sequence requested by his publisher to write on the subject. He therefore composed two Lay Sermons, addressed to the higher and to the middle classes of society, and had the intention of addressing a third to the lower classes. The first sermon he named "the Statesman's Manual, or the Bible the best guide to political skill and foresight." The pamphlet was as might have been expected, "cut up." He was an unpopular writer on an unpopular subject. Time was, when reviews directed the taste of the reading public, now, on the contrary, they judge it expedient to follow it. But it may be well to place before the reader the expression of Coleridge's own feelings, written after these several attacks, it may also serve to shew the persecution to which he was liable : "I published a work a large portion of which "was professedly metaphysical." (First Lay Sermon.)* "A delay," said he, "occurred between its first "annunciation and its appearance; and it was "reviewed by anticipation with a malignity, so 66 66 66 66 66 avowedly and so exclusively personal, as is, I believe, unprecedented even in the present contempt of all common humanity that disgraces and endangers the liberty of the press. After its appearance the author of this lam *The first was published in 1816, and the second in 1817. poon was chosen to review it in the Edinburgh "Review and under the single condition, that "he should have written what he himself really 66 66 thought, and have criticised the work as he "would have done had its author been indiffe"rent to him, I should have chosen that man myself, both from the vigour and the originality "of his mind, and from his particular acuteness "in speculative reasoning, before all others. "But I can truly say, that the grief with which "I read this rhapsody of predetermined insult, 66 66 had the rhapsodist himself for its whole and "sole object: and that the indignant contempt "which it excited in me was as exclusively "confined to his employer and suborner. I "refer to this Review at present, in consequence “of information having been given me, that the " innuendo of my 'potential infidelity,' grounded "on one passage of my first Lay Sermon, has been received and propagated with a degree of credence, of which I can safely acquit the originator of the calumny. I give the sentences as they stand in the Sermon, premising only that I was speaking exclusively of mi"racles worked for the outward senses of men. 66 66 66 66 66 6 It was only to overthrow the usurpation ex"ercised in and through the senses, that the "' senses were miraculously appealed to. REASON 66 6 AND RELIGION ARE THEIR OWN EVIDENCE. 66 6 66 6 The natural sun is in this respect a symbol "of the spiritual. Ere he is fully arisen, and "while his glories are still under veil, he calls 66 6 66 6 up the breeze to chase away the usurping vapours of the night season, and thus converts "the air itself into the minister of its own pu"rification: not surely in proof or elucidation 66 6 666 66 6 of the light from heaven, but to prevent its 'interception. Wherever, therefore, similar "circumstances coexist with the same moral "causes, the principles revealed, and the examples recorded, in the inspired writings, "render miracles superfluous: and if we neglect to apply truths in the expectation of wonders, or under pretext of the cessation of the latter, we tempt God and merit the same reply which our Lord gave to the Pharisees " on a like occasion.' 66 6 66 66 6 "In the sermon and the notes both the his"torical truth and the necessity of the miracles are strongly and frequently asserted. • The 66 6 66 4 666 66 6 66 6 testimony of books of history (namely, relatively to the signs and wonders with which Christ came,) is one of the strong and stately pillars of the church; but it is not the foundation.' Instead, therefore, of defending myself, which I could easily effect by a series "of passages, expressing the same opinion, from the fathers and the most eminent protestant divines, from the Reformation to the Revolution, "I shall merely state what my belief is, con 66 cerning the true evidences of Christianity. "1st. Its consistency with right reason, I consider as the outer court of the temple, the 66 66 66 46 66 66 common area within which it stands. 2ndly. "The miracles, with and through which the religion was first revealed and attested, I regard as the steps, the vestibule, the portal of the temple. 3rdly. The sense, the inward feeling, in the soul of each believer, of its exceeding desirableness—the experience, that he "needs something, joined with the strong foretokening, that the redemption and the graces propounded to us in Christ are what he needs this I hold to be the true foundation of the spiritual edifice. With the strong à priori probability that flows in from 1 and 3, on the correspondent historical evidence of 2, no man can refuse or neglect to make the experiment "without guilt. But, 4thly, it is the experience "derived from a practical conformity to the con"ditions of the gospel-it is the opening eye; "the dawning light; the terrors and the pro"mises of spiritual growth; the blessedness of loving God as God, the nascent sense of sin “hated as sin, and of the incapability of attaining to either without Christ; it is the 66 66 sorrow that still rises up from beneath, and the "consolation that meets it from above; the bosom treacheries of the principal in the warfare, and the exceeding faithfulness and long suffering of the uninterested ally ;-in a word, "it is the actual trial of the faith in Christ, with "its accompaniments and results, that must form 66 the arched roof, and the faith itself is the com pleting keystone. In order to an efficient be"lief in Christianity, a man must have been a "Christian, and this is the seeming argumentum "in circulo, incident to all spiritual truths, to 66 every subject not presentable under the forms "of time and space, as long as we attempt to "master by the reflex acts of the understanding, "what we can only know by the act of becoming. "Do the will of my Father, and ye shall know "whether I am of God.' These four evidences "I believe to have been, and still to be, for the world, for the whole church, all necessary, all equally necessary; but that at present, and "for the majority of Christians born in Christian countries, I believe the third and the fourth evidences to be the most operative, not as "superseding, but as involving a glad undoubting faith in the two former. Credidi, ideóque "intellexi, appears to me the dictate equally of philosophy and religion, even as I believe redemption to be the antecedent of sanctification, "and not its consequent. All spiritual predi"cates may be construed indifferently as modes 66 66 66 66 66 of action, or as states of being. Thus holiness "and blessedness are the same idea, now seen "in relation to act, and now to existence."Biog. Liter. Vol. ii. p. 303. |