Aids to Reflection; and, The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

One other instance will, I trust, prevent all misconception of my meaning. I am clearly convinced, that the scriptural and only true[76] Idea of God will, in its development, be found to involve the Idea of the Tri-unity. But I am likewise convinced, that previously to the promulgation of the Gospel the doctrine had no claim on the faith of mankind; though it might have been a legitimate contemplation for a speculative philosopher, a theorem in metaphysics valid in the Schools.

I form a certain notion in my mind, and say:—This is what I understand by the term, God. From books and conversation I find, that the learned generally connect the same notion with the same word. I then apply the rules, laid down by the masters of logic, for the involution and evolution of terms, and prove (to as many as agree with me in my premises) that the notion, God, involves the notion, Trinity. I now pass out of the Schools, and enter into discourse with some friend or neighbour, unversed in the formal sciences, unused to the process of abstraction, neither Logician nor Metaphysician; but sensible and single-minded, an Israelite indeed, trusting in the Lord God of his Fathers, even the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. If I speak of God to him, what will he understand me to be speaking of? What does he mean, and suppose me to mean, by the word? An accident or product of the reasoning faculty, or an abstraction which the human mind forms by reflecting on its own thoughts and forms of thinking? No. By God he understands me to mean an existing and self-subsisting reality,[77] a real and personal Being—even the Person, the i am, who sent Moses to his forefathers in Egypt. Of the actual existence of the divine Being he has the same historical assurance as of theirs; confirmed indeed by the Book of Nature, as soon and as far as that stronger and better light has taught him to read and construe it—confirmed by it, I say, but not derived from it. Now by what right can I require this man (and of such men the great majority of serious believers consisted, previously to the light of the Gospel) to receive a notion of mine, wholly alien from his habits of thinking, because it may be logically deduced from another notion, with which he was almost as little acquainted, and not at all concerned? Grant for a moment, that the latter (that is, the notion, with which I first set out) as soon as it is combined with the assurance of a corresponding Reality becomes identical with the true and effective Idea of God! Grant, that in thus realizing the notion I am warranted by Revelation, the Law of Conscience, and the interests and necessities of my Moral Being! Yet by what authority, by what inducement, am I entitled to attach the same reality to a second notion, a notion drawn from a notion? It is evident, that if I have the same right, it must be on the same grounds. Revelation must have assured it, my Conscience required it—or in some way or other I must have an interest in this belief. It must concern me, as a moral and responsible Being. Now these grounds were first given in the Redemption of Mankind by Christ, the Saviour and Mediator: and by the utter incompatibility of these offices with a mere creature. On the doctrine of Redemption depends the Faith, the Duty, of believing in the Divinity of our Lord. And this again is the strongest Ground for the reality of that Idea, in which alone this Divinity can be received without breach of the faith in the unity of the Godhead. But such is the Idea of the Trinity. Strong as the motives are that induce me to defer the full discussion of this great Article of the Christian creed, I cannot withstand the request of several divines, whose situation and extensive services entitle them to the utmost deference, that I should so far deviate from my first intention as at least to indicate the point on which I stand, and to prevent the misconception of my purpose: as if I held the doctrine of the Trinity for a truth which Men could be called on to believe by mere force of reasoning, independently of any positive Revelation. In short, it had been reported in certain circles, that I considered this doctrine as a demonstrable part of the Religion of Nature. Now though it might be sufficient to say, that I regard the very phrase "Revealed Religion" as a pleonasm, inasmuch as a religion not revealed is, in my judgment, no religion at all; I have no objection to announce more particularly and distinctly what I do and what I do not maintain on this point: provided that in the following paragraph, with this view inserted, the reader will look for nothing more than a plain statement of my opinions. The grounds on which they rest, and the arguments by which they are to be vindicated, are for another place.

I hold then, it is true, that all the (so called) demonstrations of a God either prove too little, as that from the order and apparent purpose in Nature; or too much, namely, that the World is itself God: or they clandestinely involve the conclusion in the premises, passing off the mere analysis or explication of an Assertion for the Proof of it,—a species of logical legerdemain not unlike that of the jugglers at a fair, who putting into their mouths what seems to be a walnut, draw out a score yards of ribbon—as in the Postulate of a First Cause. And lastly, in all these demonstrations the demonstrators presuppose the Idea or Conception of a God without being able to authenticate it, that is, to give an account whence they obtained it. For it is clear, that the proof first mentioned and the most natural and convincing of all (the Cosmological I mean, or that from the Order in Nature) presupposes the Ontological—that is, the proof of a God from the necessity and necessary Objectivity of the Idea. If the latter can assure us of a God as an existing Reality, the former will go far to prove his power, wisdom, and benevolence. All this I hold. But I also hold, that this truth, the hardest to demonstrate, is the one which of all others least needs to be demonstrated; that though there may be no conclusive demonstrations of a good, wise, living, and personal God, there are so many convincing reasons for it, within and without—a grain of sand sufficing, and a whole universe at hand to echo the decision!—that for every mind not devoid of all reason, and desperately conscience-proof, the Truth which it is the least possible to prove, it is little less than impossible not to believe! only indeed just so much short of impossible, as to leave some room for the will and the moral election, and thereby to keep it a truth of Religion, and the possible subject of a Commandment.[80]

On this account I do not demand of a Deist, that he should adopt the doctrine of the Trinity. For he might very well be justified in replying, that he rejected the doctrine, not because it could not be demonstrated, nor yet on the score of any incomprehensibilities and seeming contradictions that might be objected to it, as knowing that these might be, and in fact had been, urged with equal force against a personal God under any form capable of love and veneration; but because he had not the same theoretical necessity, the same interests and instincts of reason for the one hypothesis as for the other. It is not enough, the Deist might justly say, that there is no cogent reason why I should not believe the Trinity; you must show me some cogent reason why I should.

But the case is quite different with a Christian, who accepts the Scriptures as the Word of God, yet refuses his assent to the plainest declarations of these Scriptures, and explains away the most express texts into metaphor and hyperbole, because the literal and obvious interpretation is (according to his notions) absurd and contrary to reason. He is bound to show, that it is so in any sense, not equally applicable to the texts asserting the Being, Infinity, and Personality of God the Father, the Eternal and Omnipresent one, who created the Heaven and the Earth. And the more is he bound to do this, and the greater is my right to demand it of him, because the doctrine of Redemption from sin supplies the Christian with motives and reasons for the divinity of the Redeemer far more concerning and coercive subjectively, that is, in the economy of his own soul, than are all the inducements that can influence the Deist objectively, that is, in the interpretation of Nature.

Do I then utterly exclude the speculative Reason from Theology? No! It is its office and rightful privilege to determine on the negative truth of whatever we are required to believe. The Doctrine must not contradict any universal principle: for this would be a Doctrine that contradicted itself. Or Philosophy? No. It may be and has been the servant and pioneer of Faith by convincing the mind, that a doctrine is cogitable, that the soul can present the Idea to itself; and that if we determine to contemplate, or think of, the subject at all, so and in no other form can this be effected. So far are both logic and philosophy to be received and trusted. But the duty, and in some cases and for some persons even the right, of thinking on subjects beyond the bounds of sensible experience; the grounds of the real truth; the life, the substance, the hope, the love, in one word, the Faith: these are Derivatives from the practical, moral, and spiritual Nature and Being of Man.

[72] At a period, in which Doctors Marsh and Wordsworth have, by the Zealous on one side, being charged with Popish principles on account of their Anti-bibliolatry, and the sturdy adherents of the doctrines common to Luther and Calvin, and the literal interpreters of the Articles and Homilies, are, (I wish I could say, altogether without any fault of their own) regarded by the Clergy generally as virtual Schismatics, dividers of, though not from, the Church, it is serving the cause of charity to assist in circulating the following instructive passage from the Life of Bishop Hackett respecting the dispute between the Augustinians, or Luthero-Calvinistic divines and the Grotians of his age: in which Controversy (says his biographer) he, Hackett, "was ever very moderate."

"But having been bred under Bishop Davenant and Dr. Ward in Cambridge, he was addicted to their sentiments. Archbishop Usher would say, that Davenant understood those controversies better than ever any man did since St. Augustine. But he (Bishop Hackett) used to say, that he was sure he had three excellent men of his mind in this controversy: 1. Padre Paolo (Father Paul) whose letter is extant in Heinsius, anno 1604: 2. Thomas Aquinas: 3. St. Augustine. But besides and above them all, he believed in his Conscience that St. Paul was of the same mind likewise. Yet at the same time he would profess, that he disliked no Arminians, but such as revile and defame every one who is not so: and he would often commend Arminius himself for his excellent wit and parts, but only tax his want of reading and knowledge in Antiquity. And he ever held, it was the foolishest thing in the world to say the Arminians were Popishly inclined, when so many Dominicians and Jansenists were rigid followers of Augustine in these points: and no less foolish to say that the Anti-Arminians were Puritans or Presbyterians, when Ward, and Davenant, and Prideaux, and Brownrig, those stout champions for Episcopacy, were decided Anti-Arminians; while Arminius himself was ever a Presbyterian. Therefore he greatly commended the moderation of our Church, which extended equal Communion to both."

[73] Aranea prodigiosa. See Baker's Microscopic Experiments.

[74] May not this Rule be expressed more intelligibly (to a mathematician at least) thus:—Reasoning from finite to finite, on a basis of truth, also, reasoning from infinite to infinite, on a basis of truth, will always lead to truth, as intelligibly as the basis on which such truths respectively rest.—While, reasoning from finite to infinite, or from infinite to finite, will lead to apparent absurdity, although the basis be true: and is not such apparent absurdity, another expression for "truth unintelligible by a finite mind"?