CXXXIII. TO THE REV. J. P. ESTLIN.
Crescelly, near Narbarth, Pembrokeshire,
December 7, 1802.
My dear Friend,—I took the liberty of desiring Mrs. Coleridge to direct a letter for me to you, fully expecting to have seen you; but I passed rapidly through Bristol, and left it with Mr. Wedgwood immediately—I literally had no time to see any one. I hope, however, to see you on my return, for I wish very much to have some hours’ conversation with you on a subject that will not cease to interest either of us while we live at least, and I trust that is a synonym of “for ever!”... Have you seen my different essays in the “Morning Post”?[276]—the comparison of Imperial Rome and France, the “Once a Jacobin, always a Jacobin,” and the two letters to Mr. Fox? Are my politics yours?
Have you heard lately from America? A gentleman informed me that the progress of religious Deism in the middle Provinces is exceedingly rapid, that there are numerous congregations of Deists, etc., etc. Would to Heaven this were the case in France! Surely, religious Deism is infinitely nearer the religion of our Saviour than the gross idolatry of Popery, or the more decorous, but not less genuine, idolatry of a vast majority of Protestants. If there be meaning in words, it appears to me that the Quakers and Unitarians are the only Christians, altogether pure from Idolatry, and even of these I am sometimes jealous, that some of the Unitarians make too much an Idol of their one God. Even the worship of one God becomes Idolatry in my convictions, when, instead of the Eternal and Omnipresent, in whom we live and move and have our Being, we set up a distinct Jehovah, tricked out in the anthropomorphic attributes of Time and successive Thoughts, and think of him as a Person, from whom we had our Being. The tendency to Idolatry seems to me to lie at the root of all our human vices—it is our original Sin. When we dismiss three Persons in the Deity, only by subtracting two, we talk more intelligibly, but, I fear, do not feel more religiously—for God is a Spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit.
O my dear sir! it is long since we have seen each other—believe me, my esteem and grateful affection for you and Mrs. Estlin has suffered no abatement or intermission—nor can I persuade myself that my opinions, fully stated and fully understood, would appear to you to differ essentially from your own. My creed is very simple—my confession of Faith very brief. I approve altogether and embrace entirely the Religion of the Quakers, but exceedingly dislike the sect, and their own notions of their own Religion. By Quakerism I understand the opinions of George Fox rather than those of Barclay—who was the St. Paul of Quakerism.—I pray for you and yours!
S. T. Coleridge.