mark of genius. The Spirit “actuated the faculties of the Sacred Poet, and expanded his Conceptions & Language beyond the Sphere of the temporal and individual interests which yet they included” (CN V 5791). The “Penman has become the Holy Spirit for us, even the Spirit and Wisdom of the Most High—He has ascended in the fiery Chariot of Prophecy and let fall the Mantle of individual Humanity.” John Coleridge’s Miscellaneous Dissertations (1768), a study of the Book of Judges, is an astonishingly important interlocutor for Coleridge’s work on the prophets. In a chapter entitled, “The Nature of Divine Vision Largely Explained,” Coleridge’s father describes how

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the prophet receives a power of vision through inspiration: “A man who never had spiritual sight, can have no exact notion of perceiving spiritual objects; no more than a man, who never enjoyed natural sight, can entertain of natural objects.” Through the “Infinite Mind,” however, the prophet is able to perceive spiritual truths that no other could obtain with certainty: “God . . . who is an eternal Spirit, and the father and life of our spirits, can easily communicate to the soul of man the knowledge of his will in an extraordinary way; and that with so much certainty and light, that the man may be assured, that God is the author of those things, which are at that time communicated to him” (129). The prophets, gifted with divine insight, know future events. John Coleridge describes the prophet as one who enters the divine council and leaves with a charge to proclaim truth to others. The language of Job provides an exemplary case study, as the prophetic consultation reveals: “In condescension to our present apprehensions, God is there described [in Scripture] as holding consultation among his heavenly nobles, that host of angels, who wait around his throne. Into this grand assembly the prophet is admitted, and there permitted to see and hear what God decreed shall come to pass, and from thence is commissioned to declare these things to men” (131). S. T. Coleridge’s understanding of prophecy departs from his father’s in the latter’s emphasis on prognostication.13 Still, both father and son uphold a vital tradition of the prophet. As John Coleridge indicates, the prophet’s mind is open to divinity as a light, “thrown in upon his mind, which carried its own evidence with it” (138). For John Coleridge, crucially, the record of the vision of God in Scripture sets apart the biblical witness from all other writings: In these sacred volumes the mountains and forests do not only tremble, as in Homer, but melt like wax at the presence of God. The God of the prophets doth not ride over the level waves, in a swift chariot, like Neptune, but comes flying upon the wings of the wind; while the floods clap their hands, and the hills and forests, and earth and heaven, all exult together before their Lord. In what uninspired writers is the universal presence of the Infinite Mind represented in so exalted a manner as in the divine poet? (4)

Miscellaneous Dissertations provides a powerful example of John Coleridge’s insight into the nature of prophetic wisdom. In word and thought, a striking resemblance exists between father and son: they share the belief that the true prophet holds communion with the Divine.14

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Comparing John Coleridge and S. T. Coleridge uncovers the relevance of one of the most difficult claims in Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit: the befuddling sections in which Coleridge affirms the direct communication of divine truth to the prophets. As I have already explained, Coleridge’s Confessions denies the plenary, verbal inspiration of the Bible, a view that he equates with the notion that “all that exists in the sacred volume . . . [was] dictated by an Infallible Intelligence” (CIS 13). Coleridge makes one notable exception, however. He surprises many readers by overtly and unambiguously affirming his commitment to the verbal inspiration of some passages of Scripture. Coleridge pointedly emphasizes that he is unwilling to deny the direct, verbal communication of divine truth in some of the Old Testament prophets. Coleridge commences the second letter of the Confessions by denying the verbal inspiration of Scripture, but he also adds a strange addendum: “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” (CIS 15). Coleridge continues this line of reasoning—it is no passing remark—and explains that the act of transcription in such cases does not appear to require any special act of faith (outside of the basic belief that divine truth can be communicated to finite beings at all): “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 phænomena 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 or goodness are such” (CIS 15–16). Coleridge points out that a few biblical passages exist in which “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.”15 For Coleridge, “there can be no dispute” that these passages are a true record of the words of God. He maintains that “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” (CIS 16). Most readers find Coleridge’s position on the prophets rather uncharacteristic of the thinker who so frequently carps and rants against English bibliolatry. Historians often cite Confessions as proof that Coleridge was decades ahead of his contemporaries. For this reason, scholars frequently apologize on Coleridge’s behalf, defending

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him for his uncharacteristically pre-critical oversight. Basil Willey, for example, remarks that Confessions, “laid down nearly all the positions about biblical interpretation which are now taken for granted by everyone” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge 257). But, elsewhere, immediately before quoting from the second letter of the Confessions, Willey defensively claims that “[t]he modern Christian will find Coleridge in one respect too uncritical” (Nineteenth Century Studies 43). Willey’s statement recalls the sentiments of the influential religious historian Vernon Storr, who, writing in 1913, praised Confessions as “extraordinarily modern in tone” and “one of the best expositions of the principles of higher criticism.” But, as with Willey, Coleridge’s treatment of the prophets perplexes Storr: “There is, however, one curious reservation in Coleridge’s acceptance of a wider view of inspiration. He accepts ‘the recorded words of God’” (Storr 195n.2). Coleridge is not placating his audience with a pre-critical overture, but explaining his view of revealed religion. He even repeats his view of the prophets in the third letter of the Confessions, as if to confirm that his first avowal of the matter was not an aberration. He unabashedly argues, “[h]ave I not declared—do I not begin by declaring—that whatever is referred by the sacred Penman to a direct communication from God . . . or where the writer in his own person, and in the character of an historian, related that the Word of the Lord came unto priest, prophet, chieftan, or other individual—have I not declared that I receive the same with full belief, and admit its inappellable authority?” (CIS 27). His insistence indicates the earnestness of his proposal. He even restates his belief elsewhere: in the prophets there are occasions when inspiration conceived as “actuation” fails to explain the work of the Spirit. Unlike the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, in which the actuating influence of the Holy Spirit predominates, the prophetic literature frequently contains what is better described as “miraculous dictation—not merely inspiration of the Spirit, but INFORMATION by the WORD of God” (CN V 6315). What are readers to make of Coleridge’s stance? While Coleridge unmistakably concedes that God directly communicated divine wisdom to some of the prophets, he generally maintains that such occasions are rare exceptions.16 Normally, the biblical prophets conveyed the Word of God because they spoke under the actuating influence of the Spirit. Inspiration came as the highest use of the natural faculties of the individual. Luther’s Table Talk describes the prophet in terms that are strikingly agreeable to Coleridge’s stance. Luther appeals to the conscience when he instructs Melanchthon on the prophetic claim “Thus saith the Lord” and “whether God in person spoke with them or

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no.” According to Luther, the Prophets “were very holy, spiritual, diligent, people, who seriously did contemplate upon holy and divine causes; therefore God spake with them in their consciences, which the Prophets held for sure and certain Revelations” (327). For Coleridge, one must distinguish between miraculous revelation and the use of inferential reasoning in the prophets. Reflecting on Jeremiah 33, Coleridge writes in a copy of the Bible that the Prophets often drew inferences “from the divine declarations” as “unaided Men”: “Jeremiah probably supposed that this splendid promise was to be fulfilled at the close of 70 years; but this is neither expressed or implied in the prophetic words themselves or dictated to him by the Lord” (CM I 438–39). Coleridge proposes that the failure of some prophetic claims led others to search out the text for the true, spiritual meaning. Rather than looking to the outward letter, with its apparent prognostications, readers ought to perceive the “Life” of the prophets’ message. Coleridge wonders in one notebook entry, “[m]ay we not, without any ecclesiastic or bibliolatrical evasion, assert—that the Spirit, which prompted and potenziated the minds of the Prophets and Psalmists, provided by a series of providential events for the spiritual interpretation & application of their words . . . by the non-fulfillment of the predictions in the sense first understood by the Contemporaries of the inspired Men [?]” (CN V 6069). Providentially, the true value of many prophetic writings only became apparent “from the time that the apparent falsification of their promises, the failure of their literal sense, became evident.” Coleridge notes that even Luther questioned whether the prophets heard the Lord speak to them by “a sensible supernatural dictation ab extra [from without] to the mortal or bodily ears of the Prophet, his own human intellectual faculties remaining passive, & to his own consciousness merely recipient” (CN V 6348). The prophet, Coleridge proposes, just as likely may have gained a “deep and instantaneous intuition of it’s truth and accordance with the divine Wisdom and Goodness.” Coleridge’s inclination, “my own present persuasion,” favors the notion that the prophet received “a direct and positive Communion . . . with the Jehova-Word.” On the other hand, Coleridge still recognizes the possibility that later, “a doubt arising in his mind, he might avail himself of the power of recurring to the Divine Instructor” by means of spiritual intuition. Coleridge thereby affirms his belief that direct revelation could come to the prophet by means of special dictation as well as the “potenziation of the prophet’s intellectual powers by the operation of the Spirit.” Coleridge’s conception of the prophet is strikingly similar to that of the Cambridge Platonists. John Smith’s discourse on prophecy in the

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Select Discourses (1660), for example, speaks of the prophetical spirit as that which “seems to be the quickening up of our Minds to a more lively converse with those Eternal Truths of Reason, which commonly lie buried in so much fleshly obscurity within us that we discern them not” (171).17 Smith maintains that the Old Testament prophets gazed on divine things through the power of the Imagination. Though the prophets saw as men, at times “the Imagination and Mind of the Prophet was thus ravished from itself, and was made subject wholly to some Agent intellect informing it and shining upon it” (182). In others, Smith explains, the senses of the prophet remained still and calm and “in their full vigour” while “this Enthusiastical Spirit seated itself principally in the Higher and Purer faculties of the Soul” (231). The Spirit dictated truths to the prophets “only principally” by revealing “Symbolical and Hieroglyphical” forms of “Intelligible things in their Imaginations.” Consequently, the prophets’ oracles remained truly their own, having been “digested fully into their Understandings,” even though the truths represented appeared as if dictated directly from “the Mind of God” (273).18 Coleridge, like John Smith, believes that the Prophets’ impart divine wisdom through symbols. Imagination, “the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception” (BL I 304), allows prophets to communicate divine ideas.19 In the Old Testament, prophets reasoned through “the organ of Imagination, and vivid Images supplied the place of words, and came more readily than words in language so limited & scanty as the Hebrew” (CN V 6028). Prophecy is the divinely aided activity of the “Subjective-Objective.” The dreams and visions of the prophets were occasions in which a greater awareness of the natural faculties became apparent: “God most often acts by a potenziation of existing, or the awakening of inherent, tho’ dormant or latent Faculties of Human Nature—not by suspending or overwhelming the natural Powers and reducing the Seer or Prophet into a passive Automaton, or mere Camera Obscura” (CN V 6216). Zechariah, for example, illustrates the role of the Imagination in the prophetic dream state. When the prophet relates that “thus saith the LORD” in Zechariah 1:16, his words are not the record of an immediate address to the prophet by God, but one aspect of a whole vision. Because the Hebrew prophets speak in the language of poetry, the words of God are no more present to the prophet than the vision of a red horse is accompanied by “a man on a real red horse” (CN V 5786). The inspiration of the prophets occurs in the form of vision: “Would it be MORE real, MORE true, if the Prophet were bonâ fida sound asleep & dreamt, than if in the perfect state of his Judgement & all his other intellectual

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faculties his conscious Imagination called forth these impressive & pregnant visual Symbols?”20

The Preacher as Prophet As with the prophets of the Old Testament, the preacher’s sermon is able to make the Word of God present in the life of the church. Though the activity of the prophets diminished with the Incarnation of the Word in Christ, the witness of the early church still provides examples of similar ecstatic utterances.21 Coleridge regards the early church as a transitional age between the divine witness of the Prophets through the Imagination, and the demonstration of the Gospel according to Reason by the preacher. The example of biblical “glossolalia” provides an intriguing case. Coleridge distrusts any attempt to relate the “tongues” of the Book of Acts to the divinely appointed ability to speak foreign languages (in part, for its potentially analogous relationship to notions of a divinely dictated Bible).22 Yet the act of conversion did lead to a form of preaching in which converts uttered the “sublime truths” of Christianity. Against “the absurd but universal notion of the gift of speaking in unlearnt foreign languages,” Coleridge cites Acts 10:46: “For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God.” Coleridge argues that all present spoke the same language. Thus, the presence of “tongues” indicates (as in Acts 19:6), “a technical expression for prophecying, or speaking extatically, a Spirit mightier than the Speakers using their tongues instrumentally, so that not they but the Holy Ghost spake thro’ them” (CN V 5842).23 Similarly, Coleridge proposes that reference to the voice of the Holy Spirit in the assembled community refers to the continued activity of the prophets in the church. Thus, when he reads Acts 13:2 (“As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them”), Coleridge maintains that “the Spirit likely speaks through the testimony of one of the prophets in the assembly” (CN V 5850).24 The preacher speaks the living Word as one called by God. Despite his difficulties with the gift of tongues in Acts, Coleridge connects the ongoing activity of the preacher to the Spirit-inspired witness of the apostles. Relying on Leighton’s Commentary on 1 Peter in Aids to Reflection, Coleridge claims that preachers have a duty to speak the word; to endeavor their utmost to accommodate it to this end, that sinners may be converted, begotten again, and believers

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nourished and strengthened in their spiritual life . . . Their hearts and tongues ought to be set on fire with holy zeal for God and love to souls, kindled by the Holy Ghost, that came down on the apostles in the shape of fiery tongues. (AR 101)25

The passage demonstrates Coleridge’s commitment to the actuating work of the Spirit in the preacher: the preacher speaks the Word of God, awakens others to truth, and sets hearts ablaze to true religion. But, since the Reformation, too many preachers have neglected their divine calling to public, biblical exposition in favor of self-interest (CM III 426). The same light that fell on the “old Prophets & the Apostles” is available to contemporary preachers, just as it was available to Luther, whose heart “was enkindled by the H[oly] Spirit.”26 Widespread neglect led to disparagement of the office. In this light, can there be any wonder that so few “prize it as the great ordinance of God for the salvation of souls” (AR 101)? What are the duties of the preacher? First, the preacher must remain sensitive to the needs of those inquiring into Christianity. Two evil extremes are prevalent among church ministers: the stoic pride that snatches crutches “from a curable Cripple before he can walk without them” and the “worldly and temporizing Preachers who would disguise from such a Cripple the necessary truth that Crutches are not Legs; but only temporary Aids and Substitutes” (SW&F I 571). The goal of the preacher is neither to destroy the faith of the fledgling, nor to hinder the maturing process of one who may be induced to meditate on higher things. The preaching of the Word, in the words of Leighton, is “the beginner and the sustainer of the Divine life of grace within us,” but the promulgation of the Gospel in preaching requires repetition and presumes a gradual growth (AR 101). Clergy must also remember that the private reading of Scripture cannot replace the necessity of preaching the Word. Coleridge opposes the sentimental portrait of the Christian who sits down before the Bible under the mistaken “expectation and assurance that the whole is within his comprehension” (CIS 85). Luther’s words may sound extreme, but certainly resonate with Coleridge’s religious system: “You see, unless the Word is preached publicly, it slips away. The more it is preached, the more firmly it is retained. Reading is not as profitable as hearing it, for the live voice teaches, exhorts, defends, and resists the spirit of error” (qtd. Ferry 271). The preaching of the Gospel presents the truths of the Christian faith to all.

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Above all, the preacher must always “preach Christ alone” (CM II 291). Commenting on the function of the preacher in Donne’s sermon on John 10:10 (“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”), Coleridge laments the general neglect of preaching in the pulpits of England: “Since the Revolution in 1688 our Church has been chilled and starved too generally by Preachers & Reasoners, Stoic or Epicurean.” For Coleridge, the “Christian Preacher ought to preach Christ alone” since only Christ can provide the answers to all questions, whether of a practical or philosophical nature: “If [the preacher] finds a dearth in this, if it seem to him a circumscription, he does not know Christ, as the Pleroma, the Fullness—It is not possible, that there should be aught true, or seemly, or beautiful, in thought, will or deed, speculative or practical, which may not & which ought not, to be evolved out of Christ, and the Faith in Christ.” Unlike the older Puritan divines, who tended to over-interpret the meaning of the Scriptures, contemporary preachers often fall into the opposite error of merely expounding their “own sentiments & conclusions” (CM II 338). For this reason, Coleridge claims that “I would assuredly make Expositions my Rule, and Sermons the occasional exceptions.” Preaching Christ directly from the Bible has a powerful effect on a congregation: “an hour expended in expounding, illustrating, & according to my own feelings applying the verses of a Chapter would appear shorter to the congregation, than a continuous moral Discourse, an Essay with a Text for its Motto, of but 20 minutes” (CN V 6721).27 The preacher must always present Christ: “Christ in all, all things in Christ—the Christian Preacher should abjure every argument, that is not a link in the chain of which Christ is the Staple & Staple Ring” (CM II 291). In sum, Coleridge’s view of the Christian preacher is an enigmatic but vital dimension of his system of revealed religion. Preachers are the provision of God and the means by which spiritual sight is converted into action (CN V 5844). Coleridge argues that those who speak the Word of God do not repeat dead prophecies that merely portend future events, rather they express ideas in accordance with ultimate ends. The preacher’s words, as with the visionary language of the prophet, are symbolic and “grounded on the prophetic character of all God’s works.” On that basis, language is “made to express things above sense” (CM III 425). Unexpectedly, an exposition of the preacher casts a new light on Confessions as well. Many have praised Coleridge’s work for its vatic insight into the future of biblical studies, since Coleridge “laid down nearly all the positions about biblical

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interpretation which are now taken for granted by everyone” (Willey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 257). But, insofar as Confessions rehabilitates the prophetic role of the preacher, students of Coleridge must equally look to the past, for Coleridge’s renewed vision of the Christian preacher as “the sensible Voice of the H[oly] Spirit” (CM II 290) recaptures the past through a decisive recovery of Reformation theology.

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Chapter 9

Conclusion: The Reception of Coleridge’s R eligious System

We have no doubt of his sincerity; but unless we err greatly, he has either misunderstood his own views, or grossly misinterpreted the doctrines of his church . . . The truth is, Mr. Coleridge, though a great scholar, was not qualified in point of biblical learning for an undertaking like this. Frederick Henry Hedge (127–28)

C

oleridge was among the most knowledgeable biblical scholars in all of England during the early nineteenth century. Few in England or abroad recognized Coleridge’s full theological achievement. Hare, Maurice, and others defended Coleridge’s reputation. But his early Unitarianism, association with plagiarism and opium addiction, and willingness to challenge controversial doctrines such as biblical inspiration cast a shadow over his entire system of religion. Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit establishes Coleridge’s religious system and the framework for a complete recovery of his understanding of Christian doctrine. Coleridge is methodical, ever aware of the need to see the parts in relation to the whole. Coleridge’s thought develops, but not necessarily as an “improvement” or a “gradual increase in divine light” (as if to insinuate that the story of his life is all about how he finally came to the truth of Christian orthodoxy). Although Coleridge gradually embraces the teachings of the historic Christian faith, the grounds on which he makes such claims (e.g., his Christology and

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Trinitarianism) are not traditional. Coleridge’s view of religion “develops” inasmuch as he changes in response to ongoing reading, study, and spiritual reflection. His writings indicate the journey of a life of faith as “fidelity to conscience.” His commitment to conscience, however, added to the confusion over his religious views, including his commitment to the symbiotic relationship between the objective and subjective vehicles of religious knowledge. As a result, the story of Coleridge’s reception is one of praise and censure.1 In New England, one of Coleridge’s greatest intellectual achievements was Aids to Reflection. The early Transcendentalists (including eminent young minds such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, Orestes Brownson, and Bronson Alcott) studied Aids to Reflection at the home of Frederick Henry Hedge.2 Hedge wrote a pivotal article for the influential Christian Examiner in 1833, “Coleridge’s Literary Character.” Hedge claims that Coleridge’s literary rank is “ill-defined,” despite the fact that he is “a profound thinker” and “an intellect of the highest order” (109, 128). But Hedge questioned the consistency of Coleridge’s views: In the “Aids to Reflection,” our author would have us believe that he has accomplished at last the wished for reconciliation between his head and his heart. To us the breach seems as wide as ever. In this work he appears as a zealous Trinitarian, and a warm defender of the doctrines of the English church. We have no doubt of his sincerity; but unless we err greatly, he has either misunderstood his own views, or grossly misinterpreted the doctrines of his church . . . The truth is, Mr. Coleridge, though a great scholar, was not qualified in point of biblical learning for an undertaking like this. Many of his assertions, we are persuaded, would not have been hazarded, had he not taken his understanding of the New Testament for granted, but studied that book with the same diligence and perseverance which he appears to have bestowed upon other works. (127–28)

Hedge’s criticism cuts to the quick: calling Coleridge’s biblical knowledge into question undercuts the objective character of his entire religious system. Hedge had no idea that Coleridge worked through the Bible with meticulous scrutiny. Having reserving his commentaries for the yet unpublished magnum opus, Coleridge could be dismissed by critics as a naïf. Only the damning praise of the sentence that follows dampens Hedge’s derogation of Coleridge’s biblical knowledge: “With these exceptions, however, we consider the A ‘ ids to Reflection’ as a very valuable work.”

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The reception of Coleridge’s views in Britain encountered similar hurdles. Henry Nelson Coleridge’s 1834 review of the Poetical Works in the Quarterly Review—an essay “sometimes seen as a turning-point in criticism of Coleridge” (Haven et al. 81)—begins by acknowledging the tattered myth of his poetic demise and his turn to metaphysical speculation, as if to forestall the reader’s disapproval. Coleridge’s reputation, characterized by Henry, is that of a public figure who “commonly passes for a man of genius . . . but whose original powers, whatever they were, have been long since lost or confounded in the pursuit of metaphysic dreams.”3 Henry knew Coleridge’s genius to be otherwise, but his preemptive move indicates public suspicion. Later periodical reviews extend the attack that Henry feared and attempted to correct. Critics characterize Coleridge’s theology as a religion of the self. The earliest major response to the Confessions, for example (though not properly a review of Coleridge’s works at all), ranks Coleridge with skepticism for an obstinate reliance on the unchecked powers of speculation. William Palmer’s “On Tendencies towards the Subversion of Faith” (1848), provoked the attention of several thinkers, including Hare and Maurice, by linking eminent divines such as Carlyle, Arnold, Hare, and Sterling in a common Coleridgean school. The influence of Coleridge, whom Hare praised in his edition of Sterling’s Remains as “the true sovereign of modern English thought,” had a “disturbing influence” on the faith of others in Scripture as God’s Word (416). But, as Coleridge’s daughter Sara later described the article, Palmer completely misunderstood the spiritual impulse of the Coleridgean school as a move toward infidelity: “What is the common characteristic of that school? We believe it to consist simply in the striving after intellectual liberty” and “a tendency to reject all which does not commend itself to the individual reason as right and true—a tendency to resist authority, of whatever nature it may be, which interposes any restraint on the freedom of speculation.”4 Rather than recognizing Coleridge’s attempt to reform Christian thought through a reevaluation of particular doctrines and teachings, Palmer relegated Coleridge and the Coleridgean tradition to infidelity and the “subversion of faith,” and, simultaneously, rallied all orthodox believers to action against the source of infidelity: it is time for those who do not wish to have any part in leading the nation into infidelity, to abstain from promoting the circulation of infidel and sceptical works; and it is high time for all whose faith

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remains firm and deeply rooted, to nerve themselves for the vindication of that faith—the faith contained in the CREEDS—the Apostles’, the NICENE, and the Athanasian Creeds—against all cavillers. It is time for them to look with distrust on any man who recommends the study of a Theology tainted by incurable scepticism. It is time to resist, and to denounce, those who would thus, in vanity or in treason, undermine our faith. (Palmer 443)

Coleridge’s Confessions became associated with the skepticism of infidels, unraveling any of the merit he earned as a churchman in his later years. Palmer’s article led Sara Coleridge to request an introduction from Joseph Henry Green for the second edition of Confessions. Green rather awkwardly defended Coleridge against the by-then-persistent suspicion that he plagiarized German thinkers.5 More notable than Green’s clumsy defense, however, was the response evoked by Palmer’s review from Sara Coleridge herself. Sara’s “Note on the C ‘ onfessions of an Inquiring Spirit’” perceptively ripostes critics for mishandling her father’s work and appealing “to the violent and unthinking Many against the Few, whose opinions are too refined to be popular on their first promulgation.”6 Sara recognizes that her father’s work on “revealed” religion challenges others to “think on what they are required to believe.”7 Denouncing Coleridge and vainly imagining that he is in league with the “Prince of Darkness” is far easier than developing an adequate response based on sound evidence and proof. In the same essay, Sara praises “a fair and straight-forward” manuscript critique of the Confessions that “shows so much acuteness and knowledge of Scripture, and enters upon the examination of my father’s little work in so elaborate and legitimate a manner, that I cannot help wishing the author would revise and publish it.”8 The “fair” manuscript did not appear until 1867, when T. R. Birks published The Victory of Divine Goodness with “Notes on Coleridge’s Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit” (65–146).9 Birks’s text is important for two reasons. First of all, Birks provides one of the most thorough examinations of Coleridge’s Confessions during the nineteenth century. Second, Birks highlights Coleridge’s relevance and contribution to the contemporary English debate over Scripture. Birks notes that “[t]he controversy has grown in importance since Coleridge’s little work appeared. The cloud, like a man’s hand, has almost overspread the firmament. The question of the true authority of Scripture claims more and more the careful study of every Christian, who would not drift away, in utter uncertainty, from the old landmarks of the

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Christian faith” (viii–ix). Birks’s essay, which quotes extensively from the Confessions, argues that Coleridge obtusely misunderstands the popular belief in biblical inspiration. For instance, Birks objects to Coleridge’s treatment of the Book of Job, which Coleridge used as an example of a story that counters the notion of verbal biblical inspiration. Birks’s tone indicates the way critics read Coleridge’s work in subsequent decades: “with all due respect be it spoken, Coleridge is surprisingly rash and unaccountably superficial. The subject has its real difficulties. But he does not solve one of them, and quite misunderstands the common view” (88). Birks insists that Coleridge falls into subjectivism: “the same principle of a purely subjective test will warrant others in rejecting much, and an immoral infidel in casting aside nearly the whole. For what is the principle? The varying degree of moral attainment in each Christian is to be the text by which he decides how much is, and how much is not, Divine” (126–27). To Birks’s credit, he was one of the few interpreters to recognize Coleridge’s distinctly apologetic aim. In closing his notes on Confessions, Birks hints that Coleridge’s apologetic stance gives too much ground to the inquirer: To receive nothing on false grounds, and no truth out of its due order, may be the best preparation for a healthy and vigorous faith at the last. But we smooth the pathway of recovery for hopeful sceptics at far too dear a price, when, for their sake, we set aside, or pare down a revealed truth, inject doubts and difficulties into the life-blood of the Universal Church, and impute error to those messages, which the Holy Spirit has caused to be written and recorded for our learning by men of God . . . (146)

Though his views did not appear until nearly twenty years after the first publication of Confessions, Birks proved to be among the most sympathetic of Coleridge’s nineteenth-century opponents. The second edition of Confessions prompted another major article on Coleridge in The English Review (December 1849). The reviewer, as with Palmer, links Hare and Maurice to Coleridge’s thought and castigates them for failing to dissociate themselves from Coleridge’s religious views. With reference to Confessions, the author asserts that these rationalistic writings appear to have been in private circulation for many of the later years of Coleridge’s life, and, notwithstanding this, such men as Messrs. Hare, Maurice, and others, continued to look up to, and refer to Coleridge on all occasions, as their leader and master.

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This has continued even to the present time, though the “Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit” were published so long ago as 1840. (264)

The author does examine Confessions, but repeatedly argues that Coleridge’s denial of plenary biblical inspiration is tantamount to wholesale skepticism. According to the author, Coleridge ill-advisedly follows Lessing, a lamentable consequence of a lack of theological education.10 Moreover, according to the author, Coleridge degrades the perspicuity of Scripture by treating authoritative passages of the Bible as accidental occurrences (249). A sober analysis of the Confessions draws a clear conclusion: readers must guard against Coleridge’s works with the same tenacity as any other invention of skepticism. Coleridge’s theology is the same as “the most notorious amongst our modern infidels, and . . . they are wholly and absolutely subversive of the Christian religion” (267). Another significant nineteenth-century effort to clarify the “Coleridgean school” is James Rigg’s Modern Anglican Theology (1857). Rigg’s work went through several editions. He associates Coleridge and several subsequent English divines (including Hare, Maurice, Kingsley, and Jowett) in a common Neoplatonic intellectual tradition. In the preface to the first edition, Rigg explains his aim: to clarify the obscurity of Coleridge’s philosophy and theology, since “Coleridge himself is understood by very few” (113). Rigg admires Coleridge, but he also associates Coleridge’s thought (negatively) with both pantheism and mysticism. When Rigg discusses Coleridge’s conception of revelation and biblical authority, he concludes that Confessions advocates the ultimate subjectivity of all truth: “Now, even though Coleridge’s Reason had authenticated to him every jot and tittle of the Bible, this would not have absolved him, in holding such doctrine, from the charge of Rationalism. The effect of it is that no man need acknowledge any external standard of truth whatever. Each man’s Reason becomes to him the measure and standard of all truth” (152). The most significant sign, once again, that critics overlooked the polar relationship between objective and subjective in Coleridge’s religion system is a long paragraph near the end of Rigg’s preface. Responding to concerns that his own work was too obscure, Rigg offers a devastating critique of Coleridge: No one can go down to the foundations of Coleridge’s philosophy, or to what he supposed to be its foundations, without finding himself in a dark region of shadows and abstractions, where he can but grope his way . . . The peculiar principles which lie at the foundation of the

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Coleridgean philosophy are, as I presume to think, inconceivable and unintelligible; neither given as facts by intuition, nor provable or definable by logic. But they seem to magnify man’s reason, to bring his nature very near to God, to lift him above the region of logical scrutinies and judgments, and of all external control and authority, whether over head, or heart, or conscience. Hence their fascination and their practical power. (117)

Rigg claims that Coleridge effectively degrades all external sources of religious knowledge. Although Rigg shortly thereafter apologizes for the remark as one made only for those who might object to a “few abstruse metaphysical phrases,” his comment evokes a pervasive sentiment among Coleridge’s nineteenth-century interpreters: the perception that he rejects outward vehicles of revealed religion in favor of absolute individualism. One of the most important commentators on Coleridge’s system in North America is W. G. T. Shedd. Shedd’s “Introductory Essay” to the American edition of Coleridge’s Complete Works (1858) argues that Coleridge is “an able defender and expounder of the doctrines of Christianity” (I 36). Shedd claims that Coleridge’s aphoristic style does not lend itself to the construction of a whole system of theology. He nonetheless recommends Coleridge with considerable confidence, “as an aid to reflection, as inducing a general style of thinking, and manner of unfolding and defending truth” (39). As with so many of his contemporaries, Shedd is concerned by Coleridge’s doctrine of inspiration. He recognizes that Coleridge believed the Scriptures to be “true on all primary points, and that those Christian doctrines which he, in common with the Christian Church, regarded as vital to human salvation, are all plainly revealed in them.” Shedd worries that Coleridge’s failure to contemplate the canon as a whole “having a common origin in the Divine Mind” diminishes his achievement (56–57). He argues that the fault lies in the undue influence of Eichhorn. If Coleridge had pursued subsequent scholarship after Eichhorn, then he would have been less liable to hold “erroneous hypotheses” that have now “exploded in the land of their birth” (e.g., Coleridge’s rejection of Matthew and Luke’s account of Christ’s birth; 58–59). Shedd finds Coleridge’s apparent departure from German philosophy even more troubling. The priority of the subject marks the defect of Coleridge’s work on revealed religion: In determining the absolute truth and authority of the Scriptures, the Objective generally is subordinate to the Subjective . . . The Subjective Reason . . . is placed first, as the fixed and absolute norm or rule to

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which the Objective Reason is to be brought up and conformed. Now the strongest objection to this theory of Revelation is to be derived from the principles of the philosophy adopted, as we have endeavored to show, by Coleridge himself. But even if we should regard him as an adherent of the later German philosophy, the absolute and fixed truth would not lie in the Subject alone, but in the identity of the Subject and the Object—in a common ground that contains both factors. (55–56)

Ironically, as I have shown in the preceding chapters, Coleridge’s conception of the identity of the object and subject is just as Shedd thought that it should be, “a common ground that contains both factors” (56). Shedd’s work reveals that even among some of Coleridge’s most sympathetic interpreters, the belief persisted that Coleridge’s religious system posits the exclusive priority of the subject over the object. Other nineteenth-century commentators reflected on Coleridge’s theological system as well,11 but a disinterested assessment of Coleridge’s religious views did not take place until a “secondgeneration” of Coleridge scholarship emerged—long after the controversies over religious authority in the nineteenth century had passed. Herbert Stewart’s “The Place of Coleridge in English Theology” (1918) is one indicator of the emergence of a new stage in Coleridge’s reception. Stewart calls Coleridge’s work on Scripture “perhaps his clearest and most definite service in this field” (19). Though Stewart focuses on Coleridge’s contribution to biblical criticism, his analysis of Confessions is telling: “There is a wealth of thought in the Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit—thought which was long lost upon a religious world still unfit to assimilate it, and afterwards regained with far less than the due meed of gratitude to the subtle mind that had been so far ahead of his time. Coleridge on Inspiration was like bread cast on the waters and found after many days.” Stewart posits the distinctly constructive character of Coleridge’s theology. Though Thirlwall and Whately touched on the theme of Scriptural authority and inspiration prior to Coleridge, still “Coleridge’s contribution was far more positive, far more constructive, than theirs” (20). Stewart also avoids the commonplace notion that Coleridge’s conception of religion was unavoidably subjective. Stewart uses the familiar quote, “whatever finds me,” to remind readers that Coleridge wished to raise the authority of the objective revelation in the Word of God: “By this attestation all history proclaimed that other books were to this one but as subordinate spiritual luminaries, that it alone shines by its own light, the ultimate manifestation of the Sun of Righteousness” (21).12

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This brief history demonstrates the magnitude of Coleridge’s inability to complete the magnum opus. For all that Coleridge attempted in his mature years, he never published a complete account of revealed religion. Henry Nelson Coleridge’s decision to publish the “Letters on Scripture” as Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit in 1840 helped to elucidate the framework of Coleridge’s religious system, but Confessions inadvertently contributed to the persistent misinterpretation of Coleridge’s theology. Coleridge’s system is present in Confessions, but without the numerous examples that are found in the corresponding notebooks and his extensive commentaries on the Bible, many of his most sympathetic critics invariably misrepresented his views. Coleridge allows the objective and subjective to remain in tension, as parts of the whole. The objective sources of Christian teaching complete and guarantee, by the activity of the Holy Spirit, “the reality of the subjective Truths in myself” (CN V 5624). As Sara Coleridge explains, Confessions would not “fully and unobjectionably solve the whole difficult problem of the Bible,” but “the work is a step in the right direction.”13 Today, with the previously unpublished notebooks at hand, readers can rehabilitate Coleridge’s complete system of revealed religion. Niebuhr’s comparison of divine revelation to the experience of reading a book provides an apt analogy. Revelation “means for us that part of our inner history which illuminates the rest of it and which is itself intelligible” (93). Enjoying Confessions is similar to reading a text that is obscure and difficult: coming upon a single sentence that makes sense, one may work backward and forward and, from that point, gain a sense of the whole. The experience of Horace Bushnell, one of Coleridge’s early American disciples, is similarly illuminating. Grappling with Aids to Reflection, Bushnell claims that “the author seemed foggy and unintelligible, and I closed the book, and put it upon my book-shelves, where it remained a long time. Meanwhile, my mind went on thinking and maturing; and one day, my eye falling on the book, I took it down and began to read, and, behold, all was lucid and instructive!” (Cheney 208). When read in the light of his extensive notebooks on the Bible, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit opens the whole of Coleridge’s literary corpus to fresh and captivating readings.

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Notes 1

Introduction: “Revealed” Religion and C ONFESSIONS OF AN I NQUIRING S PIRIT

1. I use the word “revelation” to encompass that aspect of Christian theology that examines how God may be known through various vehicles of divine disclosure, such as the Bible. Coleridge’s use of the term varies. He defines revelation quite narrowly in the Confessions as “the sense of Information miraculously communicated by voice or vision” (CIS 88). However, he uses the term elsewhere in the broader sense I employ throughout this study (CN IV 5070, CN V 5530, 5977 [f18]). 2. Shaffer rightly challenges the decision to publish Confessions in manuscript format only—with deletions and insertions cluttering the text—in the Shorter Works and Fragments volume of the CC (CIS-CC). All quotes from Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit in this book refer to the published 1840 edition (CIS), unless otherwise noted. 3. Consider references to the project in 1814–1815 (CL III 533; CL IV 588, 590). 4. Op Max c, cv. By this account, the Confessions forms an additional leg of McFarland’s proposed tripod (including Aids to Reflection, The Philosophical Lectures, and Theory of Life) (cxcvii). In my essay “The Quest for System: An Introduction to Coleridge’s Lifelong Project,” I explain that there are many more legs than McFarland admits (Assertion 1–32). 5. CIS, x. The CIS-CC dissociates the Pentad from the text as published in 1840. To my knowledge, no intervening manuscript corrections exist between the manuscript version of the text in CIS-CC and CIS. Further, only one intimation to the Pentad, in the seventh letter, appears in the Confessions (CIS 92 and 92n.). Regardless of who decided to place the Pentad before the letters in the published text (S. T. Coleridge or Henry Nelson Coleridge), the Pentad frequently appears in marginal discussions of the Bible and religion that parallel the theological content of Confessions (e.g., CM V 661–63). Not surprisingly, most of Coleridge’s nineteenth-century readers found the Pentad confusing—Birks, for one, calls it “rather curious and fantastic in its form” (128). Chapter nine discusses nineteenth-century responses to CIS.

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N ot e s 6. On the Word and God, see Boulger 133; Barth, Coleridge and Christian Doctrine 92–98. 7. Newman’s comment first appeared in the British Critic (April 1839) (Prickett, Romanticism and Religion 37).

2 Christ, the Word: The Coleridgean Creed 1. The fifth tenet of Coleridge’s creed develops the authority and inspiration of the Bible. 2. Nicholas Reid provides a concise overview of Coleridge’s work on the Logos in “The Logosophia: How the Logos Acts as Unifying Principle in Coleridge’s Thought” (Assertion 255–80). My emphasis on Coleridge’s shift from Unitarianism to Trinitarianism throughout this chapter is not an effort to patronize the religious views of the early Coleridge, rather I hope to highlight the substantial shift that occurs in his thought by the 1820s (the period of his major work on the Bible and “revealed” religion) (cf. Harding, rev. of Coleridge’s Progress to Christianity 198; Bray 341). 3. On the Unitarian climate in England around this time, see H. W. Piper’s “Coleridge and the Unitarian Consensus,” in Gravil and Lefebure 273–90. 4. On Coleridge’s tendency to associate Unitarianism with Atheism, see Barbeau, “Science and the Depersonalization of the Divine” (Assertion 163–86). 5. McFarland explains that “Platonic philosophy, therefore, in Coleridge’s view, logically prepared the way for the trinitarian Christianity that grounded the interests of the ‘I am,’ along with the interests of the ‘it is,’ in a personalized extramundane deity” (Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition 207). 6. CN I 1710 (ca. December 6, 1803); on Kant, see Ann Loades, “Coleridge as Theologian”; idem, “No Consoling Vision: Coleridge’s discovery of Kant’s a‘ uthentic’ theodicy,” in Watson 95–124. 7. The orthodoxy of Coleridge’s Trinitarianism has been a matter of some discussion by commentators including Shedd, Barth, Hardy, Hedley, and Gregory. 8. On Coleridge’s use of authoritative sources in the Op Max, see James Vigus, “‘With his garland and his singing robes about him’” (Assertion 97–120). 9. By contrast, consider Haney’s discussion of the relationship among sin, ethics, and interpretation (201–09). 10. In 1794, Coleridge proclaimed to Robert Southey that “I am a compleat Necessitarian—and understand the subject as well almost as Hartley himself—but I go farther than Hartley and believe the corporeality of thought—namely, that it is motion” (CL I 137).

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11. Taylor’s Erotic Coleridge highlights Coleridge’s understanding of the social and moral implications of marriage and sexuality (esp. 22–30, 166–84). 12. The principle grounds his rejection of Southey’s plan to bring slaves to assist them in the pantisocracy scheme (CL I 114–15). 13. Coleridge was so pleased with his brief discussion of human apostasy in Aids to Reflection that he bragged to his nephew Edward Coleridge that he had converted his publisher with the work: “Did I tell you, that I had received a letter from my Publisher, announcing to me his conversion by the Aids to Reflection—principally, by the comments on Original Sin and Redemption?” (CL VI 558). 14. On Coleridge’s disparate uses of “will” as moral faculty, choice, and volition, see my article on “The Development of Coleridge’s Notion of Human Freedom” 576–94. 15. Hedley calls Coleridge’s discussion of sin and evil in Aids to Reflection “a typical instance of Coleridge’s linguistic ingenuity” (255). 16. Cf. CN IV 4910; Hedley 255; Robert Brown 49–66. 17. Coleridge rejected the Calvinist position of Jonathan Edwards’s Freedom of the Will (1754): “a Will absolutely passive, clay in the hands of a Potter, destroys all will, takes away its essence and definition” (AR 158–59). Coleridge complains that Edwards’s “World is a Machine” (CN IV 5077). 18. On the will and sin, see Coleridge’s Op Max, esp. sections that incorporate the Essay on Faith (80–96). On original sin and Coleridge’s “anxiety,” see McFarland, Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin 131–32. 19. The third article provides one possible framework for a thematic analysis of Coleridge’s biblical studies. 20. Coleridge follows Priestley in opposing the teachings of the great English theologian Joseph Butler (1692–1752) on redemption in Christ: “To assert therefore with Bishop Butler that Sin is of so heinous a nature that God cannot pardon it without an adequate Satisfaction being made to his justice, and the honour of his Laws and Governments, appears to me not to be Blasphemy only because it is nonsense” (Lects 1795 204). 21. Bate explores this in his insightful intellectual biography (Coleridge 219). 22. For example, Coleridge remonstrates: “The Grotian Paleian Defences of [Christianity] how injurious to [Christianity to] develop” (CN II 2640). 23. Hardy further explains that the purposes of God are the measure and “highest criterion” of Coleridge’s work: “the task was to establish the entire span of knowledge and moral agency in relation to the Logos and Spirit in God, which were both accessible to human beings and yet beyond proof” (Assertion 35).

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3 The Scriptures: The Mirror of Faith 1. Coleridge planned to add an additional letter to the Confessions that would make explicit what is only implicit in this article of his creed. Writing in early 1826, Coleridge claims “I would annex to my eight Letters on the right & superstitious use of the Scriptures a ninth Letter, comparing the Objective, or philogical, and (in the narrower sense of the word, historical Handling of Scripture: and the SUBJECTIVE, and historical in the large & most philosophic sense of History—namely, that which they [sic] Scriptures have by divine Providence become, as a mighty Agent, and into which they may be realized Subjectively—i.e. in the mind & spirit of the Readers & Hearers” (CN IV 5315). Works by Barth, Boulger, Dawn, Harding, Hoffman, Mileur, Murley, Prickett, Shaffer, and Welch indicate the range of recent scholarly discussion on Confessions. 2. Light is a pivotal theme in Coleridge’s writings. He rejects a flattening unity of oneness and instead compares the twofold sense to the unity of light as inclusive of the full spectrum of colors: “The Spiritual Unity in the Bible . . . a pregnant inclusive not a negative exclusive Oneness— such as is the Unity of Light, comprehending the Colors, and infinite shades or intensities of each Color” (CN IV 5399). In Confessions, which uses images of light and darkness throughout, Coleridge describes the Word as the “Light higher than all, even the Word that was in the beginning . . . light for every man, and life for as many as give heed to it” (CIS 9). 3. Wesley encouraged piety in the Methodist societies by searching the Scriptures and putting scriptural holiness into practice through classes (geographically oriented clusters of about twelve individuals each) and bands (even smaller groups of seasoned Methodists) (Heitzenrater 118–19). These small groups, among other activities, studied the Bible and sang Methodist hymns together. Scripture, particularly the psalms, permeates Methodist hymnody (frequently written for the societies by Charles Wesley), a crucial feature of early Methodist practice. Southey’s biography of Wesley, a book that Coleridge called the “favorite of my Library among many favorites,” notes that John Wesley “enjoined that the whole congregation should sing, that there should be no repetition of words, no dwelling upon disjointed syllables, and that they should not sing in parts, but with one heart and voice, in one simultaneous and uninterrupted feeling” (CM V 134; Southey I 133n; II 85). 4. Some dissenters during the nineteenth century, such as the Wesleyans, continued to use the Prayer Book as a supplement to family devotion, long after the text was no longer the central liturgical model used in Sunday worship. Other groups distinguished themselves precisely on their rejection of the Prayer Book. The Bible Christian Society, e.g., was an “organization that proclaimed its independence from Wesleyanism

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5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

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only after protracted struggles over ministerial freedom . . . The name B ‘ ible Christians’ pointed to the contrast between ‘those who in church use Bible and Prayer Book and those who on village green, in farm shed, and everywhere used only or chiefly one book and appealed to it for everything.’” In this way, “Bible Christianity gradually infiltrated the kitchens and barns of small farmers throughout northern Devon, capturing outposts that Wesleyan Methodism and the Established Church had failed to win” (Valenze 144). CM I 414; cf. 440n.681. Wellesley Index speculates that the article may have been written by Francis Jeffrey. The BFBS was so prosperous that it drew criticism from some quarters that its charitable goals were offset by management expenditures (E. Edwards 5–6). On the two Abraham accounts, see Genesis 12:10–20 and 20:1–18. Compare this to the “inferior metal” and “collateral chain” of CN IV 5372. On truth in Enoch, see CM I 468. Coleridge keeps before his readers the importance of understanding the purpose or end of a work such as the Bible. While addressing the problem of infallibility and biblical history in one 1819 notebook entry on Eichhorn, Coleridge maintains that readers need to be “contented to adopt the plain doctrine that the Canonical Books contain as faithful an History of the Doings and Sayings of Men impelled by the Spirit and Truth and Holiness, as written History can be—a History not only adequate but admirably adapted to all the purposes, for this it was intended, and for all really desirable ends” (CN IV 4603). Marsh’s four-volume translation exposed many in England to serious criticism of the unity of many books of the Bible (Rogerson 24, 158–79). Marsh hypothesizes a common Hebrew document for the three authors (II 361). One of the best summaries of the early influence of German critics, including Michaelis, Semler, and Eichhorn, appears in CN III 4401n. Though not a harmony, Milman’s History of the Jews exemplifies this trend in “biblical” literature. Various “lives of Jesus” also appeared during the era. Originally published in three volumes, a supplement was later added in 1821 that extended the scope of the original work. Horne neglected the latest findings of German criticism, yet, even as late as 1860, writers quoted new editions of the volumes with authority in reference to the history of biblical criticism (see “Horne, Thomas Hartwell” in ODCC 791). CM I 802 (emphasis added); on the difference “in kind” between canonical writings and the writings of Apostolic Fathers such as Ignatius or Polycarp, see CM I 816–17.

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17. Coleridge’s commitment to the twofold character of Scripture chastens an overemphasis on the literary sense. Elinor Shaffer assertively moved the discussion of Coleridge’s biblical criticism forward in the 1970s by arguing that Coleridge’s work should be set against the rationalism of the Enlightenment, but she overstates the case at times in her insistence for the mythological reading of Scripture and Coleridge’s alleged abandonment of the claim to biblical inspiration. Shaffer claims that Coleridge’s literary approach “entailed the freedom to amend the H ‘ oly Spirit’ by establishing an accurate text, sifting the historical sources, questioning the traditional ascriptions of authorship and date, scrutinizing the formation of the canon, and comparing the scriptures coolly with the sacred and secular writings of other nations. The significance of this procedure, whether or not it was openly stated in any given case, was simply the abandonment of the claim that the Bible is ‘inspired’” ( ‘Kubla Khan’ 62). Such a view collapses the twofold character of Scripture and too quickly forces Coleridge into a hollow caricature of German higher criticism. 18. Michaelis mentions the Fragments, polemically, when denying the inspiration of the Gospels of Mark and Luke (I 96). 19. Thirlwall included an extensive “Introduction” to the translation. He describes the progression of German biblical criticism since the appearance of Marsh’s Introduction. Thirlwall, aware of the low estimate of German theology in England, apologetically defended the value of Schleiermacher’s work to his English readers: “it may appear to some readers necessary to apologise for the controversy itself, by shewing, what has never been universally or even generally admitted in this country, that it is neither dangerous nor useless” (in Schleiermacher viii). His defense contrasts with the tone of Marsh’s “Preface” thirty years earlier: “The Public is here presented with the translation of a work, which is held in high estimation in Germany, a country at present the most distinguished in Europe for theological learning” (in Michaelis I iii). 20. Certainly Thirlwall recognized that his introduction and translation had the potential for controversy, as letters to his friend Julius Hare (1795–1855) indicate. Despite Hare’s undoubtedly well-intentioned suggestion that Thirlwall soften some of Schleiermacher’s doubts about the authenticity of the Gospel of Matthew in his translation, Thirlwall explains “the suppression of it is a liberty which I feel a scruple in taking” (Thirlwall I 80; November 26, 1824). Later, Thirlwall explains the fuller impact of his decision: “Schleiermacher’s doubt about Matthew is now irrevocable, and if it is likely to do mischief I hardly know how to remedy it. I had not intended in the Introduction to notice any of the details of the book except as far as they may enter into my discussions. But even if I should find an opportune place for touching upon this subject, or, not finding, should make one, I am afraid I should be in danger of making matters worse. The doubt is evident, and cannot be explained away” (I 82–83; November 29, 1824).

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21. Coleridge never explains precisely who is responsible for the popular view of biblical inspiration in England, he only claims that it has its origin with those Christian theologians who wrongly took up an ancient Jewish conception of the Pentateuch (CIS 19). 22. “I am told that this Doctrine must not be resisted or called in question, because of its fitness to preserve unity of faith, and for the prevention of schism and sectarian by-ways!” (CIS 54). 23. Coleridge’s notes on Eichhorn’s Introduction to the New Testament record a frequent complaint: “The infallibility attributed to the Apostles has been scarcely less injurious to Theology than the Infall[ibility] assumed by the Pope has proved to Religion” (CM II 495). 24. Coleridge’s review of Scripture bolstered his belief. The writers refer to their use of other documents in the process of composition and claim that their mental state was clear (CIS 16). Moreover, no biblical testimony exists that speaks for the biblical canon as a whole: 2 Peter 3:16 and 2 Timothy 3:16 are both suspect in his view. On fear and truth, see CN IV 4755. 25. Coleridge’s terminology confuses many readers since the term “revelation” is commonly used in recent theological studies to refer more generally to a form of divine disclosure, whether or not in the form of a divine command. 26. The manuscript version of the “Letters” implies that Coleridge either planned to distinguish revelation from inspiration or inadvertently called “actuation” by its more common name, thereby falling into the linguistic error himself: “confounding two distinct conceptions, Revelation by the Eternal Word, and Actuation of the Holy Spirit” (CIS-CC 1166). 27. The literature on the Coleridgean notion of the symbol is vast and contentious—see McNiece, Masson 128–37, and, especially, J. Robert Barth’s “Past and Present: A Prologue,” in the second edition of The Symbolic Imagination (1–17). Readers should compare Barth’s influential work on the symbol as sacramental encounter to Nicholas Halmi’s (“When is a Symbol not a Symbol?”) delineation of two competing descriptions in Coleridge (sacramental and tautegorical). 28. Coleridge coined the word “tautegorical” in his May 1825 lecture before the Royal Society of Literature, “On the Prometheus of Aeschylus.” Schelling famously used the coinage and praised Coleridge in his work on mythology (SW&F II 1268n.). 29. Halmi’s persuasive work maintains that Coleridge’s use of symbol is muddled (cf. Perry), developing irreconcilable views of the symbol when he attempts to discuss precisely how the Eucharistic elements are consubstantial with Christ: “Whereas in the tautegorical symbol the relations of participation and identity are conflated, in the sacramental symbol they are opposed. The symbol can be tautegorical or sacramental, it appears, but not both” (91).

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30. The spiritual meaning of the biblical text makes more sense than the literary in many cases. On Coleridge’s troubles reading the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis 27, see CN V 6182. 31. The spiritual sense—mediated by the literary sense through the symbolic capacity of language—leads Coleridge to what might otherwise be regarded as merely highfalutin praise for the books of the Bible: “prize them, love them, revere them, beyond all other books!” (CIS 31). On the influence of the Bible on civilization, see CIS 71–72. 32. E.g. CM II 423 and CN V 5521. 33. For example, Coleridge affirmed the use of allegory in Ephesians 5:30–32, a text that draws on Genesis 2:23–24 (AR 264n.61), though he rejects the use of allegory by Jerome (CN V 5688). 34. Consider his comments on the letter and the Spirit in May 1828 (CN V 5867). 35. Storr claims that “[i]t was not Coleridge’s object to lay before the English public the detailed results of the higher criticism, though frequent references to them are scattered over his writings. He probably did not possess the requisite knowledge for such an undertaking” (193).

4 The Scriptures: The Interpretation of the Old Testament 1. While I offer insights into Coleridge’s prose writings on every major category of the Bible (e.g., the Pentateuch, Prophets, Gospels, etc.), I have not attempted to provide either a book-by-book or chapter-bychapter analysis. Such a task is both impossible (since—despite Coleridge’s aim—substantial comments on every book and chapter of the Bible do not exist) and undesirable in light of the scope of my broader interest in Coleridge’s formation of a system of religion. I have also set aside Coleridge’s use of Scripture in the poetic literature, which will indubitably require a separate monograph. Moreover, although Coleridge is almost always reading Scripture with another book or biblical commentary beside him, I have not allowed a discussion of these resources to overtake the larger goals of this chapter. Readers should examine the extensive notes of Kathleen Coburn and Anthony John Harding in the companion volume to the fifth of the Collected Notebooks, which contain innumerable references to many of Coleridge’s likely sources. I have profited immensely from their work. Raymond Brown et al., The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, provides a helpful, scholarly introduction to key terms, genres, and books of the Bible. 2. In The Elements of the Hebrew Language, Hurwitz claims: “What would be thought of an Anatomical Professor who should attempt to explain all the intricacies of the vascular system before auditors, to whom even the structure of the skeleton is as yet unknown! such,

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6. 7.

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however, is the method generally adopted in communicating a knowledge of the Hebrew Language” (iv). The whole of the Old Testament points to the completion in the New just as the presence of lungs, mouth, and nostrils in a fetus “presuppose the atmospheric State to come” (CN V 6292). The passage continues with an anomalous phrase, “the Christian only reads them by the light of the same Spirit, by which they were first dictated. Faith is the Commentator—Christianity the Interpretation.— 27 Jan[uary] 1829” (CN V 5939; emphasis added). The editorial note recommends CM II 561 as a helpful counterpoint to this passage; cf. CN V 5702 (on interpreting Scripture according to Truth). I have elected to follow the divisions of the Hebrew Bible in the course of my treatment of the Old Testament, primarily because, perhaps through the influence of Hurwitz, Coleridge most often follows such a division (CN V 5519; cf. SW&F II 1034–35). CM II 395, 398; CN IV 5116; CN V 6248, 6315, 6353, 6383, 6426 (on the authenticity of the Pentateuch). Cf. the marginalia on Eichhorn’s Introduction to the Old Testament (CM II 369–414), esp. 389–90. One discussion of sacrifice, e.g., leads to curiosity on the nature of blood (CN V 6415). Coleridge’s timetable differs from Eichhorn’s (CN V 6118n). Cf. CN IV 4794 (reading G. F. Creuzer’s Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker and others) and 5219 (where Coleridge, studying Vico’s Scienza nuova, argues “[h]ave we not every (rationally postulable) reason to believe the historic assertion that Moses was learned in all the Learning of the Egyptians?”). The fuller context of the passage is telling: “I am most thoroughly aware that the Bible was given for other & higher purposes than to make us Naturalists: that God never intended to supersede Industry by Inspiration, or the efforts of the rational Understanding by the Revealed Word. Yet I am not ashamed to confess that I am strongly disposed to regard the first Chapter of Genesis, as in some sort an exception” (CN IV 5144). Coleridge holds out hope, nonetheless, in later entries, claiming that “it is impossible to deny a wonderful coincidence in many parts of the Mosaic Cosmogony with the recent deductions of Geology” (CN V 6125; cf. CN III 4485). Coleridge maintains that there is no reason to believe that humanity was created any earlier than six thousand–eight thousand years ago (CN V 5555 [f 36v]). However, he remains uncommitted to the precise age of the earth (CN 5555 [f 30v]); cf. CN IV 4625; CN V 5504 (on Epochs and Nature). Coleridge’s high regard for Böhme is apparent in CM I 616. On the creation accounts and Böhme, see the extended treatment of Genesis 1–3 in SW&F I 790–94; see also CN V 6127 (on Philo and “germinal Ideas”); CN IV 4625n. and Hedley, “Philosophia Trinitatis” (Assertion 213–31) (on the Cabbala).

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13. E.g. CN III 4418; CN IV 4551, 4558, 4625, 4843; CN V 6120; CN IV 4562 (on the independence of Coleridge’s system from the Mosaic account). 14. In a marginal note in Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici, Coleridge distinguishes between the literal (chapter 1) and symbolical (chapter 2) chapters of Genesis: “The first is by Moses himself, the 2nd of far greater antiquity, and probably translated into words from graven Stones” (CM I 783; cf. CN III 4325). 15. CN V 6128, 6129, 6132; cf. 6128 (on the interpretation of the four rivers of Genesis 2). 16. Coleridge’s use of “symbolic or allegorical” indicates his uncertainty. That Coleridge does wholly attempt to understand the logic of the passage is clear, as his discussion of Philo on Genesis 2:5 illustrates (CN V 6126). The editors of CN propose that the use of “germinal Ideas” may owe something to Hurwitz, whose Hebrew Tales (1826) offers a fascinating account of the same passage: “From the first chapter of Genesis, it would appear, that the heavens and earth were made on distinct days; but from the 4th verse of the second chapter, it appears that they were made on the same day. Is this a contradiction? No, said the Hebrew Philosophers . . . they compared the divine fiat to the act of one who throws a handful of seeds of various kinds into the ground. The act of sowing is instantaneous, and one; but the growth and development of the plants are successive” (CN V 6127n.). 17. Cf. CN IV 4702, 4703. 18. Coleridge notes that “the Creator of the First Man and Woman supplied the place of Father, Guardian, and Instructor. Language was taught and at the same time the Social State instituted by GOD, who was for Adam and Eve what Adam and Eve were then capable of being for Cain, and Abel” (CN V 5531). 19. Cf. CN V 5556; SW&F I 794–95. 20. “But understand the narrative of the Institution of Marriage the creation of the Wife, and of the cause and grounds of it in Man’s rational, moral, and yet finite, Being, and thence morally  rationally social—nothing can be more legitimate than the conclusion, or more just and apposite than the cause and motive here assigned for the Law, enacting that ‘Man shall leave &c.’” ( CN V 6132). On God, creation, and the family (SW&F II 1355–56). 21. Graham Davidson develops a fascinating account of Coleridge’s use of sense, love, and consciousness in “Duty and Power: Conflicts of the Will in Coleridge’s Creation of the Self” (Assertion 121–44). 22. He adds, “even 21⁄2 is inconceivable” (CN IV 5104). 23. On the Genesis Flood: CN IV 5116 (reflecting his struggle to come to a “quieting judgment”), 5119 (where he proposes a series of powerful geysers while reflecting on William Buckland’s writings); CN V 6145 (on the questions to ask), 6146 (an extended entry on the

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28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

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plain sense of the meaning of the rainbow); SW&F II 1109–10 (on the planetary conditions for the Deluge); CM III 480 (raises difficulties while reading Lacunza’s The Coming Messiah). On Genesis 16, Coleridge states: “No wonder that this and the following Chapters have been such favorites with the great Painters. Nothing can be conceived more exquisite than the whole story of Hagar. She never appears but under all the finest requisites of a fine Picture” (CN V 6154). Coleridge was not only interested in the history of “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” but also in the formation of human races in relation to Noah (SW&F II 1456ff). Commenting on Genesis 35:20, Coleridge offers the following consideration: “One great impediment to a sound biblical criticism has been the Confounding of the Documental Writings with the Compilation of the same—their arrangement, needful elucidations, and connecting Links, or rather sewing Threads, as in binding a number of Sheets into a Volume . . . if no possible ill consequence can be deduced from the hypothesis that the Pentateuch owes it’s present form as a Book to Samuel or David or to both—the Benefits are obvious—for few indeed are the difficulties which would not disappear or receive an immediate solution.—On the other hand, I confess that without violence to my feeling & judgment I cannot read the biographical fragments or fragmentary Biography of Moses & Aaron, in the first part of Exodus, as contemporaneous with the Subjects of the Biography, much less as Auto-biography” (CN V 6206). Cf. CN V 6163. Elsewhere, Coleridge suspects that a chapter corresponding to Genesis 36 has been lost or “purposely omitted” (CN V 6209). CN V 6193 (on Christ “humanized” before the Incarnation). CN V 6239–40 (a retrospective summation of his 1829 comments on Genesis). CN V 6263 and CN IV 4897 (on the dating of Exodus); CM II 396 (on Eichhorn and Exodus 1–14). Coleridge believes that calling these chapters an “interpolation” would be too modern and misleading. Coleridge maintains that extravagant miracles are only “more proportionate to the Omnipotent who worked them” (CN V 6262). CN V 6260 (on the relation between natural calamities and judgment [as well as a very interesting note on the account of Joshua and the Red Sea]); CN V 5977 (on the plagues as “prognostications”). Coleridge’s remarks in this note are reminiscent of the anti-pantheistic claims of the Opus Maximum: “even as the ancients form’d the Naiads from the rivulets, their Driads from the Mountain, their Aurae and Zephyri from the Gales and Breeze, and an Hemadryad from every Oak” (Op Max 111); cf. Barbeau, “Science and the Depersonalization of the Divine” (Assertion 170–83).

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35. Coleridge illustrates the chain visually in CN V 6261. Though he is intrigued by modern explanations (e.g., strong winds generating the Red Sea passage [CN V 6260]), he generally objects to the attempts of modern commentators to explain miracles by natural means, because the approach misses the spiritual truth (e.g., Henry Hart Milman’s hypothesis in The History of the Jews that the priests poured chemicals in the waters to bring the appearance of blood, etc. [CN V 6262 and n.]). Cf. CN V 6353 (on the “Chain of Providences”). 36. CN V 6250 and n. (a cryptic entry on the propriety of embracing women of varying degrees [e.g., wife, sister, sister-in-law]); CN V 6251 (on the law, sexual intercourse, and holiness); cf. CN III 3293 (an intriguing account of “eternal Obligation” and the Decalogue [Exodus 20], contra Paley). 37. Coleridge may be reading John Webster’s The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft (1677). 38. Leviticus troubled Coleridge. When he finished his study of the first chapters of Exodus, he moved directly over the law to Deuteronomy. Later, in early June 1830, having finished Deuteronomy, Coleridge decided to move backward through the Pentateuch rather than returning to complete Exodus and Leviticus, stating: “It is now past 11oclock—And to morrow, if it pleases God to grant me a tomorrow, I must look over the 3 or 4 last-written Fly-catchers [his notebooks], to ascertain, how far I had proceeded in the regular perusal of Exodus—and mean tomorrow evening to begin with Numbers—& then to Leviticus, that in this moving backward I meet my former Comments.—May God sanctify them & me to the weal of his Church!” (CN V 6326). Later, after completing Numbers and returning to the entry on Leviticus 4, Coleridge grasps at a series of passages from Psalms, Hebrews, and Song of Solomon before turning to what must have been more comfortable territory: the Gospel of John. 39. CN V 6337–436 (on Numbers); CN V 6359, 6375, and 6400 (on these topics). 40. His most recent publication at the time, On the Constitution of the Church and State, testifies to his interest in these matters. 41. On Jehovah and rule in Numbers (CN V 6370, 6337, 6348; CM II 146). 42. Coleridge notes that “[t]he whole subject of Sacrifice is at present a Terra incognita to me. God I doubt not, will give me Light, when it is needful for me” (CN V 6406). 43. Note, again, his method: engage the historical sense and make a decision to wait prayerfully for clarity and “light.” This is precisely the method Coleridge advocates in Confessions: noting the “Light higher than all,” he asserts that he will not “lie for God” but “be thankful for what I have—and wait” (CIS 9–10). 44. CN V 6358 (on Coleridge’s distinction between the narration of facts and the facts narrated).

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45. Coleridge’s struggle with interpreting Numbers is most evident in the legal status of the woman suspected of adultery (Numbers 5:11–31). Coleridge calls this “[t]he most difficult passage in the whole Pentateuch” and later prays for “increased light” to “be able to solve this difficulty.” He eventually finds resolution as “a satisfaction dawning & shooting up it’s horns of Light into my Mind” (CN V 6339–43). 46. Cf. CN V 6284, 6311. 47. Near the completion of Deuteronomy, Coleridge again returns to the “obscure” scene of Moses’ offence: “Is it, that as a People is never wholly free of the guilt of it’s Rulers, so a Ruler of a sinful people is never wholly sinless?—as if to teach both parties, that they must not seek to shift the sin, either on the other.—But the typical sense is most evident, and of awefully deep interest—. Even the least imperfect fulfilment of the Law is still imperfect—there is some one death-spot, wherein the Death lurks—and the Law therefore may lead toward, but cannot enter into the Holy Land” (CN V 6321). 48. CM II 399. 49. Coleridge also compares the Jordan episode with that at the Red Sea (CN V 6260). 50. CN V 6787; CM II 897 (on Joshua 10). 51. CM I 422 (on the dating of Judges). 52. CN V 6616 (on Christianity before Christ). 53. CM I 823 (on interpretation and the errors of the Understanding). 54. CN III 4116 and n. (on Deborah’s song and repetition in poetry). 55. On individuation and the scope of history, Kooy 200–06. 56. For example, CN V 5496, 5804; CM I 423–24; CM II 33, 1108. 57. Coleridge discusses the twelve Minor Prophets infrequently in the notebooks, though his numerous allusions to them demonstrate his familiarity (e.g., CN IV 4826; CN V 5519, 5625, 6867; CM I 441–45; CM II 372; CM III 457). Coleridge regularly draws on the Minor Prophets when discussing Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel (e.g., CN V 5687, 5704) and they appear in various assessments of Old Testament prophecy and the role of Christ as Jehovah (e.g., CN V 5688, 5691, 5786, 6076, 6091). 58. CN V 5519, 5520, 5682–87; CM I 434–40; CM III 110, 462 (examples of Coleridge’s treatment of the historical composition and authorship of these works). 59. Coleridge recommends preparatory studies for the new believer: “the gradual expansion, the Growth of Faith,—root and stem, is exchanged for the Shower-bath Descent of the Christian Scheme on the naked & unprepared Catechumen/!—” (CN V 5520). 60. CM II 410; cf. CM I 437 (on visions and symbols in Ezekiel). 61. Cf. CN V 5689 and 5702 where Coleridge claims that “a holy God will not give any but conditional prophecies.” True miracle is found not in foretelling, but in the activity of the prophet (CN V 6810).

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62. 63. 64. 65.

66.

67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

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N ot e s Elsewhere, he denounces “the Wish for more . . . & this Wish it is, which we seek to gratify in the Prophecies of special Events, not that Faith in a God, which is pre-supposed in the very conception of the possibility of a Prophecy” (CM II 405). CN V 5701, 6764, 6765 (on the role of Christ). CN V 5684 (on this passage and the “twofold character of our Saviour”). Cf. CN V 6794, 6798. Coleridge’s grappling with Isaiah 53 raised serious doubts about his own rejection of the language of sacrifice in speaking of the atonement. In 1833 Coleridge wonders, “Is my Idea of Redemption compatible with the doctrine of atonement by the sufferings of Jesus Christ? Does my System give a distinct Causativeness, a direct efficiency, to ‘the stripes by which we are healed?[’]” (CN V 6790; cf. 5685, 6503, 6794, 6798, 6799). One of Coleridge’s most remarkable, forward-thinking statements is that converted Jews ought to be permitted to form distinct communities in order to preserve the Abrahamic covenant: “O a grosser, a more unhappy, I had almost said, a wickeder error never prevailed, than that which requires of a Jew to abandon the covenant of Abraham as the condition of his receiving the Covenant of Christ—to cease to be a Jew in order to become a Christian! On the contrary, it is my full and steadfast conviction, that if a thousand Jewish Families were converted, it would be their duty to form themselves into a Jewish Church, distinct from, tho’ federally and with fraternal affection allied with, the Gentile Churches.—And a Blessing to both would this Interdistinction without breach of spiritual Union be!” (CN V 6412). Coleridge recommends John Davison for the task (CM II 153). Cf. CN V 5707, 6520. CN IV 4913 (on the fallibility of the compilers of the Writings); cf. CN IV 5163 (on Nehemiah as a “glorious” subject for an artist), 4870 (on Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles vis-à-vis I and II Esdras); CN III 3754 and CN V 6486 (on Song of Solomon and its spiritual interpretation); CN III 3614 and CN V 6608 (on Ecclesiastes and its meaning); CIS 82 (on Esther’s legendary character). CN IV 5433; CN V 6364; CM I 429. Coleridge expresses a similar sentiment, comparing the content of the Psalms to Greek mythology, in CN V 6433 and CM I 430. CN V 5804, 6731; CM I 431, 707 (on authorship and dating). Coleridge’s marginalia are in both his Bible (CM I 427–32) and Prayer Book (CM I 705–10). CN IV 4625; CN V 5795, 5796; CM I 708–09 (on wording difficulties). Coleridge warns against those who would pervert the “plain meaning of the words” by mistaking “the imaginative Metaphors and tropes of a Lyric Poem for a matter of fact Statement” (CN V 6530). Cf. CN IV 5433; CN V 6707.

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77. A view that Coleridge claims to have expounded in the (lost) “Calne Sermon” (CN V 5727n.) 78. Cf. CN V 5732. 79. CM III 34 (on Ps. 22), 3890; CM I 427; CN IV 5350; CN V 6634, 6734; CM I 706, 708 (on Christ and Jehovah). 80. E.g. CN V 6330, 6432; CM I 427 (on Ps. 17) and 710 (on Ps. 118). 81. Coleridge thinks many of these psalms have been misinterpreted. All, save 137:9 (“Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones”), are capable of a spiritual interpretation (CN V 6446, 6721, 6744). 82. CN V 6455 and 6457 (on enthusiasm), 6454 (on the Psalms as a source of “Life”); Vallins 58–61 (on enthusiasm and fanaticism). 83. CN V 5698 (on nations). 84. On S. J. Cohen’s four volume Die Heilige Schrift mit möglichster Correctheit des hebräischen Textes (Hamburg, 1824–27), see CN V 5795 and n., 5802, 5807, 5810; CM I 425–26; CM II 922–24. 85. Jasper notes that “[i]n a sense, all these notebooks of 1827–34 are the prayer of a man who is tragically aware of his own inadequacies, and whose desperately won faith in the Divine mystery was the culmination of a life-long intellectual struggle” (134). 86. CN IV 4869; CM II 156, 375–76 (on Daniel and canonicity). 87. For stories appearing in chapters 13 and 14, see “Apocrypha” later; on the use of a biographical preface similar to Isaiah, see CN V 5519, 6824. 88. CN IV 5287; CN V 5829, 6824. 89. Cf. CN V 5568. 90. CN V 6532, 6765; cf, CN IV 5286 (on Isaiah 40ff). 91. Cf. CN IV 5439. 92. For example, CIS 25, 54; cf. CL VI 568–71; CN V 6869 (on the contemporary problem); CM III 417 and n. (on Coleridge’s rejection of Lacunza and Irving on Daniel); CN IV 5123 (on the preponderance of mathematicians such as Newton as Daniel’s interpreters). 93. Positive, if vague, appreciations do occasionally appear, e.g.,CN IV 4909 (“The Bible is all Life”); 4912 (on measures of time in Daniel as “proper to the Soul in the state of inward Vision”). 94. Cf. CN IV 4615; CN V 5752, 6026; “Excursus Note 3,” in AR 552–53. 95. Cf. CN V 6531. 96. Cf. CN V 6868. 97. Cf. CN IV 4615; CN V 5852; CM III 111–12. 98. The twentieth-century discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has overturned some prior assumptions about the unavailability of these works in Hebrew. 99. Cf. SW&F II 1485. 100. Coleridge often uses the term “Apocrypha” to designate a range of writings: not only those texts commonly called the “Apocrypha” as

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found in the Authorized Version, but also other pseudepigraphal works both before and after Christ (e.g., Enochic literature, the Epistle of Barnabas, etc.; CN V 5593, 5595, 5715, 5716, 5729, 5745). 101. Coleridge alludes to the Wisdom of Solomon (more frequently than other Apocryphal texts) in reference to his firm belief that canonical works do not discuss a promise of life after death (e.g., CN IV 4708; CN V 5682; CM II 1075). On the tendency to amplification in recollecting historical events, see CN V 5543.

5 The Scriptures: The Interpretation of the New Testament 1. Less frequently, Coleridge uses a two-part division for the New Testament: “Apostolic and earliest post-apostolic” (CL VI 784). The Book of Acts, according to a this alternate division, falls into two categories: (i) an extension of the “Evangelical Triad” and (ii) a prelude to the Epistles, as the memoirs of Paul. 2. Eichhorn’s notion of a prior Gospel recording the testimony of the Apostles interested Coleridge for a time, but its appeal faded after his reading of Thirlwall’s “Introduction” to Schleiermacher’s Critical Essay on Luke. By 1827, Coleridge confidently claims, “I have never attached much credit and now attach none, to Eichhorn’s assertion of a Book entitled, The Marks of the Messiah—and if less than zero could exist, to the supposition of a Protoevangelion composed by the 12 Apostles conjointly, Matthew being their Clerk or Secretary” (CN V 5542). Elsewhere, Coleridge mocks Eichhorn’s skepticism: the “Urevangelium is a downright Will o’ the Wisp of Eichhorn/ It is for ever leading him out of his way, and [has] undoubtedly rendered his Introduction a work of much less value than with his great Learning and Acuteness it would have been if this Fancy had not fascinated his Judgement” (CM II 447). Coleridge found the “form” of Eichhorn’s theory more objectionable than the “substance,” and he remained attached to the notion that a shared Apostolic testimony lies behind the Gospel narratives. 3. Cf. CM II 451. 4. Coleridge worries that by detaching the sayings of Christ from their original context, some loss may occur (CN V 6063, 6064, 6072). 5. CN IV 4603, 5427 (on written history). 6. Through the Synoptic Gospels, the historical sense of Christianity was “made a fact of History” because the Apostles were called to be witnesses (CM I 446; CN V 5755). Coleridge compares the various Gospels to the availability of a story faithfully reported in multiple newspapers in his own day (CN V 5558).

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7. Johann Gottfried Herder’s carefree approach to the Gospels proves the point: “All this runs [g]lib as cream” (CM II 1056–57). Elsewhere, Coleridge bluntly (though eloquently!) denounces Herder as “a paltry Juggler, a tricksy gaudy Sophist, a rain-bow in the Steam of a Dunghill” (CN IV 5334). 8. Luke wrote without any knowledge of an account to the Hebrews (i.e., the earliest version of the Gospel according to St. Matthew). Coleridge distinguishes between Luke, who received his materials from eyewitnesses, and Matthew and Mark, who relied on the reports of converted Jews who returned to Palestine (see CM II 436–37 and n.11; CL VI 611; CN V 5598). 9. Cf. CN IV 4603 (on Luke 9:51–18:14 [“the Journey to Jerusalem”] and history); CM II 438; CN V 5538 (on Coleridge’s view of Luke and Marcion). 10. Cf. CN V 5543 (f17), 5549, 5602. 11. On the difficulties of reconciling John and Paul with Matt., Mark, and Luke, see CN V 5840, 6062. Noteworthy passages on Luke include CN III 3867 (on “Textual Proofs of the Divinity of the Messiah”); CN IV 4611 (on duty), 5320; and CN V 5667, 5728 (on Christ’s exposition in Luke 24:27, 44–45), 5487 (Jesus before Pilate), 5561, and 5572 (on the Gerasene Demoniac and psychology in Luke 8:26–39 [cf. CN V 6643; in relation to psychology and healings in Acts, see CN V 5836, 5877, 5929]), 5601 (on Luke 5 and the calling of the disciples); 5604 (symbolic interpretation of new wine in Luke 5), 5614 (on Luke 14), 5625 (on John the Baptist and Elijah [cf. CN V 6867]), 5616 (on the kingdom of God), 5951 (on the ascension), 5971 (Coleridge calls the praying mantis an emblem of the harlot in the account of the prodigal son in Luke 15), 6018 (on “Son of Man” cometh in Luke 12), 6270 (the centurion’s address in Luke 7 the perfect enthymeme); CM I 455–56 (marginalia on Luke in his personal Bible). 12. I complete my account of Acts in the “Epistles” section later, with reference to the ministry of Paul. 13. The account of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 is a difficult hurdle for Coleridge. On Acts 2–6, see CN IV 5169, 5242; CN V 5527, 5632, 5776, 5780, 5788, 5789, 5856, 5958; CL VI 784; CM I 235. 14. The passage feels different to Coleridge (CN V 5944, 5943). Some other passages of interest in Acts include CN IV 4687 (Acts 10:34–35), 5063 (Acts 15:28 and the church); CN V 5790 (Acts 8 and Stephen’s speech), 5841 (Acts 10), 5849 (Acts 12:22–23 and angels), 5851–54 (Acts 13–14), 5935 (Acts 21:18–37 on James and Paul); CN V 5776–5944 (extended commentary); CM I 458–59 (marginalia on Acts) CM II 492–93 (on miracles and Christ). 15. For example, CN III 3353, 3888, 4183. 16. His view is likely based on the longer process of composition of the canonical Matthew: CN V 5538 (Mark seems to be third composed), 5542 (Eichhorn praised for recognizing that Mark is not an abridgement

188

17.

18.

19.

20. 21. 22.

23.

24.

25.

N ot e s of Matthew), and 5543 (Mark is alternately labeled third [f 14v] [for following the Syro-chaldaic version of Matt] and second [f 15] [as preceding the canonical version of Matthew). Coleridge intimates Markan priority for Matthew at CN V 5558 (f 55). For example, CN V 5542. Thus, Mark could have been lost with little or no damage to Christianity (CN V 5560). For typical comments, see CN V 6017 (on Mark 8–9); 6252 (on Mark 10:5); CM II 570 (on Mark 9). Coleridge believes that the Gospel of Matthew could not have been written by either the Apostle or any other Apostle (CN V 6077; CL VI 784; CN III 3879). Coleridge cites Hug’s Einleitung in die Schriften des neuen Testaments, which he likely knew through Thirlwall and Schleiermacher. He also attempted to procure a copy through his friend Charles Aders (CN IV 5324). Cf. CN V 5542, 5545. CL VI 611 (on the prophetic character of the work). On Coleridge’s many attempts to work out the composition of Matthew, see CN V 5546 (on Origen and Matthew), 5592 (on the possibility of different Gospels of the same name), 5593 (on the authority gained in later centuries), CM II 448 (in marginalia on Eichhorn). Coleridge believes that Matthew’s high Christology is irreconcilable with the Unitarian view of Jesus as a mere man (CN V 6067). Numerous notes consider the commission of Peter in Matthew 16 (CN IV 5169, 5224, 5335; CN V 5524, 5527, 5918). Judas, an “enigma” among the disciples, fascinates Coleridge (CN V 6104–06; CM II 1060). Other notes worth consulting on Matthew include CN IV 5297 (on Jonah); CN V 5989 (on the ascension), 6066 (on Matthew 7:15–20 and true religion), 6076 and 6091 (on Elijah and John in Matthew [cf. CN V 6867]), 6092 (on Matthew 20 and parable of laborers), 6093 and 6095 (on will and prayer), 6098 (historical interpretation of Matthew 24), 6099–6100 (on the “coming of the Lord”), 6101 (on morality contra Utilitarians in Matthew 26:6–13); CM I 448–54 (marginalia on Matthew in his Bible). In one early note, Coleridge claims that “[t]he false Gospels concerning his Infancy never appear to have obtained the least credit with any number of Christians in any age of Christianity” (CN III 3779). On the other hand, the infancy narratives highlight the “peculiar something in his whole most wonderful character” and the early recognition of his divinity (CM III 36; CN V 5876). The infancy narratives were a matter of critical concern during the period, as Schleiermacher’s scrutiny of the Gospel of Luke indicates. Schleiermacher concludes of these passages that “even in the historical part there is much which will not admit of being understood as literal narrative” (25). The two different infancy narratives, in Luke and Matthew, provide the best example of the way different stories emerge from the same

N ot e s

26.

27.

28.

29. 30.

31.

189

materials (CN IV 5240). Coleridge hypothesizes that the infancy narratives may be responsible for modern harmonists, with their “disgraceful contortions & snaky lubricities.” On Coleridge and the Cabbala, see Fulford, Coleridge’s Figurative Language, esp. 130–62; Hedley, “Philosophia Trinitatis” (Assertion 213–31). An insight from Jacob Rhenferd’s Opera Philologica (1722), who maintains that “[The ancient Jews] believed, and declared, that good Mother Eve bore a new offspring after the death of good Abel, and that at the same time she did indeed hope the Messiah would now surely be born, the promised seed, and that other, or o ‘ f the other,’ that is, of noble origin” (ed. trans.; CN V 5540n.; cf. CM IV 242–60). CN V 6630. Elsewhere, Coleridge suspects that the infancy narratives evolved from either a late-first-century “poetic Romance” of “allegorico-cabalistic” nature or, “may it not be sinful to permit the suggestion!,” Mary herself, having recalled some vision or trance: “And yet if this had been the case, it is strange that John, with whom she resided, should not have alluded to it in his own Gospel account” (CN IV 5075). The two narratives are ultimately irreconcilable, “the truth of the one involves the falsehood of the other.” Ed. trans. In early 1829, Coleridge weighed the possible arguments for and against the dogma of Mary’s perpetual virginity. On one hand, (i) the language of both Matthew 13:53–58 and Mark 6:1–6 are rather awkward if intended to refer to Jesus’ cousins and (ii) Jesus is never referred to as the “only” son of Joseph and Mary (cf. CN V 5539 [on Joseph’s probable death before Jesus entered public ministry]). On the other hand (commenting on the traditional view of Jerome and others), “James” may refer to the son of Alphaeus, indicating that “brother” can mean “cousin” in Scripture (CN V 5946). His conclusion relies on dating. If the Synoptics are from the Apostolic age, then the preponderance of the evidence favors the traditional interpretation. But if they are post-Apostolic, then, he proposes, the names of Jesus’ true brothers simply had not been preserved and “those of the more prominent & distinguished Cousins would be substituted” (CN V 5948). Coleridge favors the former view (affirming “cousins”), but the ambiguous phrasing weighs heavily against the apostolicity of a dogma of Mary’s perpetual virginity (CN V 5949). Coleridge argues that John and Paul date the coming of the Logos from the baptism by John, “all enquiries into the previous state & circumstances of our Lord, marked a fleshly mind, an absence of Faith, and a womanish curiosity” (CN V 5950). In marginalia on John Donne’s “Sermons Preached Upon Christmas-Day,” Coleridge claims, “But were it asked of me—Do you then believe our Lord to have been the Son of Mary by Joseph? I reply—It is a point of religion

190

32.

33. 34.

35.

36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

N ot e s with me to have no belief one way or the other—I am in this way like St Paul more than content not to know Christ himself [according to the flesh]. It is enough for me to know, that the Son of God ‘became flesh’” (CM II 271). Other notable references to the infancy narratives include CN IV 5060 (on Joan of Kent and the veneration of Christ), 5228, 5372; CN V 5568, 5592, 5596 (on religious honors to Mary), 6630 (on the Nestorian and the potentially adoptionistic implications of Coleridge’s position). “What one article of the Christian Creed in its most comprehensive form would be touched!/Of the faith preached by Luther at least not one, except the very point, I am now agitating—viz. the inexplicable tenet of the inspiration or rather the revelation of every sentence, word and syllable of the Bible from Genesis to the Apocalypse” (CN IV 5372). Cf. CN IV 5169. Against the claim that the Evangelists only intended their work for a few close friends, Coleridge remonstrates: “so they put down a power of silly fictions, and the ridiculous fancies that the Palestine Vulgar entertained of their great Master & his Actions!!—Verily, I can think of no fancy more whimsical than that of selecting an intimate friend for the Confidant of one’s Lies!” (CN V 5562). CN III 3886–87 (on faith and the cause of miracles); CN V 5600 (Coleridge’s high regard for Luke’s treatment of miracles), 6071 (on miracles and morality in Matthew 8:34). Cf. CN V 5777. Coleridge distinguishes between the objective and subjective character of New Testament miracles: the objective accounts for the appearance of Providential events, while the subjective is the miraculous meaning assigned to the event by the Understanding (CN V 5977). Coleridge affirms the authenticity of the Feeding of the Five Thousand (likely on the authority of John’s Gospel), though the miracle lacks the visual qualities of an eyewitness account (CN V 5978). He is surprised, however, that Paul fails to allude to the scene in his rebuke of the Corinthians “for their selfish Conduct at the Meal before the Eucharist.” On the twelve baskets as representative of the Disciples, see CN V 6718. CN V 6068 (on Matthew 8:4), 6089 (on Matthew 16:20), 6644 (Matthew 9:30), 6097 (Matthew 22:41–46). Cf. CN V 5323, 6048, 6097, 6573. “It would inflict a sharper pang than the Loss of any other portion of outward Evidence, on my mind, were I compelled to entertain a doubt of the Authenticity of the 4th Gospel” (CN V 5069). For example, regarding the Eucharist; cf. CN V 6492 (f24). On the likely influence of Paul, see CN V 6492 (f26ff). Though guidance in prayer is always sought, earlier entries lack the certainty of later ones (CN III 4183; CN V 6546). For example, CN V 5730.

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191

44. Coleridge believes that John 21:1–14 is by the Apostle, but remains open to the possibility that the chapter is by John’s successor at the see of Ephesus (CN V 5601; cf. CM I 492, 515). Though Coleridge is uncomfortable marking any verse with “the degrading or even the questioning Obelisk,” he also wonders if John 4:22 and John 18:6 are glosses on the text (CN V 5731, 5756; CM I 457). 45. Coleridge associates John and Genesis in CN IV 4843 and CN V 6493; cf. CN V 5721 (on the twofold sense with respect to John and the Synoptics). 46. Cf. CN V 5678; CM II 478–79 (contra Eichhorn). 47. CM II 456–57; CN V 5530 (on revelation and Reason). 48. In late December 1830, Coleridge (reading John 15) links the magnum opus to his “desire to complete a commentary on John’s Gospel which . . . often prompts a desire to live, I should not otherwise feel” (CN V 6583); cf. CN III 3824 (on John and Plotinus); CN IV 4673 (on John and “The Logosophic System and Method”). 49. Coleridge’s resolute belief in the Trinity conflicts with his struggle to discover “the distinct personal Subsistence of the Holy Ghost” in the Gospel of John, since the use of “Spirit of Truth” is better regarded as a reference to Christ; still, the church was right to infer the “Idea of the Trinity,” since the Trinity is “the only possible form, under which the Divinity of the Redeemer could be reconciled with the Unity of the Godhead; and the personality . . . of the Spirit proceeding a necessary term in the Idea of the Trinity” (CN IV 5301; cf. CN IV 5344; CN V 5613, 5751, 6574). 50. There are innumerable notes on the Word and frequently with allusion to John. Notable entries include CN IV 4870, 5172; CN V 5522, 5820, 6491, 6496, 6622; CM II 458; on the connection between life and mind, see CN V 5679, 5808, 6488, 6583. Beer claims that “any phenomenon which could be described in terms of the first chapter of St. John’s gospel was seized upon” (Coleridge, the Visionary 287). 51. For example, the chapter on “FAITH and CONSCIENCE” in “Fragment 1,” Op Max 57–79. 52. Coleridge’s difficulties with the burgeoning Methodist movement may owe something to his analysis of qualitative growth. On the righteousness of the individual, see CN V 5825. 53. The verse preserves an important distinction for Coleridge: Christ alone deserves unique esteem as the Son of God, even though his redemption allows divine light to come to all true Disciples; see CN V 5978, 5865, 6512; cf. CN IV 4984 (on redemption and will); CN V 5556 (on Christ as second Adam and John 6:46; 14:9, 10; 10:15), 5733 (on John 5:19). On John and the infancy narratives, see CN V 5950; CM III 610. 54. Coleridge, exasperated with Unitarianism in this entry, notes that “for the Unitarians, I say, the whole of my system in all it’s parts must be

192

55. 56. 57.

58. 59.

60.

61. 62. 63.

64. 65.

66.

67.

N ot e s pure jargon, Rosicrucian Abracadabra! . . . The chasm between us is so wide, that so far from any the dimmest prospect of joining hands across it, we cannot even make our voices intelligible” (CN V 5814); CN V 6515, 6568 (on Unitarianism better called “Psilanthropists”), 6595 (on Unitarians and Calvinists on redemption [“Extremes meet”]). Cf. CN V 5983. Cf. CN V 6502 (on Paulus’s comical interpretation of John 4). “I have no objection to take miracles as the appropriate proof that Jesus was the Christ; but the belief in the Christ must be produced before & by other means—/—How can Miracles prove the fallen state of human Nature, or the existence of God, or the scheme of Redemption, or the necessity of it?” (CN III 3804). “Salvation from Salivation, and conversely Salvation from Salve-ation” (CN IV 4854). Note the striking resemblance to Coleridge’s famous exhortation in Aids to Reflection, “How is [Christianity] to be proved? . . . TRY IT” (AR 202). CN IV 4985 (on miracles and proof); CN V 5731 (on John 4:48 and faith); 6521 (that the “greater witness” of John 5:36 was not principally “outward Miracles”). CN V 5594 (on difficulties in the resurrection account and Paley). Consider Coleridge’s marginalia on Herder’s Von der Auferstehung, als Glauben, Geschichte und Lehre (CM II 1072–88). He continues, if so, “then why this miracle in particular? Why not Lazarus & c—&c—” (CN III 3581); cf. CN V 5814, 6553 (contra Priestley’s conception of matter and spirit); CM II 832 (on the Jewish belief in the resurrection). The event is only alluded to in John (CN V 5737 [on John 6:62]). If there had been no ascension, some may have argued that the resurrection was merely “a resuscitation from a trance or suspension of Life.” Moreover, “we should ask, how long Christ lived afterwards? What became of his body?” (CN V 6030). Coleridge, noting that “[l]ife begins in detachment from Nature and ends in union with God. The adorable Author of our Being is likewise it’s ultimate End,” claims: “I doubt not, since our Lord’s Actions, especially after his resurrection, were all symbolical and instructive, that this was one Reason for our Lord’s Retiring from the Sensible into the Spiritual Sphere appearing to the Disciples as an Ascent thro’ the Air” (CN V 5748). Coleridge frequently invokes the raising of Lazarus in discussions of the Resurrection of Christ (CN V 5745, 5983; CM II 315). He wonders, too, whether the ascension was a prerequisite for the resurrection of the saints (CN V 5503, 5526). Coleridge makes a similar claim elsewhere: “I seem to understand (as the reward of many years’ meditation) the whole & in all it’s parts . . . I find a consistent & sublime sense in every verse, and the

N ot e s

68.

69.

70.

71. 72.

73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

82.

193

connection of the Thoughts—tho’ I doubt not, that it will if God prolong my life, be the means of conveying or awaking more & other treasures of divine knowledge” (CN V 6546). On Coleridge’s attempts to explain John’s account of the feeding, see CN V 5978, 6526. For an earlier consideration of the clamoring for a “sign,” see CN III 3846 (cf. 3805 [on the distinction between signs and miracles] and CN V 5983 [on providential coincidences]). Cf. Matthew 26:26–29; Mark 14:22–25; Luke 22:14–20; 1 Corinthians 11:23–25. The feeding of the five thousand is an example of partaking of the body and blood of Christ, even before the formal pattern of the Institution (CN III 3964; CN IV 5126 [on John 6 and Eucharist]). Coleridge wrote numerous entries on the Eucharist. Several directly linked to John 6 include CN III 3847 (on transubstantiation and Eucharist); CN V 5737 (on John 6:62), 5741 (on John 6 and Egyptian ritual), 6530 (on Moses and the bread from heaven), 6546 (on John 6:62 and ascension), CM I 673 (on objects of sense and spiritual realities); cf. CN V 6565 (on symbols and washing of feet in John 13). See also, Barth, Coleridge and Christian Doctrine 168–81 and, by contrast, Halmi “When is a Symbol not a Symbol?: STC on the Eucharist.” Cf. CN III 3803. The notebook entries on various chapters of John are too numerous to highlight here. He commented on the Gospel as a unit no less than two times in the late notebooks (January–March 1828 and October 1830–January 1831). Cf. CN V 5594. For example, CN V 5942–44. Coleridge’s view may further reflect the influence of Martin Luther, whose “Preface” to the New Testament makes a similar claim (Dillenberger 18–19). The postscript appears only in the first edition. Cf. CN V 6019. Cf. CN V 6006, 6008. Coleridge mistakenly writes of “Cornelius’s” dream instead of “Ananias’s” in this note. CN V 6055–56 (on Paul’s knowledge of the Gospel and his conversion experience). Coleridge’s emphasis on toleration may provide further evidence of his place as the Father of the Broad Church movement in England. On Acts and Paul, see CN V 5873 (Acts 17:3 and Paul’s connection to the Epistle to the Hebrews), 5875 (Acts 18:18 and Paul’s Nazarene vow as symbolic act), 5938–40 (on Christianity and Old Testament prophets), 5941 (Acts 28:28 and Christianity “as a Light”). Coleridge requires three separate attempts to begin his commentary on Romans (CN V 5945, 5955, 6002). As with so many other biblical books, Coleridge often turns to Eichhorn’s Introduction to the New

194

83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88. 89.

90.

91.

N ot e s Testament for knowledge of the literary sense (e.g., CN V 5955, 6002). Cf. CN V 5593. Coleridge’s use of the “cinque-spotted” insect also appears in BL I 124. Coleridge questions the force of the Authorized translation of Romans 1:3 (CN V 6005). Cf. CN V 6009. In addition to the late series of notebook commentaries on Romans (CN V 5945–6013, esp. 6002–13), see CN III 3904 (Romans 4–5), 4487 (Romans 14:9 contra Unitarianism), CN IV 4677 (Romans 9), 4769 (Romans 9 on Israel and Christianity), 4836 (Romans 9 on nations and individuals); CN V 5475 (Romans 8 on Christ in Paul), 5996 (on redemption), 6012 (on the Logos); CM I 232 (on “saved” in Romans 10—reading Richard Baxter), 459–61 (Bible marginalia), 922 (on Paul’s concern for his countrymen). References to I and II Thessalonians include (often with discussion of death), CN III 3881; CN IV 4183, 5377; CM I 467, 494. Glimpses of brilliance occasionally appear with direct or indirect reference to 1 Corinthians. He refers to the centrality of the Eucharist occasionally: commenting on 1 Corinthians 10:16–17 in November 1827, e.g., Coleridge compares the need “to combine the Light with a Life” with the Christian sacraments: “Hence it is that we need Baptism () but once; but the Eucharist daily” (CN V 5664; cf. CN III 4044; CN V 5978, 6522). Several intriguing references to 1 Corinthians 15 also appear (with varying emphases): CN III 3320 (on soul and body vis-à-vis Plato), 3976 (on the self); CN IV 4626 (on the resurrection of the body), 5077–78 (1 Corinthians 15:28 on hell as a “Mystery of Love”); CN V 5745 (and resurrection of the dead), 6030 (and lack of reference to the ascension); CM II 469 (on resurrection of the dead). Other passages of interest include CN III 3517 (on mysteries); CN V 5741 (on 1 Corinthians 1:30), 6020 (on 1 Corinthians 12:14 and canon); CM I 461–62 (Bible marginalia); CM III 6 (on offices of the church in the form of a Pentad). Coleridge’s friend Edward Irving (1792–1834) may play some role in his interpretation of Paul during this time. Irving had translated the Spanish Jesuit Manuel Lacunza’s The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty in 1827, and Coleridge wrote marginal comments in his copy around that time (CM III 415–82). On the historical context of the letters to Corinth, see CN V 6045. CN V 6022, 6023, 6024 (on language difficulties in 1 Corinthians). Almost every comment on 2 Corinthians incorporates a linguistic concern: CN V 6033 (2 Corinthians 3:16 on the Holy Spirit), 6034 and 6040 (2 Corinthians 7:11 on revenge and the redemption of the body; cf. CM I 462), 6036 (2 Corinthians 8:18 on the Evangelist), 6037 (on 2 Corinthians 8 and Paul’s anxiety), 6038 (2 Corinthians 9:8–15 and Paul’s anxiety potentially hindering a passage of “unspeakable value

N ot e s

92.

93.

94.

95. 96. 97.

98.

99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

104.

105.

106.

195

to the Church”), 6039 (2 Corinthians 10 as difficult but exquisite), 6041 (2 Corinthians 10:12 on Understanding and sleep), 6042 (2 Corinthians 11 and Paul’s struggle with Corinth). Coleridge proposes a course of argument against “glossolalia” in 1828: “first to prove from the N.T. itself, that no such Miracle ever existed—2nd—the senselessness of the miracle in this first instance—3—it’s worse than uselessness—4. it’s contraryness to all Analogy” (CN V 5775; cf. 5928). Paul’s claim in 1 Corinthians 14:18 (“I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all”) is difficult for Coleridge to understand. He prefers the notion that “ecstatics were accustomed to speak in the characters of the absent or the departed or of supposed Angels” than any other view (CN V 6029; cf. 6021). On similar difficulties with the meaning of “prophecy” in 1 Corinthians, see CN V 6024, 6028. On 2 Corinthians 12 and the doctrinal “end” of miracles, see CN V 6043. Technically, the quote refers to Ephesians, Colossians, and Galatians along with John’s Gospel. Yet Coleridge often discusses Philippians in the midst of the others, indicating the close connection between them in his own mind (see esp. CN V 6046–61). CN V 6048; CM II 498 (on Christology in these works). Cf. CM I 468–69. CN V 6027 (on the relationship between grace and faith). Other notes of interest on Galatians include CN III 3852 (Galatians 5:12 and literalism); CN V 6055–61; CM I 463 (on Galatians 1:6 and 3:19–20); CM II 495–96 (commenting on Eichhorn’s Neue Testament). Other significant entries on Ephesians include CN IV 5072 (on a doctrine of the Spirit vis-à-vis Seneca), 5240 (allusion to Ephesians 3 & 6), 5348 (implied in entry on marriage and sacraments); CN V 6355 (on Christ as the object of prayer in Ephesians and Col.). CN IV 5396 (on Col. 2:2–3). Cf. CN V 6049–54 (on Philippians). CN V 6793 (on Philippians 2 and Socinianism). Philemon is not the subject of comment in the late notebooks. Coleridge wonders why there is not “a single hint of the duties of obedience due from all Bishops to the Bishop of Rome—not a hint concerning the CENTER of Unity, the Unity of the Churches as of so many Units.” CM IV 485–86 and n.11; CN IV 5347 (on Schleiermacher). On the Pastorals: CN III 3857 (on 1 Timothy 3:16); CN IV 5240, 5241, 5312 (on the lack of positive purpose in these writings), 5372; CM I 459, 490, 532–33. CN IV 5353n; CM II 499 (on the influence of Eichhorn and Hone’s Apocryphal New Testament); CN IV 5352–53, 5355; CN V 5991 (on comparisons with Barnabas). CM I 467; CM II 563–64, 706; CM III 19–20.

196 107. 108. 109. 110.

111.

112.

113.

114.

115.

116. 117.

N ot e s Cf. Op Max 57–96; SW&F II 834–44, 845–47. CN IV 5269 (on types of Christ). CM VI 306–07. A curious note of 1833–34, discussing Christology in 1 Peter, treats the Epistle as if written by either Peter or Paul (CN V 6863). Clarity comes from a marginal comment on Lacunza’s The Coming of Messiah: “There are serious difficulties besetting the authenticity of the Catholic Epistles under the name of Peter; though there exist no grounds for doubting that they are of the Apostolic age. A large portion too of the difficulties would be removed by the easy and nowise improbable supposition, that Peter, no great scholar or grammarian, had dictated the substance, the matter, and left the diction and style to his amanuensis, who had been an auditor of St. Paul. The tradition which connects, not only Mark, but Luke the Evangelist, the friend and biographer of Paul, with Peter, as a secretary, is in favour of this hypothesis” (CM III 445–46); cf. CN V 5755 (Coleridge claims that 1 Peter is Pauline in thought). A few notable references include CN IV 4643 (on 2 Peter 1:19 and prophecy); CN V 6146 (on 2 Peter 3:7, 10, 12 and Genesis 9), 6842 (on 1 Peter 4:15 and busybodies). The notes on Leighton’s exposition of Peter can be found in the third and sixth volumes of CM: CM III 508–13 (Copy A); CM VI 295–304 (Copy B, which retranscribes all notes from Copy B of the Genuine Works, including the original notes from the earlier transcription [CM III 514–22; see headnote CM VI 295–96]); CM III 541–603 (Copy C). Coleridge marked whole passages of Leighton’s exposition of 1 Peter in connection with Aids to Reflection, e.g., CM III 541–43, 568, 570, and so on. Cf. CL V 198–99. In Copy A of Leighton’s Expository Works, Coleridge claims, “[s]urely if ever [a] Work not in the sacred Canon might suggest a belief of Inspiration, of something more than human, this it is” (CM III 508). Examples of Coleridge’s animadversions on Leighton include CM III 510, 591, 600–01; CM VI 301. Key topics arising from Leighton’s exposition of 1 Peter include eternal election (CM III 543; CM VI 297–300); life, soul, and spirit (CM III 546, 557–61, 596–97; CM VI 300, 302); faith and belief (CM VI 301); the blood of Christ (CM III 544; CM VI 296); and conscience (CM III 588–89). CN III 4065; CN IV 5347; CM III 429; AR 301. Other notes on James include CN III 3354 (James 2:10); CN IV 4935 (James 3:15 and life); CM VI 304–05 (James 3:17). On Jude and inspiration, CN IV 5352; CN V 5560; CM III 594; CM II 476–77. CN IV 5297n. (on controversy over 1 John 5:7); cf. CN III 3879; CN IV 5297. Other notes related to 1 John include CN III 3293

N ot e s

118.

119.

120. 121.

122.

123.

124.

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(1 John 3:15); CN IV 4980 (1 John 4:18); CM I 469–70 (1 John 3:4–10 and imputed righteousness/sin). In June 1810, e.g., Coleridge denounces any connection between the two (CN III 3879; cf. CN IV 5068; CN V 5546, 5976; CM II 459–60, 488–90). Coleridge’s proposed epic, The Fall of Jerusalem, is the dramatic axis of Shaffer’s treatment of Coleridge’s early contact with German biblical criticism (“Kubla Khan” 17–61). CN V 5988; CM II 458–59 (“a Vision, not a Poem”); C&S 139–40*. Coleridge generally concludes that “666” refers to “a Superscription containing Numeral Letters, the amount of which equalled 666; & which, perhaps, differently placed might be a man’s Name” (CN V 6822); on 666 and the beast of Revelation, see CN III 3793, 3966; CN V 6803–09. An Ebionite refugee of a later period likely wrote the text. For historical explications of the text, see CN IV 5069, 5329; CN V 5687, 6098. In addition to various notes in the marginalia in Eichhorn’s and Heinrich’s works, see also CN IV 5077 (on Revelation 19 and hell), 5222 (Revelation 4:8 and holiness of God); CN V 5852 (on Christ in Revelation); CM I 471–73 (marginalia on the Bible); CM II 708 (on John in old age). On eschatology and the Book of Revelation, the marginalia on Edward Irving’s works are pivotal (CM III 3–74, 415–82 [on Lacunza’s Coming of Messiah; ed. Irving]); other key interlocutors include Eichhorn (CM II 465–66, 503–20), Johann Heinrich (CM I 480–87; cf. CL VI 968), and Johannes Cocceius (CM II 46–47 [headnote], 504; CN IV 5323). For example, Luther and Isaac Newton (CN IV 4755; CN V 5752).

6 The Church: Tradition as the Master-Key of Interpretation 1. The pivotal phrase “whatever finds me” frequently serves as a sweeping statement of Coleridge’s view of the Bible (Greenslade 280, 518; Willey Nineteenth Century Studies 41). 2. This chapter develops Coleridge’s understanding of the relationship between the teachings of the church and the claims of the Bible. For notebook entries related to On the Constitution of the Church and State and Coleridge’s use of terms such as clerisy, ecclesia, and enclesia, see CN IV 5020, 5082–85, 5263; CN V 5868, 6737, 6773; CM III 72. On the church and its sociopolitical role, see John Colmer, “Introduction” in C&S, and works by Allen, Calleo, P. Edwards, and Morrow. On readers and “the creation of meaning,” cf. Harding (“Coleridge, Scripture, and the Active Reader”) and Gowler 162–63.

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3. Coleridge comments on Donne’s sermon in John 12:38 (“That the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?”). The same note appears as a footnote in the first edition of Confessions (CIS 92–93n.). A memo reminding Coleridge “to quote this if ever I publish my letters on the right [contrary] to the superstitious veneration of the Scriptures” (CM II 290) substantiates the connection between this passage and the Pentad. 4. CM III 453–54. 5. Four centuries later, Trent continued to cast its shadow, impacting the discussion of divine revelation at Vatican Council II (1962–65). The initial draft of Dei Verbum in November 1962 treated Scripture and Tradition as two independent sources of revelation—in accordance with accepted receptions of Trent—to the utter dismay of many in attendance (Olsen 182–87). 6. The decree of the fourth session can be found in Denzinger 1501–08; the standard English translation is Schroeder 17. The word “equal” should be included, as Schroeder’s Latin text demonstrates (“pari pietatis affectu ac reverentia” [296]). 7. On the Council of Trent, see Jedin II 52–98 (on the fourth session), and O’Malley. Although the final form of the decree avoided the language of “partly-partly” to describe the relationship between Scripture and Tradition, opting instead for the nebulous (if less exclusive) “and,” a study of the vigorous debate leading up to the celebration of the decree indicates the participants’ intention to bifurcate the two sources (Barbeau, “Scripture and Tradition at the Council of Trent” 127–46; cf. Kramer 165–75; Donnelly, “Jesuit Controversialists and the Defense of Tridentine Tradition,” in Hagen 94–109; Evans 376–97). 8. The Christian doctrine of “church tradition” remains a major field of theological study today, as works by Congar, Fuller, Mackey, Tilley, Thiel, Wiedenhöfer attest. 9. CN IV 5372 (on canon and providence). 10. This list of traditions, including the authority of apostolic succession and communion of saints, indicates that Coleridge was attempting to delineate what doctrines might be held that are not fully explicated in the Bible. He is, nonetheless, uncomfortable delineating such aspects of the faith for fear that customs of a single sect will be taken as a part of the universal and necessary faith of Christianity (CL VI 620–23). 11. Elsewhere Coleridge uses the phrase “pick and choose” to express his disapproval of those who attempt to interpret Scripture without the aid of note or comment (often Unitarians) (LS 181–83). 12. The full Revised Constitution of the Society read: “I. The designation of this Society shall be the British and Foreign Bible Society, of which the sole object shall be to encourage a wider circulation of the holy

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15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

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24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

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Scriptures without note or comment: the only copies in the languages of the United Kingdom to be circulated by the Society shall be the Authorized Version” (Canton I 18). Later revisions allowed for either the Authorized or Revised Authorized Version. Canton observes that “[t]he founding of each Auxiliary was an event of deep interest far beyond its own locality” (I 65). Christopher Wordsworth’s (1774–1846) Reasons for Declining to Become a Subscriber to the British and Foreign Bible Society (1810) provided another Cambridge voice against the Bible societies. For Coleridge’s criticism of Marsh’s contribution to the Catholic Emancipation debate, see CM IV 22–24. Coleridge wrote marginal notes in William Chillingworth’s Works first in 1809 and again, likely, sometime around 1812 (CM II 24–41). In 1831, Coleridge claimed that it had been “now twenty years since I read Chillingworth’s Book” (TT I 231). Coleridge has Tridentine notions of Scripture and Tradition in mind, although other Roman Catholic views of tradition existed (Hinze). CN V 5792. CM II 261. CN V 5500. Coleridge opposed the Church of England’s use of the Athanasian Creed (e.g., CN IV 5413, 5437; CN V 5490; CM I 586–87, 837; CM III 369). Coleridge argues that new believers “let their attention be fixed on the history of Christianity learnt from universal tradition, and the writers of each successive generation . . . Then induce them to meditate on the universals of Christian Faith,—on Christianity, taken as the sum of belief common to Greek and Latin, to Romanist and Protestant” (CIS 79–80). For Coleridge’s complaints against Lessing on the Apostles’ Creed, see CM III 691–92, cf. 686. Coleridge’s “inward” creed in Confessions is the basis of chapter 2; cf. CN IV 4701 (on common articles of faith), 5318 (on redemption in the New Testament and the creeds). Coleridge also mentions difficulties with Christ’s “descent” into hell (CN V 5606). CN V 5634, 5635, and 5659 (on the manner in which views of sexuality and martyrdom shifted in the early centuries). CM II 707, 1152. CN V 6073, 6722; CM I 203 (on the church and individual assent). Coleridge quotes Irenaeus (Adversus haeresus III 4, 1) from Lessing (CIS–CC 1160n.1). CN V 5997. Edward Hawkins’s (1789–1882) Dissertation on the Use and Importance of Unauthoritative Tradition (1818) distinguishes between teaching and proving doctrine. The Bible proves the truth of doctrine, but it does not teach doctrine. Biemer notes of Hawkins that “[t]hough he was an opponent of the Oxford movement, he had

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31.

32. 33.

34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

N ot e s laid down one of the principles which were [sic] to guide it, long before the movement was launched. As early as 1818, he had put forward a principle which was essentially a novelty in the Anglican theology of tradition. This was that ‘many of the most important articles of faith are rather implied than taught’ in scripture, and that ‘universal tradition is our guide to Scripture’” (24–25). Hawkins’s Dissertation claimed that “the Scriptures themselves presuppose tradition; the New Testament implies a previous acquaintance with the outline of its doctrines” (86). Many worried that Hawkins departed too far from his Protestant roots (“Hawkins’s Dissertation on Tradition” [1819]). Cf. John Henry Newman’s early aversion to the modern emphasis on textual context as a guide to biblical interpretation (Barbeau, “Newman and the Interpretation of Inspired Scripture” 53–67). For typical examples of Coleridge’s criticism of Roman Catholicism, CN V 5907, 5915, 5919. He distinguishes between Protestant and Roman Catholic notions of tradition in his marginalia on Baxter (CM I 345; cf. CN IV 5126; CN V 5560). Eichhorn views the passage as a late, non-Apostolic addition (CN V 5524n.; cf. CN IV 5169). The early church’s failure to pass on vital information about the composition and delivery of the Gospels bothers Coleridge immensely (CN V 5552; cf. 5593 [on Matthew]; CN IV 5118 [on the early church and inspiration]). Coleridge refers to the Vincentian canon (“quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus”) in Letter IV (CIS 60). In one explanation of the Pentad, Coleridge notes that the “Thesis and Antithesis mutually demand each the other. Neither can be suppressed without excluding the Indifference or common term of Both. In Romanism & modern Protestantism the Spirit has been quenched, the one hiding the Scriptures, the other acknowledging no Church” (CM III 451). Cf. CN V 5732 (on the twofold church, visible and spiritual). A similar version of this analogy appears in Coleridge’s marginalia on Pierre Jurieu’s The History of the Council of Trent (CM III 230–31); CN IV 5374 [on Protestantism and nationalism]). CM I 311. Coleridge frequently writes of the three together, i.e., “its Liturgy, Homilies, and Articles” (CM II 651). Commenting on Emanuel Swedenborg’s True Christian Religion, he indicates a doctrinal difficulty with approving reference to the authority of this triad: “An enlightened Church of England Minister who interprets the Scriptures in coincidence with the framers of the Church Liturgy, Articles and Homilies would believe, that Sw. either imposed on himself [through some sleep-like shaping of his own thoughts] or had been deluded by erroneous Spirits in the spir. world” (CM V 471).

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39. The editor notes that Coleridge anticipates the 1865 decision to no longer require subscription to the Articles by the clergy; for an early observation, Watchman 53. 40. For Coleridge’s marginal comments on Homily 19, on prayer, CM IV 681–83. 41. CN V 5848, 6609, 6645, 6650; CM III 72. 42. For the reference to Archbishop Leighton’s observations, CIS 95; cf. CN IV 5337. 43. Remarking with reference to Milton, Coleridge highlights the importance of Reason and tradition in one September 1825 notebook: “Hold in contempt all Church Tradition, even that which deserves the name, the successive Traces being extant in the Books of each successive Generation from within a few years of the Apostle John’s Death—in short, depose at once Reason & the Church from the Chair of Interpretation, & I am not the first man who has ventured to think, that the Arians will reap the harvest” (CN IV 5240). 44. Harding, Coleridge and the Idea of Love, correlates love, will, and relationship (e.g., 152–55). 45. CN IV 5026.

7 The Holy Spirit: Reason and the Divine Image 1. CN V 5588 (the Holy Spirit and tetractys), 5596 (Spirit and Incarnation); cf. Alan Gregory, “‘That I may be Here’” ( Assertion 202–08). 2. McLean and Hedley elucidate Coleridge’s interaction with Neoplatonism in Assertion 213–53; Patrides (1–41) and Cragg (3–31) offer excellent introductions to the Cambridge Platonists. 3. English Unitarianism, or Socinianism as it was known on the Continent, emerged from the anti-Trinitarianism of Michael Servetus (ca. 1511–53), Faustus Socinus (1539–1604), and, in England, John Biddle (1615–62). On Servetus, who was burned as a heretic near Geneva, Coleridge wryly states: “If ever a poor fanatic thrust himself into the fire, it was Servetus. He was a rabid enthusiast, and did every thing he could in the way of insult and ribaldry to provoke the feelings of the Christian Church” (TT I 455–56). 4. Cf. Wigmore-Beddoes 30–32. 5. CN IV 4870 (on the Holy Spirit as “Sophia” in Esdras). 6. Cf. CN V 5863. On the gradual revelation as evidenced by the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, Coleridge writes: “The Christian, like the Poet, finds a perpetual novelty in the Old/Why? The Christian contemplates Life in growth—im Werden [in the becoming]. Not the thing but the product of that thing on his own & others’ Souls” (CN IV 5316). Coleridge cites 2 Corinthians 3:16–18 as a valuable clue to the identification of the Spirit and Word

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7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17.

in early Christianity: “16Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away. 17Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (CN V 6033; cf. CN IV 5242; CN V 6107; Wendling 175–83). Cf. CN IV 5072. On the Holy Spirit and divine Will, see SW&F II 868–70. McFarland argues that “[t]he dilettante will invariably think that the distinction between imagination and fancy is the most important of all the binary distinctions that Coleridge proposed. The true Coleridgian, however, will know that the polarity of imagination and fancy . . . is incomparably less decisive for an understanding of Coleridge’s mind than is the distinction between reason and understanding” (Fulford and Paley 165). Cf. AR 467–69. Reason plays a major role in both Aids to Reflection and the Opus Maximum. In one notebook, Coleridge maintains that in Aids to Reflection “I was obliged to proceed analytically and a posteriori,” but in his “larger work” (presumably the opus), Coleridge commences “with the Absolute, and from thence deduce the Triunity, and therein the substantial Reason” (CN IV 5210). Cf. Hedley 196–97. Elsewhere, comparing Reason to “a Loan, a Light,” Coleridge claims that objectivity is often connected to our senses since it is the “offspring of Reason” in this “our present fallen state—We have not God within; but must look out of ourselves for him” (CN V 5641; cf. AR 253* [on reading Scripture with the light of Reason, “the Source of which is not in ourselves”]). As the editors explain, Coleridge’s citation is a pastiche (var.) of Wisdom of Solomon 7:22, 23, 25, 27 (LS 69n.4). Coleridge occasionally wonders if theologians place too great an emphasis on the outward revelation (CN IV 5070). Cf. “For Faith is the marriage of the Will and the Reason: or shall I call it the offspring of that Union? Where the Reason is the Eye, and the Light of the Will, and the Will is the Substance and the Life of the Reason—there Faith is” (CN IV 5048; cf. CN V 5833). Rule’s study of Coleridge and Newman provides a fascinating account of the central role of conscience in these seminal figures. On the difficulties with ordering these fragments, see Op Max xx. Luke Wright has proposed an alternate conception of the relationship between the manuscripts (“On the Divine Ideas: The Systematic Theology of S. T. Coleridge” in Assertion 53–72). Cf. “Reason is to Faith, as the Eye to the Telescope” (CM II 1046) and “[b]y the eye of Reason through the telescope of Faith, i.e. Revelation, we may see what without this telescope we could never have known to exist” (AR 341). For other uses of the telescope and eye, see AR 341n.2.

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18. Coleridge thereby claims in a letter of March 1832 that “[m]y principle has ever been, that Reason is subjective Revelation, Revelation objective Reason . . . If I lose my faith in Reason, as the perpetual revelation, I lose my faith altogether. I must deduce the objective from the subjective Revelation, or it is no longer a revelation for me, but a beastly fear, and superstition” (CL VI 895). 19. Cf. CN IV 5344. 20. Cf. Reason is the “Light from THE WORD” (CN V 5495). 21. Commenting on Wilhelm De Wette’s Theodor, Coleridge remarks: “What then is the Reason? a passive Consciousness of the Revelation? If not, but a power of affirming by its own light the truth of the Revelation, which must of course consist wholly in its accordance with the reason itself” (CM II 189).

8

The Preacher: Imagination and the Inspired Prophet

1. This allegation may serve as fodder for those who object to the inclusion of the Pentad with the text of the Confessions (SW&F II 1111). 2. Cf. Op Max 188. 3. Coleridge was somewhat unhappy with the use of the word “preacher” in the Pentad (perhaps due to its popular connotations with itinerant evangelists), but he maintained the term for its capacity to express the New Testament word . Other words express a similar concept: “Herald, Ambassador, even Messenger,” he explains, “would be more expressive of the function, character, and authority by Delegation” (CM III 450). Coleridge needed an emphatic term that could carry the weighty distinction while not subjecting either pole to the force of the other: “The Eternal Word thro’ and by the Spirit may fit the Individual to be a Teacher, a Discourser; but without supplying the place of the Church by miracles, or that the place of the written word by miraculous inspiration, he cannot be a Herald, an Ambassador” (CM III 451). For numerous comments related to evangelical (frequently Methodist) preaching, see Coleridge’s marginalia on James Sedgwick’s Hints to the Public and the Legislature, on the Nature and Effect of Evangelical Preaching (CM IV 619–74). 4. Oberman identifies the Reformation emphasis on the sermon with (i) an apocalyptic event, (ii) a vital dimension of the corporate act of worship, and (iii) the written and spoken Word of God (15–29; cf. Pless 83–101). 5. Ferry underscores the willingness of the laity to “improve local religious life” through “lay-endowed preacherships” (268). 6. Cf. Oberman 26–27. 7. John Milton, e.g., speaks of the Word as a force more powerful than that of civil justice. In his reflections on the “Solemn League and Covenant” (1643), Milton maintains that the covenant does not

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11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

require heretics, schismatics, and others to be extirpated and prosecuted but confounded by “the diligent preaching and insisting upon sound Doctrine” Milton claims that the refutation of “popery and Prelacy” is “no work of the Civil sword, but of the spiritual which is the Word of God” (Milton III 324; spelling modernized). Although I have encountered no direct influence, one possible line of future research would be a comparison of the function of the preacher in Coleridge’s system to that of German contemporaries such as Schleiermacher (Vial 59–73). Cf. CM III 568–69. OED VIII 1473 (on the etymology of “prophesying”); CM II 1157 (for an example of Coleridge’s criticism of Puritan modes of preaching). John R. Knott, Jr. offers an insightful account of Puritan pneumatology and contemporary opposition in The Sword of the Spirit: Puritan Responses to the Bible (36–41). Coleridge had a lifelong interest in toleration: the “result & reward of a religious Philosophy” is “Faith strengthening as Liberty is expanding” (CN V 5849). Notably, Coleridge calls Taylor’s Liberty of Prophesying “an admirable Work . . . calculated to produce a much greater effect on the many than Milton’s Treatise on the same Subject” (i.e. Areopagitica [1644]) (CM V 501); on Taylor’s importance to Coleridge, see Barbeau, review of Marginalia V 143–44. The connection is apparent in an Aphorism drawn from Jeremy Taylor in AR: “God did not only by Revelation and the Sermons of the Prophets to his Church; but even to ALL MANKIND competently teach, and effectively persuade, that the Soul of Man does not die” (AR 347). Coleridge’s interest in the prophets continued until the end of his life (CN V 6764). On the detrimental use of prophecies to prove the Christian faith, see CN V 5520. On Coleridge’s marginalia on John Davison’s Discourses on Prophecy, CM II 142–57. On prophets and Romanticism, Engell 244–64; Prickett Words and the Word 95–148; Westbrook 20–26. Cf. CM II 404; CM V 391; CM VI 107. Conversations with Jim Mays at the 2002 Coleridge Summer Conference proved helpful in confirming and propelling my interest in this oft-overlooked influence (“Was Coleridge’s Father as Simple as a Child?” 1–19). On Coleridge’s likeness to his father, see CN V 6489. Coleridge cites the books of Moses and “once or twice in the prophecy of Jeremiah” as examples. The editors of CIS–CC correctly indicate that these special commands are “recurrent in the Pentateuch,” but I believe that Coleridge’s specific emphasis in this passage is on the occasional command to write the words of God (e.g., Jeremiah 30:2; 36:2; 36:28) rather than the frequent command to speak “e.g. 1.7, 1.17, 2.1–2, 3.12, 5.20–21, 7.2” (CIS–CC 1124n.2). Elsewhere, Coleridge questions if direct revelation, “as direct information conveyed by words,” ever took place (CN V 5788).

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17. I have profited immensely from conversations with Douglas Hedley on the role of the Imagination and the prophetic in the Cambridge Platonists. 18. For Coleridge’s marginalia on Smith’s Select Discourses, see CM V 80–86. For Coleridge, the Imagination is active in the world of reality rather than fantasy (e.g., the relationship between the Imagination, “maternal impressions,” and the determination of an infant’s sex during intercourse [CM II 857; CM III 329, 392]). 19. On Imagination belonging properly to Judaism and Christianity, see CN V 6615. 20. On prophecy and sleep-states, Coleridge maintains that “[p]rophecy in the stricter sense of the Word in the far greater number of Scripture instances takes place in Sleep or States resembling it. Revelation avails herself of the natural constitution of Man, and uses the inherent faculties potenziated into higher energy as her instrument” (CN V 6150). 21. Commenting on Eichhorn, Coleridge claims that the “focal moment” of the prophetic state differs from the inspiration of the poets. The prophets “relate sudden changes produced without any conscious act of their own will, both on their bodies and their minds . . . they passed into a state of inner vision, a state . . . in all points identical with that of Extasy or Clair-voyance” (CM II 402). 22. On Coleridge’s association of the divine dictation of the Bible to the notion of a miraculous infusion of foreign languages in the gift of tongues, see CN V 6080. 23. Cf. CN V 5928 (on Acts 19:5–19); CM II 703–04, 1045. 24. Cf. Coleridge’s query on Acts 15:28 (“For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us . . .”) (CN IV 5063 and n.). 25. Cf. CM III 568. 26. Coleridge regards Luther the greatest preacher after John and Paul (CM III 743). 27. Coleridge often writes advice to clergy, e.g., the duty to avoid preaching fresh sermons continually, how to plan congregational sermons, and so on (CN V 6102–03, 6844; CM I 349; CM III 462–63, 732).

9 Conclusion: The Reception of Coleridge’s Religious System 1. This theme is present in F. D. Maurice’s “Dedication” to The Kingdom of Christ (Jackson, Coleridge: The Critical Heritage, 2 118–33). 2. Attendees read from James Marsh’s first American edition (1829). J. Marsh and Carafiol provide excellent discussions of Coleridge’s influence on the Transcendentalist Movement. 3. Henry Nelson Coleridge continues: “nothing which we can say will, as matters now stand, much advance his chance of becoming a fashionable author” (1).

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4. Quoted in Sara Coleridge, “Note on the Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit” (Jasper ed. [CIS–Jasper 79] and Hart ed. [CIS–Hart 95] of Confessions). 5. The discovery of plagiarized passages from Schelling in Biographia Literaria cast a shadow over all of Coleridge’s works. Green acknowledges some intellectual affinity with German critics, but warns critics “not to take for granted that the similarity, or coincidence, of his judgment with that of Lessing on certain points leads justly to the conclusion that Coleridge derived or adopted his opinions from Lessing, and still less that he deemed the latter a safe guide on the whole to a sound and satisfactory theology” (Joseph Henry Green, “Introduction,” in CIS–Hart 29). 6. Reprints of Sara’s essay appear in CIS–Jasper 94 and CIS–Hart 110. Sara’s literary skill is apparent in what follows: “They who dwell in the dark are ever ready to behold objects of terror, fiends and goblins on all sides round, as soon as their imaginations are excited by fearful picturings and cries of alarm.” Barbeau (“Sara Coleridge”) and Mudge each discuss Sara’s intellectual contribution. 7. CIS–Jasper 76 and CIS–Hart 92. 8. CIS–Jasper 99–100n. and CIS–Hart 115–16n. 9. Birks takes credit for Sara’s reference in his preface (vii–viii). He claims that “[v]ery few and slight corrections have been made in these Notes” (viii). 10. The author relies on the veiled admissions of Green’s “Introduction” (253). 11. For example, the various reviews of Confessions listed in the “Works Cited” and responses to other works in Jackson, Coleridge: The Critical Heritage, Volume 2. One positive assessment of Coleridge’s place in the history of biblical interpretation came in Frederic W. Farrar’s 1885 Bampton Lectures. Farrar mentions Coleridge’s Confessions and notes that “he was the first to show his fellow countrymen with convincing illustrations and impassioned eloquence that the Rabbinic, mediaeval, and post-Reformation dogma of inspiration could only lead to irreverence or casuistry . . . He proved how clearly a Christian thinker could see that the various books of the Bible greatly differ from each other in value, and could yet honour the Bible as deeply as the Apostles themselves” (423–24; cf. Hort 292–351). Alternately, the eighth “Article of Charge” at the Court of Arches (1861) linked Rowland Williams to Coleridge’s rejection of prophecy as prognostication (Shea and Whitla 694–95). 12. The work of Vernon Storr (1913) also marks the turn in scholarship around this time. 13. CIS–Jasper 95 and CIS–Hart 111.

Works C ited

Allen, Peter. “S. T. Coleridge’s Church and State and the Idea of an Intellectual Establishment.” Journal of the History of Ideas 46 (1985): 89–106. ———. “Morrow on Coleridge’s Church and State.” Journal of the History of Ideas 50 (1989): 485–89. Archer, Stanley. Richard Hooker. Twayne’s English Authors Series, 350. Boston: Twayne, 1983. Atkinson, Nigel. Richard Hooker and the Authority of Scripture, Tradition and Reason: Reformed Theologian of the Church of England? Carlisle, Cumbria: Paternoster, 1997. Augustine. Teaching Christianity: De Doctrina Christiana. Trans. Edmund Hill. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Part I, vol. 11. Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1990. Barbeau, Jeffrey W. “The Development of Coleridge’s Notion of Human Freedom: The Translation and Re-Formation of German Idealism in England.” Journal of Religion 80 (2000): 576–94. ———. “Scripture and Tradition at the Council of Trent: Reapplying the C ‘ onciliar Hermeneutic.’” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 33 (2001): 127–46. ———. “Newman and the Interpretation of Inspired Scripture.” Theological Studies 63 (2002): 53–67. ———. Rev. of Marginalia V. The Coleridge Bulletin ns 20 (2002): 143–44. ———. “Coleridge and the M ‘ aster-Key’ of Biblical Interpretation.” Heythrop Journal: A Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology 45 (2004): 1–21. ———, ed. Coleridge’s Assertion of Religion: Essays on the Opus Maximum. Studies in Philosophical Theology, 33. Louvain: Peeters, 2006. ———. “Sara Coleridge the Victorian Theologian: Between Newman’s Tractarianism and Wesley’s Methodism.” The Coleridge Bulletin ns 28 (2006): 29–36. Barth, J. Robert. The Symbolic Imagination: Coleridge and the Romantic Tradition. Second edition. Princeton Essays in Literature. 1977. New York: Fordham UP, 2001. ———. Coleridge and Christian Doctrine. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1969. Reprint, New York: Fordham UP, 1987. Bate, Walter Jackson. Coleridge. Masters of World Literature Series. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968.

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Index

Aaron (biblical ), 61, 181 Abel (biblical ), 180, 189 Abimelek (biblical ), 34 Abraham (biblical ), 16, 34, 54, 72, 103, 181, 184 actuation, 40, 131, 177; see also inspiration Adam (biblical ), 19–20, 51–2, 96, 180 Aders, Charles, 188 Alcott, Bronson, 162 allegory, 13, 40–1, 44, 82, 88–9, 178, 180 Allen, Peter, 197 alterity, see Trinity Anabaptists, 147 analogy, 40–1 Ananias (biblical ), 94, 193 Anderson, Robert, 37 Anglican/Anglicanism, see Church of England anthropology, see human(s) antichrist, 197 Antiochus Epiphanes, 73, 74 Apollos (biblical ), 102 apologetics, 3, 33, 39–40, 63, 139, 157, 165 apostasy, 17, 173; see also Fall, the Apostles’ Creed, 16, 81, 108, 115, 119–20, 125, 164, 199 Apostles, as witnesses, 156–7; see also under names apostolic succession, 121–2, 198 Arianism, 125, 201 Arnold, Thomas, 163 associationism, 18

Athanasian, Creed, 164, 199 atheism arguments against, 50 causes of, 14 and Unitarianism, 15, 172 atonement, 19, 22, 184 and Jews, 21, 44, 59 propitiatory, 96–7 see also Jesus Christ; Judaism; redemption Augustine, 3, 19, 28, 106, 120, 127, 146–7 Bacon, Francis, 35 Bacon, Roger, 35 baptism, 82, 115, 119, 137, 147–8, 194 Barbeau, Jeffrey W., 171, 172, 173, 181, 198, 200, 204, 206 Barnabas, Epistle of, 102, 186, 195 Barr, James, 4 Barth, J. Robert, 41, 137, 172, 174, 177, 193 Bate, Walter Jackson, 15, 18, 173 Baxter, Richard, 4, 125, 194, 200 Beer, John, 1–2, 191 being, and form, 134 Belsham, Thomas, 103, 130 Bentley, Richard, 74 Bible, 27–110, 178 Apocrypha, 7, 49, 73, 75–6, 185–6; see also under individual books and art, 53, 184 authority of, 3, 4, 16, 111–12, 168, 172

218

Index

Bible—continued Authorized Version of, 69, 72, 75, 98, 109, 134, 186, 194, 199 and authorship, 49, 56, 181 canon, 73, 75–6, 108, 111, 115, 120, 122, 139, 167, 176 commentaries, 31 composition of, 54 dating of, 29 and error, 31, 140 General Epistles, 104–6 Geneva Version, 75 Gospels, 36, 65, 108, 190; see also Synoptics and under individual books harmonies of, 7, 36–7, 77, 90, 189 and history, 25, 33–5, 42, 53–4, 56–7, 62, 69–70, 73, 79, 81, 107, 115, 152, 175, 186 and the individual, 24, 32, 42, 112, 116, 118, 139–40, 157 and illiteracy, 30 inspiration of, 3, 6, 8, 27, 36, 39–42, 53, 58, 60, 63, 65, 76, 82, 103, 105, 112, 126–7, 130, 139–40, 145, 150, 152–4, 161, 165–7, 176–7, 190, 196, 205 interpretation of, 7–9, 43, 54, 109, 115, 128, 142, 202; see also tradition(s); typology as literature, 2, 7, 8–9, 28, 32–3, 37–8, 43, 48, 68, 79, 107 as mirror of faith, 3, 42, 48, 141 and myth, 53, 120 New Testament, 29, 38, 77–110, 186; relationship to Old Testament, 43, 179, 201; divisions of, 77; see also under individual books Old Testament, 29, 35, 47–76, 153; and Christianity, 48, 57, 76, 193; interpretation of, 7; and Jesus Christ, 2, 7, 78; and Trinity, 132; see also under individual books

Pastoral Epistles, 101–4 Pauline Epistles, 7, 77–8, 93–104; see also under individual books Pentateuch, 7, 40, 49, 58, 60–1, 67, 99, 109, 111, 177, 179, 181–2, 204; see also under individual books perspicuity of, 114–15, 166 and philosophic sense, see Bible, spiritual sense and poetry, 107, 109, 205 and prayer, 70–1 Prophets, the, 7, 33, 49, 61–7, 73, 82, 100, 103, 109; see also under individual books publishing, 2, 27, 30 Septuagint, 73 societies, 2, 4, 32, 116–19, 174–5, 198–9 spiritual sense, 7, 37, 43, 58–9, 85, 95, 99, 108 and superstition, 3, 203 and symbols, 6, 25, 180 Synoptic Gospels, 7, 36, 77–85, 90, 111, 175, 186, 189, 191; see also under individual books translation of, 2, 69, 71, 98, 109, 113, 123 twofold character, 3–4, 28–45, 48, 53, 73–5, 93, 109, 176, 191 uniqueness of, 151 Vulgate, 73 Writings, the, 7, 49, 67–75, 184; see also under individual books Bible, books of (including Apocrypha) Acts of the Apostles, 7, 78, 79–80, 94, 99, 132, 186, 187 1:1–2:5 80 2–6 80, 187 2 99 5 187

Index 8 187 8:14–20 131 8:30–1 119 9 94 10 187 10:34–35 187 10:46 156 12:22–23 187 13–14 187 13:2 156 15 94 15:28 187, 205 17:3 193 18:18 193 18:24–28 102 19:5–19 205 19:6 156 21:18–37 187 28:28 193 Apocalypse (Book of Revelation), 7, 77–8, 103, 106–10 4:8 197 19 197 Bel and the Dragon, 75 I and II Chronicles, 67, 184 Colossians, 99, 100 2:2–3 195 I Corinthians, 98–9 1:21 149 1:30 194 2:4 149 10:16–17 194 11:23–25 193 12 98–9 12:14 194 13 98 14 98–9 14:18 195 14:31 149 15:28 194 II Corinthians, 98–9 3:16 194 3:16–18 201–2 5:16 84 7:11 194 8:18 194

219 9:8–15 194–5 10:12 195 11 195 12 195 13:12 42 Daniel, 7, 49, 67–8, 73–6, 139, 185 1–6 73, 81 7–12 73 9:24–7 74 Deuteronomy, 60, 182, 183 Ecclesiastes, 67, 184 Ephesians, 99, 100, 195 2:14–16 100 5:30–32 178 I and II Esdras, 184, 201 Esther, 67, 184 Exodus, 55–7, 81, 181–2 1–4 181 1–10 56–9 20 182 Ezekiel, 63, 66, 183 Ezra, 67, 184 Galatians, 72, 99–100 1:6 195 3:19–20 195 5:12 195 Genesis, 49–55, 57 1–2:3 49–51, 179, 180 1–3 179 1–10 52–3 2:4–24 51–2, 180 2:23–24 178 3 52 3:15 81–2 7 180–1 9 196 12:10–20 34, 54, 175 16 181 19:31–2 54 20:1–18 34, 54, 175 26:7–11 54 27 178 35:9 55 35:20 181 36 181

220 Bible, books of—continued Hebrews, 81, 101–4, 182, 193 3:14 103 11:1 102 Isaiah, 49, 63–5, 66, 152, 183 1–39 66 11:1 21 32:20 22 40ff 73, 185 42:1 65 53 66, 184 James, 104–5 1:25 105 2:10 196 3:15 196 3:17 196 Jeremiah, 63–5, 66, 183, 204 20:7–18 63–4 23:6 64–5 30:2 204 33 154 36:2 204 36:38 204 Job, 67–8, 72–3, 151, 165 1–2 72 17 72 John, Gospel of, 5, 7, 31, 77–8, 84–94, 96, 103, 106, 112, 117, 132, 182, 187, 190, 195 1:1–14 87, 134, 174 1:17 59 1:18 55 3:6 41 3:18 87 4 192 4:22 191 4:46–54 88 4:48 192 5:19 191 5:36 192 6 91–2, 103, 193 6:1–15 83 6:46 191 6:62 192, 193 8:32 1

Index 9 88 10:9 87 10:10 158 10:15 191 12:38 198 13 193 14:9, 10 191 14:26 132 15 191 15:26–27 131 17:9 87 18:6 191 21:1–14 191 I John, 104, 106 3:4–10 196 3:15 196 4:18 126, 197 5:7 106, 196 II John, 104 III John, 104 Joshua, 61 3:13–17 61 10 183 10:13 61–2 Jude, 104–6, 196 9 105 Judges, 61–2, 183 4 62 Judith, 75 I Kings, 61, 62–3 II Kings, 61, 62–3 2 34 Lamentations, 67 Leviticus, 57–8, 182 4 182 Luke, Gospel of, 7, 78–84, 92–4, 123, 167, 176, 186–90 5 187 5:14 83 7 187 8 84 8:26–39 187 9:51–18:14 187 12 187 15 187 22:14–20 193

Index 22:32 123 24:27 44–45 187 24:44 67 I and II Maccabees, 75 Malachi, 64 Mark, Gospel of, 7, 78–84, 92, 123, 176, 187–8 6:1–6 189 8–9 188 9 188 10:5 188 14:22–25 193 16:9–20 82–3 Matthew, Gospel of, 7, 78–9, 81–4, 90, 92, 167, 176, 186–8, 200 6:22 41 7:15–20 188 8:4 190 8:34 190 9:30 190 13:53–58 189 16 188 16:17–19 123, 200 16:20 190 20 188 22:41–46 190 24 188 24:15 74 26:6–13 188 26:26–29 193 Nehemiah, 67, 184 Numbers, 57–60, 182 5:11–31 183 27:18 132 I Peter, 104, 156, 196 II Peter, 104 1:21 147 2:1–19 196 3:7, 10, 12 196 3:16 177 4:15 196 Philemon, 195 Philippians, 99, 100–1, 195 2:2–3 195 2:6–11 100–1

221 3:15–16 129 Psalms, 2, 7, 33, 49, 67–71, 73, 82, 100, 154, 174, 182, 184 17 185 22 70 23 70 25 70 46 70 65:2–3 67 86 28 91:16 69–70 118 185 137:9 185 Proverbs, 67–8, 71, 73 8:14–36 71 31 71 Revelation, see Apocalypse Romans, 8, 72, 95–8, 193–4 1–7 95–6 1:3 194 3:24–8 96 4–5 193 6:3 97 7 97 8 194 9 194 10 194 10:8, 17 145–6 14:9 194 Ruth, 67 I and II Samuel, 61, 62–3, 152 Song of Solomon, 67, 182, 184 Susanna and the Elders, 75 I Thessalonians, 98, 194 4:15–18 98 II Thessalonians, 98 I Timothy, 101 II Timothy, 101 3:16 177 Titus, 101 Tobit, 75 Wisdom of Solomon, 76, 186 7:22–27 202 7:27 136 Zechariah, 155

222

Index

biblical criticism and authorship of the Bible, 181 and church articles, 125 English, 4, 36, 49 German, 2, 4, 27, 36, 39, 78, 111, 175–6, 197, 206 history of, 158–9 and miracles, 83 and philosophy, 6 and skepticism, 140 task of, 79, 128 bibliolatry, 72, 82, 118, 152, 154 bibliomancy, 72 Biddle, John, 201 Biemer, Günter, 199–200 Birks, T. R., 164–5, 171, 206 Böhme, Jakob, 51, 128, 179 Book of Common Prayer, 7, 30–2, 49, 68–70, 85, 184 and Bibles, 117, 174–5 unique strength of, 124–5 Boulger, James D., 172, 174 Bray, Gerald, 172 British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), 32, 116–19, 175, 198–9 Brown, Raymond, 178 Brown, Robert, 173 Browne, Sir Thomas, 180 Brownson, Orestes A., 162 Buckland, William, 180 Bullinger, Heinrich, 148 Bunyan, John, 37, 62 Bushnell, Horace, 169 Butler, Joseph, 173 Cabbala, 51, 81, 189 Cain (biblical ), 81–2, 180 Calleo, David P., 197 Calvinism, 173, 192 Calvin, John, 122, 128, 147 Cambridge Platonism, 128–9, 136, 154–5, 201, 204 Canton, William, 117, 199 Carafiol, Peter, 205 Carlyle, Thomas, 11, 163

Charles I, 121 Cheney, Mary Bushnell, 169 Chillingworth, William, 113, 116, 118–19, 141–2, 199 Christ, Jesus, see Jesus Christ Christianity and action, 158 before Christ, 183 and belief, 42–3, 126 and faith, 179 history of, 199 Imagination, 205 and Judaism, 78, 95, 103 and orthodoxy, 125 and persecution, 107 and philosophy, 5–6, 134 proofs of, 24–5, 63, 192 and regeneration, 86 and skepticism, 37, 39–40 spiritual and historical, 23–5, 43, 88, 93 Christology, 102–3, 108–9, 161, 188, 196, see also Jesus Christ; Logos; Trinity church, 2–3, 111–26 assent to, 199 authority of, 40 Broad Church, 193 and Christianity, 23 community of faith, 21, 90 constitution of, 101 councils, 123–4; see also under specific names early Fathers, 13, 82, 95, 104, 113, 115, 119, 121–2, 124, 133, 175, 200 formation of, 93 High, 115, 119 and history, 122, 124, 131 and individual, 122, 139, 197 invisible, 124 and Judaism, 184 offices of, 194 and preacher, 143–4, 156, 158 Reformed, 148, 149 and truth, 140

Index visible, 120, 195, 200 universal, 165 see also tradition(s); preacher Church of England, 7, 13, 27, 31, 119, 125–6, 162 homilies, 124–5, 200–1 liturgy of, 92, 124–5, 200 and Scripture, 113 sources of theological reflection, 144 see also Thirty–Nine Articles Clement of Alexandria, 134 Clement of Rome, 123 clerisy, 197 Coburn, Kathleen, 178 Cocceius, Johannes, 197 Cohen, S. J., 72, 185 Coleridge, Ann Bowden (mother), 12 Coleridge, Edward (nephew), 173 Coleridge, George (brother), 19 Coleridge, Hartley (son), 37 Coleridge, Henry Nelson (nephew), 4, 6, 163, 169, 171, 205 Coleridge, John (father), 8, 12, 150–2, 204 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor as biblical critic, 47, 77, 161–2, 178 critical reception of, 1, 5, 8, 152–3, 161–9, 171, 205–6 and fragmentation, 9 method, 161 and orthodoxy, 2, 3, 5, 9, 12, 14–17, 25, 80, 98, 104–5, 109–10, 126, 161–2, 177 and personal troubles, 14, 72, 91, 161, 185, 206 as philosopher, 5 political views, 13, 19, 35, 58 relationship with his parents, 12 search for truth, 53, 55, 83 as spiritual guide, 11, 25, 27, 59, 182, 205 and theological system, 1, 3, 8–9

223

Works: Aids to Reflection, 1–5, 19–20, 22, 40–1, 44, 104–5, 126, 135–7, 141, 148–9, 156–7, 162, 169, 171, 173, 185, 192, 196, 202, 204; Biographia Literaria, 21, 72, 77, 155, 206; Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, 2–6, 8, 11, 20–1, 23–4, 28–9, 33, 35–7, 39, 42–3, 47, 62, 73, 76, 109, 111, 115–16, 118–21, 127–8, 136–7, 143–6, 152–3, 157–8, 171, 174, 177–8, 182, 198–9, 201, 203, 206; “Destruction of Jerusalem,” 106, 197; Essay on Faith, 102, 173; Kubla Khan, 91; A Lay Sermon (1817), 21–2, 106–7, 130, 198; Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 171; Lectures on Revealed Religion (1795), 13, 18–19, 24; “Letters on Scripture,” see Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit; magnum opus, 5, 47–8, 162, 169, 191; On the Constitution of the Church and State, 182, 197; “On the Prometheus of Aeschylus,” 177; Opus Maximum, 2, 5–6, 8–9, 16, 102, 122, 126, 134–8, 171–3, 181, 191, 196, 202–3; Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 11; The Statesman’s Manual, 40, 88, 135, 143, 202; Table Talk, 153, 201; Theory of Life, 171; Watchman, 1, 9, 13–14, 201 Coleridge, Sara (daughter), 72, 163–4, 169, 205 Collected Coleridge, Princeton edition, 5 Colmer, John, 197 communion, see Eucharist Congar, Yves, 198

224

Index

conscience, 196 and evil, 19 and faith, 9, 108, 137 and feelings, 131 fidelity to, 162 and sin, 96 and will, 87 consciousness, 203 cosmogony, 20, 49–52, 179 Constitution of Oxford (1408), 113 Coverdale, Miles, 69, 75 Cragg, Gerald R., 201 creation and Genesis, 49–52 and Logos, 20 creeds, 2, 7, 116, 119, 128 Coleridge’s confession of faith, 12–26 see also under individual creeds; church; Church of England Creuzer, G. F., 179 criticism, literary, 9; see also biblical criticism Cromwell, Thomas, 113 Daniel (biblical ), 73 Darwin, Charles, 44 David (biblical ), 69, 181 Davidson, Graham, 180 Davidson, John, 43–4, 184, 204 Davy, Humphry, 35 Dawn, Maggi E., 174 Dead Sea Scrolls, 185 death, 20, 98, 194 Deborah (biblical ), 62, 183 deism, 17, 38, 100 Denzinger, H., 198 determinism, 64 Devil (biblical ), 105 De Wette, Wilhelm, 203 Didymus the Blind, 133 Dillenberger, John, 193 Disciples (biblical ), 83 dissent, religious, 13, 92 Domitian, 107 Donatism, 148

Donne, John, 112, 158, 189–90, 198 Drury, John, 129 duty, 187 Edinburgh Review, 32 Edwards, Edward, 175 Edwards, Jonathan, 173 Edwards, Pamela, 197 Eichhorn, Johann Gottfried, 36, 63 on Acts, 95 on Apostles, 177 and Bible history, 175 Coleridge critical of, 49, 55, 80, 82–3, 191 Coleridge use of, 2, 4, 51, 53, 61, 66, 72–3, 76, 78, 94, 167, 197, 205 compared to marginalia on Leighton, 104 and Exodus, 181 and Gospels, 186–8, 200 on Old Testament, 179 and Pastoral Epistles, 101 and Pauline Epistles, 99, 195 and Romans, 193–4 election, 196 Elijah (biblical ), 63, 187 Elisha (biblical ), 34, 63 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 162 empiricism, 89, 130 Engell, James, 204 Enoch, 105, 175, 186 enthusiasm, 185, 201 Epistles, see Bible Erasmus, Desiderius, 39 Esau (biblical ), 178 eschatology, 20, 197; see also Bible, Apocalypse Essays and Reviews (1860), 44 Estlin, John Prior, 14 Eucharist, 193 participation in, 14, 194 contrasted to washing feet, 119

Index performance of, 147–8, 190 and prayer, 85 as symbol, 41, 90–2, 103, 177 Eusebius, 104 Evans, G. R., 198 evangelism, 67 Eve (biblical ), 81–2, 180, 189 evidentiary theology, 63, 83, 90–1, 130, 140–1, 173 evil, 124 heart, 139 moral, 18–19 and will, 17 exorcism, 82 experience, 24, 31, 136 faith act of, 52, 126, 137 analogy of, 115 and belief, 87–8, 91, 196 and conscience, 9, 191 defined, 102 and God, 8 growth of, 183 and knowledge, 6 method of, 3 and miracles, 90 and Reason, 202 rule of, 116, 121 and sacraments, 148 and salvation, 20, 86 see also Reason Fall, the, 6, 20, 52; see also apostasy; sin fancy, 40, 186; see also Imagination Farrar, Frederick W., 206 fear, 40, 126, 139, 177, 203 Ferry, Patrick, 147, 157, 203 Field, Richard, 121 filioque, see Spirit, Holy, procession of Fleury, Claude, 121 Frend, William, 12 Fulford, Tim, 189, 202 Fulke, William, 114–15 Fuller, Reginald H., 198

genius, 150 George IV, 58 glossolalia, see tongues, gift of God and creation, 49–55 creative, 41–2 existence of, 52 and good, 18 holiness of, 197 and language, 180 and nature, 141 personal, 16, 17 preacher as voice of, 147 proof of, 17 and providence, 56 and revelation, 143–4, 151 Unitarianism, 13 unity of, 133 and will, 86, 93 and Word, 172 see also atheism; Logos; Spirit, Holy; Trinity Godwin, William, 18 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 11–12 Gospels, see Bible Gowler, Steve, 197 grace, 20, 23, 59–60, 72, 86 and faith, 195 prevenient, 89 and salvation, 132 and the soul, 127 Gravil, Richard, 172 Green, Joseph Henry, 164, 206 Greenslade, Stanley L., 197 Gregory, Alan P. R., 172, 201 Gregory I (the Great), 42 Grotius, Hugo, 24, 66, 173 Guthrie, W. K. C., 12 Gutjahr, Paul, 31 Hagar (biblical ), 181 Hagen, Kenneth, 198 Halmi, Nicholas, 177, 193 Haney, David P., 172 Happel, Stephen, 8, 144

225

226

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Harding, Anthony John, 172, 174, 178, 197, 201 Hardy, Daniel W., 26, 144, 172, 173 Hare, Julius Charles, 161, 163, 165–6, 176 Harper Publishers, 31 Hart, H. StJ., 206 Hartley, David, 18, 24, 172 Haven, Richard, 163 Hawkins, Edward, 122, 199–200 healing(s), 88, 129, 184, 187; see also miracles Hedge, Frederick Henry, 161–2 Hedley, Douglas, 17, 141, 172, 173, 179, 189, 201, 202, 205 Heinrich, Johann, 197 Heitzenrater, Richard P., 174 hell, doctrine of, 194, 197, 199 Helvetic Conference, Second, 148 Heraclitus, 12 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 25, 33, 186, 192 Herschel, William, 35 Hezekiah (biblical ), 66 Hinze, Bradford, 199 history, 21, 174, 186, 187 Hoffman, Daniel, 174 Holy Spirit, see Spirit, Holy Homer, 151 Hone, William, 195 Hooker, Richard, 4, 115–16, 138 Horne, Thomas Hartwell, 36–7, 39, 175 Horsley, Samuel, 14 Hug, Johann Leonhard, 188 human(s) affections of, 59 creation of, 50, 179 and development of society, 51–2 distinguished from animals, 18 doctrine of, 17–20 and Fall, 52 immortality of, 90 mind, 137 psychology of, 18 races, 181

and redemption, 87–8 self–knowledge, 139, 194 and soul, 196 and Spirit, 2–3 will, 18 see also, Fall, the; soul; will Hume, David, 24 Hurwitz, Hyman, 48, 67, 69, 178–80 hymns, 30–1 hyperbole, 69 Idealism, German, 66 Ideas above sense, 158 Christ the living object of, 99 defined, 66 divine, 128, 145 and Imagination, 155 Platonic, 135 and Reason, 135–6 and true religion, 27, 127 Ignatius of Antioch, 175 Imagination and biblical criticism, 102 and fancy, 202 and ideas, 69 and prophets, 155–6, 204 and Reason, 136 and Spirit, 128 and visions, 8, 144 Incarnation, see Jesus Christ Inquisition, 122 intellect, see mind intuition, 59–60, 89, 136, 145, 154, 167 Irenaeus, 86, 92, 104, 121–2, 199 Irving, Edward, 102, 107–8, 131, 135, 185, 194, 197 Isaac (biblical ), 17, 34, 181 Jackson, J. R. de J., 5, 205–6 Jacob (biblical), 17, 53, 55, 178, 181 Jael (biblical ), 62 Jahn, Johannes, 74

Index James, Apostle, 187, 189 Jasper, David, 185, 206 Jeffrey, Francis, 175 Jehovah, see Jesus Christ Jedin, Hubert, 198 Jerome, 178, 189 Jerusalem, Council of (Acts 15), 94–5 Jesus Christ ascension of, 90–1, 188, 192, 193, 194 baptism of, 81 crucifixion, 92, 100 descent into hell, 199 divinity of, 82–4, 103–4 and Gospels, 36 and grace, 59, 132 high priest, 103 incarnation of, 58, 87, 102, 181, 201 infancy narratives, 81–2, 95–6, 109, 120–1, 167, 188–90, 191 and Jehovah, 55, 57–8, 65–6, 70, 132, 154, 182, 183, 185 and Law, 100 “lives” of, 175 and Logos, 101 and miracles, 129, 187, 192 object of prayer, 195 and Old Testament, 2, 64, 66, 69 preacher as representative of, 146, 158 and procession of Spirit, 132–3 resurrection of, 82, 96, 130 and redemption, 16, 21–3 and sacrifice, 44, 66, 196 sayings of, 78–9, 186 second coming of, 98 and sin, 96–7 son of, 189–90 and spiritual sense of Scripture, 99 teachings of, 21, 85, 192 twofold character of, 184 virgin birth, see Jesus Christ, infancy narratives

227

see also atonement, Bible, Logos, redemption, Trinity Joan of Kent, 190 John, Apostle, 2, 77, 106, 115, 121, 189, 197, 201, 205; see also Bible, John, Gospel of John the Baptist, 87, 188 Jonah (biblical ), 125, 188 Joseph (biblical ), 72, 82, 189–90 Joshua (biblical ), 61, 132, 181 Jowett, Benjamin, 166 Judaism, 33–35, 78 and converts to Christianity, 84, 184 and Imagination, 205 and Jehovah, 55 and sacrificial system, 59, 179, 182 status of, 66–67 Judas (biblical ), 188 judgment, 42 Jurieu, Pierre, 200 Justin Martyr, 134 Kant, Immanuel, 15, 135–6, 172 Keble, John, 34 Kingsley, Charles, 166 Knight, Frances, 30–2 Knott, John R., Jr., 204 knowledge, 132, 134, 138, 144–5, 162, 167 Kooy, Michael John, 183 Koran, 34 Kramer, Fred, 198 Lacunza y Diaz, Manuel, 122–3, 181, 185, 194, 197 language biblical, 23, 33, 40–1, 69, 71, 107, 109, 133, 184 and God, 180 inspired, 150 philosophical, 134 of poetry, 155 and redemption, 21 religious, 8, 135, 145

228

Index

language—continued and society, 52 and symbols, 51, 158 see also allegories; metaphors; symbol(s) Laud, William, 113 Law, 59–60 dietary, 57 moral, 96, 100 universal, 98 Lazarus (biblical ), 192 Lefebure, Molly, 172 Leighton, Robert, 104–5, 148–9, 150, 156–7, 196, 201 Leith, John H., 148 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 4, 24, 38, 78, 120–1, 166, 199, 206 literacy, 31–2 liturgy, 2, 7, 119, 128, 200; see also Book of Common Prayer; Church of England; prayer Loades, Ann, 172 Locke, John, 129–30 logic, 24, 89, 90, 167 Logos and Christianity, 24 disclosure of, 42, 77 incarnate, 44, 55, 58, 66, 70, 156 philosophy, 51, 134 and rational discourse, 147 and Reason, 71, 203 and redemption, 23, 86, 87 as source of revelation, 3, 7, 28, 89, 140, 144, 153, 173, 179 and system of theology, 6, 8, 12, 15, 21, 26, 86, 127–8, 141, 191, 203 and wisdom, 146 see also Jesus Christ; Word Lord’s Supper, see Eucharist Lot (biblical ), 54 love, 20, 58, 141, 194 and fear, 126 and lust, 52 and will, 201 Lowth, Robert, 33

lusts, 54, see also love Luther, Martin on the Apocalypse, 197 and grace, 59 on Hebrews, 101–2 influence on Coleridge, 8, 27, 122, 193, 205 on James (Bible), 105 on the preacher, 147–8, 150, 157 on prophets, 153–4 and Reformation, 124, 190 and Spirit, 128 Mackey, J. P., 198 Mahomet, 34 Malachi (biblical ), 64 Maldon, William, 30 Marcion, 187 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 134 marriage as cathartic, 18 and human relationships, 52 institution of, 180 and sacraments, 195 and society, 60, 173 Marsh, Herbert, 36, 38, 117–19, 175–6, 199 Marsh, James, 1, 205 Martin, Gregory, 114 martyrdom, 199 Mary (biblical ), 82, 120, 189–90; see also Jesus Christ, infancy narratives Masson, Scott, 177 Maurice, Frederick Dennison, 161, 163, 165–6, 205 Mays, J. C. C., 204 McFarland, Thomas, 6, 171–3, 202 McGrath, Alister, 30, 75 McLean, Karen, 201 McNiece, Gerald, 177 Melanchthon, 153–4 Mendelssohn, Moses, 54 mesmerism, 88 metaphor(s), 21, 23, 40–1, 43–4, 107, 109, 184

Index metaphysics, 5 Methodism, 14, 30–31, 117, 174, 191, 203; see also Wesley, John Michael (biblical), 105 Michaelis, Johann David, 33, 36, 38, 175–6 Mileur, Jean–Pierre, 174 millenarianism, 107–8 Milman, Henry Hart, 74, 175, 182 Milton, John, 2, 201, 203–4 mind, 135, 137, 145, 154 minister(s)/ministry, 3, 59, 205; see also preacher(s) miracles, 34 and calling of Paul, 94 cause of, 190 and critique of the Bible, 61, 83 distinguished from signs, 193 as evidence of Christianity, 63, 129–30, 140–1, 192 and faith, 88 and gift of tongues, 195, see also tongues, gift of and God, 181 and history, 56–7 and nature, 62, 182 symbolic, 89–91, 192 and Unitarianism, 130 More, Henry, 51, 129, 130 Morrow, John, 197 Moses authority of, 60, 72, 103, 183 authorship, 49, 56, 180–1, 204 and Egyptians, 179 and Jude, 105 and Law, 57 miracles of, 61, 193 see also Bible Mozley, James F., 113 Mudge, Bradford, 206 Murley, Susan Lynn, 174 mystics/mysticism, 166 natural theology, 141 Necessitarianism, 18, 172 Neill, Stephen, 113

229

Neoplatonism, 13, 51, 128–9, 134, 166, 172, 201 Newman, John Henry, 9, 112, 172, 200 Newton, Isaac, 35, 185, 197 Nicene Creed/Council of Nicaea, 16, 112, 119–20, 133, 164 Niebuhr, H. Richard, 169 Noah (biblical ), 53 nominalism, 93 Norton, John, 117 Oberman, Heiko A., 148, 203 Olsen, Arthur L., 198 O’Malley, John, 198 ordination, 147 Origen, 104, 188 original sin, see sin Outler, Albert, 31 Oxford Movement, 112, 121, 199–200 pain, see evil Paley, William, 4, 24, 141, 173, 182, 192, 202 Palmer, William, 163–4 pantheism, 17, 50, 166, 181 pantisocracy, 173 papacy, 75, 115, 150, 204 and Bible, 112–13, 117–18, 122, 195 Coleridge’s distrust for, 124 and infallibility, 40, 177 Peter’s authority, 123 see also Roman Catholicism Patrides, C. A., 129, 201 Paul, Apostle and Acts of the Apostles, 7 author of Epistles, 81, 93–104, 194 on the Fall, 21 on inspiration, 39, 44, 147 knowledge of the Gospel, 193 linked to John, 2, 77–8, 84–5, 92, 115, 121, 131, 134, 189, 205

230

Index

Paul, Apostle—continued and Peter, 123 Priestley on, 130 and prophesying, 149 reconciling with Synoptics, 187 on redemption, 23 on the resurrection, 90 see also Bible, Pauline Epistles; Bible, books of Paulus, Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob, 63, 192 Pentad of Operative Christianity, vi, 6–8, 16, 110, 112–13, 124, 127–8, 133, 135, 141, 171, 194, 198, 200, 203 Pentateuch, see Bible Pentecost, 83 Perkins, Mary Anne, 12, 147 Perkins, William, 149, 150 Perry, Seamus, 9, 177 personality, see human(s), as persons Peter, Apostle, 95, 104, 123, 130, 147, 188; see also Bible, books of; papacy Pharaoh, 57 Philo, 51, 102, 179, 180 philosophy and the Bible, 6 Christian, 1, 2, 6, 16, 86, 89–90 German, 167–8 Greek, 85–6 and preparation of ministers, 149 and religion, 135, 144 Piper, H. W., 15, 172 Pilate (biblical ), 187 Plato, 13, 58, 134, 194 Platonism, 21, 51, 97, see also Neoplatonism Plotinus, 191 pneumatology, see Spirit, Holy poetry, 69, 76, 155 polarity, 23 political criticism, 9, 58 Polycarp, 104, 175 Pope, Alexander, 2 prayer, 2, 20–1, 108, 149, 188, 201

and Bible reading, 28, 32, 68, 70–1, 109, 182, 190 and liturgy, 85, 128 Prayer Book, see Book of Common Prayer preacher(s), 3, 6, 203 and action, 144–6 in Christian history, 146–50 Christ’s ambassador, 8 duties of, 157 expository, 158 hearers, 145–6 inspired utterances, 144–59 John and Paul, 93 and Spirit, 159 Presbyterians, 128 Prickett, Stephen, 38, 172, 174, 204 Priestley, Joseph, 173, 192 Christology of, 103 and the Trinity, 12–14, 17 and the will, 18 property, 18 prophecy, 24, 55, 63–6, 140–1, 183–4 defined, 150 and dreams, 205 and history, 66 and prognostication, 158, 206 prophesyings, 149–50 Prophets, the, see under Bible prophet(s), 3, 8, 102, 144, 153–5, 183, 204; see also preacher prostitution, 18 Protestantism and Apocrypha, 75 and biblical interpretation, 2, 115, 116 in England, 116 and Judaism, 67 and Roman Catholicism, 40, 122, 124, 148, 200 view of the Spirit, 133–4 see also Christianity; Roman Catholicism providence, 43, 56–7, 129, 193, 198, see also God

Index purgatory, 122 Puritanism, 15, 75, 114, 158 prophesyings, 149–50, 204 Quakers, 128 rationalism, 63 Rawley, William, 35 reader–response criticism, 112 Reason and the Bible, 28, 42–43 and church traditions, 201 defined, 135–6 and image of God, 52 individual, 166–7 and knowledge, 2–3, 8, 87 and language, 40 and Logos, 71, 86 and moral law, 96 practical, 136 and revelation, 7, 24, 60, 168, 203 and Spirit, 134–8 and Trinity, 13 truths of, 100, 155 and Understanding, 134, 135–8, 202 and will, 134–5 see also Spirit, Holy redemption of the body, 194 as central feature of system, 6, 7, 23, 86 and Church of England, 125–6 idea of, 184 and language, 41 and liberty, 105 and Logos, 87, 101 in New Testament, 199 and order of salvation, 20–3 and Paul, 194 and sin, 17, 173 of the will, 96–7, 191 see also atonement; Jesus Christ; sin Reformation

231

in England, 75 necessity of, 124 and preaching, 147–8, 157 theology, 76, 112–3, 122, 137, 144, 159 see also Protestantism; Roman Catholicism regeneration, 92 Reid, Nicholas, 172 Reimarus, Hermann Samuel, 38 religion practical, 71 revealed, 2–4 resurrection of the body, 194 and creed, 20 and divinity of Jesus Christ, 96, 130 in Gospels, 90–1 and proof, 192 see also Jesus Christ revelation defined, 169, 171, 177 direct, 204 gradual, 201 and the Logos, 28 process, 140 “rare” in the Bible, 40 and Reason, 24, 191 twofold character of, 131 revenge, 194 Reventlow, Henning Graf, 4, 38 Rhenferd, Jacob, 189 Rigg, James, 166–7 Ripley, George, 162 Rogerson, John W., 34 Roman Catholicism, 112 and Apocrypha, 75–6 criticism of, 200 emancipation debate, 199 in England, 114, 118 and presence of Christ, 122 and Protestantism, 40, 115, 120 sacraments of, 92 see also Christianity; papacy; Protestantism Rule, Philip C., 202

232

Index

Sabbath, 57, 58 sacrament(s), 41–42, 59, 85, 91–2, 119, 147–8, 194; see also baptism, Eucharist, symbol(s) salvation, 68, 132 Samuel (biblical ), 181 Sarah (biblical ), 34, 54 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 66, 177 Schillebeeckx, Edward, 41–2 Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst, 38–9, 41, 78, 101, 176, 186, 188, 195, 204 Schroeder, H. J., 198 Schweitzer, Albert, 129 Scot, Thomas, 54 Scripture, see Bible Sedgwick, James, 203 Semler, Johann Salomo, 63, 175 Seneca, 134–5, 195 sense(s), 89, 136, 152 Septuagint, see Bible Servetus, Michael, 201 Seth (biblical ), 81–2 sexuality, 57, 182, 199, 205 Shaffer, Elinor S., 4–5, 171, 174–5, 197 Shakespeare, William, 2, 37, 64 Sharpe, James, 114 Shedd, W. G. T., 167–8, 172 Simon (biblical ), 131 sin consequence of, 20 emancipation from, 68 original, 19, 173 and redemption, 17 and will, 173 Sisera (biblical ), 62 skepticism, see apologetics slavery, 13, 173 Smith, Edwin W., 117 Smith, John, 136, 154–5, 205 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), 32, 117

Socinianism, see Unitarianism Socinus, Faustus, 201 Socrates, 13, 22 soul, 88, 127–9, 134, 137 and body, 194 and the interior life, 147 and knowledge, 155 purging of, 141 and Spirit, 139, 196 transformation of, 149 Southey, Robert, 9, 82, 172, 173, 174 speech, ecstatic, 99; see also tongues, gift of Spinoza, Benedict de, 78 Spirit, Holy, 127–42 in Acts, 95, 124 and church, 126, 200 and community, 127, 149 empowerment by, 99 and incarnation, 201 and inspiration, 31, 36–8, 40, 76, 138–42, 150, 153–4, 157, 165, 176 and knowledge, 2–3, 121–2 Paul on, 194 personal subsistence of, 131–2, 191 procession of, 132–3 and reader of Scripture, 112, 138–42 and revelation, 7, 8, 28, 42, 144–5, 156 as Sophia, 201 and truth, 127–34, 155, 169 and will, 202 and Word, 86 and wisdom, 71 see also Bible, inspiration; Reason; Trinity Sterling, John, 163 Stewart, Herbert, 168 Storr, Vernon F., 44–5, 153, 178, 206 Strauss, David Friedrich, 44 suffering, 72

Index

233

Swedenborg, Emanuel, 200 symbol(s) and allegory, 44 and Christ, 54, 97 and history, 25 and language, 6, 38, 42, 51–2, 155–6 and miracles, 88–90 sacramental sense of, 41–2, 91–2, 177, 193 and senses of the Bible, 40–1, 43, 58, 59, 73 tautegorical, 177 see also Eucharist

Eastern and Western views, 133 formula of, 106 idea of, 133, 191 mystery of, 93 philosophical, 16 and Reason, 202 and redemption, 22 and revelation, 6 and Spirit, 191 see also Jesus Christ; God; Spirit, Holy Tyndale, William, 30, 113 typology, 7, 44, 48, 54, 58, 60, 63, 69, 108–9, 196

Talmud, 103 Taylor, Anya, 173 Taylor, Jeremy, 4, 8, 113, 135, 149–50, 204 Tennemann, Wilhelm Gottlieb, 51 tetractys, 127, 201; see also Trinity Thelwall, John, 18 theophany, 55 Thiel, John E., 198 Thirlwall, Connop, 38–9, 78, 168, 176, 186, 188 Thirty–Nine Articles, 75, 114, 119, 124–5, 200, 201; see also Church of England Tilley, Terrence, 198 toleration, 149–50, 193, 204 tongues, gift of, 82, 98–9, 131–2, 156–7, 195, 205 tradition(s), 7–8, 111–26, 128, 130, 146, 198, 201; see also church Transcendentalism, 162 transubstantiation, 59; see also Eucharist Trent, Council of, 113–15, 124, 198–9 Trinity/Trinitarianism and Bible, 115 Coleridge’s early rejection of, 12–17, 21 Coleridge’s system of religion, 127, 162, 172

Understanding, 128, 134, 145, 155, 179, 190 defined, 136 errors of, 183 and Reason, 202 Unitarianism and Christology, 125, 188 Coleridge’s early, 6, 13–16, 161, 172 English, 201 incompatible with the New Testament, 103, 191–2, 195 and intellect, 137 and interpretation, 198 and Logos, 70, 87, 101 and miracles, 130 and redemption, 21–2 rise of, 130 and Spirit, 128 Utilitarianism, 188 Valenze, Deborah M., 175 Vallins, David, 185 Vatican Council II, 198 Vial, Theodore M., 204 vice, see evil Vico, Giambattista, 179 Vigus, James, 172 Vincentian Canon, 124, 200 virtue, 71 Vulgate, see Bible

234

Index

Watson, J. R., 172 Webster, John, 182 Wedgwood, Josiah, 14 Wedgwood, Tom, 14 Welch, Claude, 174 Wendling, Ronald C., 202 Wesley, Charles, 174 Wesley, John, 9, 30–31, 174 Westbrook, Deeanne, 204 Whately, Richard, 168 Whichcote, Benjamin, 129, 130 Wiedenhöfer, Siegfried, 198 White, Daniel W., 13 White, Joseph Blanco, 4 Wigmore-Beddoes, Dennis G., 201 Wilbur, Earl Morse, 130 Will, the Absolute, 93 and evil, 17 and faith, 137 finite, 97 freedom of, 19–20, 105 and love, 201

and prayer, 188 regeneration of, 95 senses of, 173 Willey, Basil, 14, 18, 153, 158–9, 197 Williams, Rowland, 206 wisdom, 6, 8, 58, 71, 129, 146 human, 149 prophetic, 151 see also Logos; Bible, Writings, the witchcraft, 57 women, rights of, 58 Word inward, 116 spoken, 129 see also Logos Wordsworth, Christopher, 199 Wright, Luke, 202 Writings, the, see Bible Zoroastrianism, 50 Zwingli, Ulrich, 147