The Literary Remains | Page 2

be to misrepresent and betray him. For he threw up
his hands in dismay at the language of some of our modern divinity on
this point;--as if a faith not founded on insight were aught else than a
specious name for wilful positiveness;--as if the Father of Lights could
require, or would accept, from the only one of his creatures whom he
had endowed with reason the sacrifice of fools! Did Coleridge,
therefore, mean that the doctrines revealed in the Scriptures were to be
judged according to their supposed harmony or discrepancy with the
evidence of the senses, or the deductions of the mere understanding
from that evidence? Exactly the reverse: he disdained to argue even
against Transubstantiation on such a ground, well knowing and loudly
proclaiming its utter weakness and instability. But it was a leading
principle in all his moral and intellectual views to assert the existence
in all men equally of a power or faculty superior to, and independent of,
the external senses: in this power or faculty he recognized that image of
God in which man was made; and he could as little understand how
faith, the indivisibly joint act or efflux of our reason and our will,
should be at variance with one of its factors or elements, as how the
Author and Upholder of all truth should be in contradiction to himself.
He trembled at the dreadful dogma which rests God's right to man's
obedience on the fact of his almighty power,--a position falsely inferred

from a misconceived illustration of St. Paul's, and which is less
humbling to the creature than blasphemous of the Creator; and of the
awless doctrine that God might, if he had so pleased, have given to man
a religion which to human intelligence should not be rational, and
exacted his faith in it--Coleridge's whole middle and later life was one
deep and solemn denial. He believed in no God in the very idea of
whose existence absolute truth, perfect goodness, and infinite wisdom,
were not elements essentially necessary and everlastingly copresent.
Thus minded, he sought to justify the ways of God to man in the only
way in which they can be justified to any one who deals honestly with
his conscience, namely, by showing, where possible, their consequence
from, and in all cases their consistency with, the ideas or truths of the
pure reason which is the same in all men. With what success he
laboured for thirty years in this mighty cause of Christian philosophy,
the readers of his other works, especially the Aids to Reflection, will
judge: if measured by the number of resolved points of detail his
progress may seem small; but if tested by the weight and grasp of the
principles which he has established, it may be confidently said that
since Christianity had a name few men have gone so far. If ever we are
to find firm footing in Biblical criticism between the extremes (how
often meeting!) of Socinianism and Popery;--if the indisputable facts of
physical science are not for ever to be left in a sort of admitted
antagonism to the supposed assertions of Scripture;--if ever the
Christian duty of faith in God through Christ is to be reconciled with
the religious service of a being gifted by the same God with reason and
a will, and subjected to a conscience,--it must be effected by the aid,
and in the light, of those truths of deepest philosophy which in all Mr.
Coleridge's works, published or unpublished, present themselves to the
reader with an almost affecting reiteration. But to do justice to those
works and adequately to appreciate the Author's total mind upon any
given point, a cursory perusal is insufficient; study and comprehension
are requisite to an accurate estimate of the relative value of any
particular denial or assertion; and the apparently desultory and
discontinuous form of the observations now presented to the Reader
more especially calls for the exercise of his patience and thoughtful
circumspection.

With this view the Reader is requested to observe the dates which, in
some instances, the Editor has been able to affix to the notes with
certainty. Most of those on Jeremy Taylor belong to the year 1810, and
were especially designed for the perusal of Charles Lamb. Those on
Field were written about 1814; on Racket in 1818; on Donne in 1812
and 1829; on The Pilgrim's Progress in 1833; and on Hooker and the
Book of Common Prayer between 1820 and 1830. Coleridge's mind
was a growing and accumulating mind to the last, his whole life one of
inquiry and progressive insight, and the dates of his opinions are
therefore in some cases important, and in all interesting.
The Editor is deeply sensible of his responsibility in publishing this
Volume; as to which he can