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

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

We call an individual a bad man, not because an action is contrary to the law, but because it has led us to conclude from it some Principle opposed to the law, some private maxim, or by-law in the Will contrary to the universal law of right reason in the conscience, as the ground of the action. But this evil principle again must be grounded in some other principle which has been made determinant of the Will by the Will's own self-determination. For if not, it must have its ground in some necessity of nature, in some instinct or propensity imposed, not acquired, another's work not our own. Consequently, neither act nor principle could be imputed; and relatively to the agent, not original, not sin.

Now let the grounds on which the fact of an evil inherent in the Will is affirmable in the instance of any one man, be supposed equally applicable in every instance, and concerning all men: so that the fact is asserted of the individual, not, because he has committed this or that crime, or because he has shown himself to be this or that man, but simply because he is a man. Let the evil be supposed such as to imply the impossibility of an individual's referring to any particular time at which it might be conceived to have commenced, or to any period of his existence at which it was not existing. Let it be supposed, in short, that the subject stands in no relation whatever to time, can neither be called in time nor out of time; but that all relations of time are as alien and heterogeneous in this question, as the relations and attributes of space (north or south, round or square, thick or thin) are to our affections and moral feelings. Let the reader suppose this, and he will have before him the precise import of the Scriptural doctrine of Original Sin; or rather of the Fact acknowledged in all ages, and recognized but not originating, in the Christian Scriptures.

In addition to this it will be well to remind the inquirer, that the stedfast conviction of the existence, personality, and moral attributes of God, is presupposed in the acceptance of the Gospel, or required as its indispensable preliminary. It is taken for granted as a point which the hearer had already decided for himself, a point finally settled and put at rest: not by the removal of all difficulties, or by any such increase of insight as enabled him to meet every objection of the Epicurean or the sceptic with a full and precise answer; but because he had convinced himself that it was folly as well as presumption in so imperfect a creature to expect it; and because these difficulties and doubts disappeared at the beam, when tried against the weight and convictive power of the reasons in the other scale. It is, therefore, most unfair to attack Christianity, or any article which the Church has declared a Christian doctrine, by arguments, which, if valid, are valid against all religion. Is there a disputant who scorns a mere postulate, as the basis of any argument in support of the Faith; who is too high-minded to beg his ground, and will take it by a strong hand? Let him fight it out with the Atheists, or the Manichæans; but not stoop to pick up their arrows, and then run away to discharge them at Christianity or the Church!

The only true way is to state the doctrine, believed as well by Saul of Tarsus, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the Church of Christ, as by Paul the Apostle fully preaching the Gospel of Christ. A moral Evil is an evil that has its origin in a Will. An evil common to all must have a ground common to all. But the actual existence of moral evil we are bound in conscience to admit; and that there is an evil common to all is a fact; and this evil must therefore have a common ground. Now this evil ground cannot originate in the Divine Will: it must therefore be referred to the will of man. And this evil ground we call Original Sin. It is a mystery, that is, a fact, which we see, but cannot explain; and the doctrine a truth which we apprehend, but can neither comprehend nor communicate. And such by the quality of the subject (namely, a responsible Will) it must be, if it be truth at all.

A sick man, whose complaint was as obscure as his sufferings were severe and notorious, was thus addressed by a humane stranger: "My poor Friend! I find you dangerously ill, and on this account only, and having certain information of your being so, and that you have not wherewithal to pay for a physician, I have come to you. Respecting your disease, indeed, I can tell you nothing, that you are capable of understanding, more than you know already, or can only be taught by reflection on your own experience. But I have rendered the disease no longer irremediable. I have brought the remedy with me: and I now offer you the means of immediate relief, with the assurance of gradual convalescence, and a final perfect cure; nothing more being required on your part, but your best endeavours to follow the prescriptions I shall leave with you. It is, indeed, too probable, from the nature of your disease, that you will occasionally neglect or transgress them. But even this has been calculated on in the plan of your cure, and the remedies provided, if only you are sincere and in right earnest with yourself, and have your heart in the work. Ask me not how such a disease can be conceived possible. Enough for the present that you know it to be real: and I come to cure the disease not to explain it."

Now, what if the patient or some of his neighbours should charge this good Samaritan, with having given rise to the mischievous notion of an inexplicable disease, involving the honour of the King of the country;—should inveigh against him as the author and first introducer of the notion, though of the numerous medical works composed ages before his arrival, and by physicians of the most venerable authority, it was scarcely possible to open a single volume without finding some description of the disease, or some lamentation of its malignant and epidemic character:—and, lastly, what if certain pretended friends of this good Samaritan, in their zeal to vindicate him against this absurd charge, should assert that he was a perfect stranger to this disease, and boldly deny that he had ever said or done any thing connected with it, or that implied its existence?

In this Apologue or imaginary case, reader, you have the true bearings of Christianity on the fact and doctrine of Original Sin. The doctrine (that is, the confession of a known fact) Christianity has only in common with every religion, and with every philosophy, in which the reality of a responsible Will and the essential difference between good and evil have been recognised. Peculiar to the Christian religion are the remedy and (for all purposes but those of a merely speculative curiosity) the solution. By the annunciation of the remedy it affords all the solution which our moral interests require; and even in that which remains, and must remain, unfathomable, the Christian finds a new motive to walk humbly with the Lord his God.

Should a professed Believer ask you whether that, which is the ground of responsible action in your will, could in any way be responsibly present in the Will of Adam,—answer him in these words: "You, Sir! can no more demonstrate the negative, than I can conceive the affirmative. The 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. 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." It belongs to the very essence of the doctrine, that in respect of Original Sin every man is the adequate representative of all men. What wonder, then, that where no inward ground of preference existed, the choice should be determined by outward relations, and that the first in time should be taken as the diagram? Even in Genesis the word, Adam, is distinguished from a proper name by an Article before it. It is the Adam, so as to express the genus, not the individual—or rather, perhaps, I should say, as well as the individual. But that the word with its equivalent, the old man, is used symbolically and universally by St. Paul, (1 Cor. xv. 22 45. Eph. iv. 22. Col. iii. 9. Rom. vi. 6.) is too evident to need any proof.

I conclude with this remark. The doctrine of Original Sin concerns all men. But it concerns Christians in particular no otherwise than by its connexion with the doctrine of Redemption; and with the Divinity and Divine Humanity of the Redeemer as a corollary or necessary inference from both mysteries. Beware of Arguments against Christianity, which cannot stop there, and consequently ought not to have commenced there. Something I might have added to the clearness of the preceding views, if the limits of the work had permitted me to clear away the several delusive and fanciful assertions respecting the state[119] of our first parents, their wisdom, science, and angelic faculties, assertions without the slightest ground in Scripture:—Or, if consistently with the wants and preparatory studies of those for whose use the volume was especially intended, I could have entered into the momentous subject of a Spiritual Fall or Apostacy antecedent to the formation of man—a belief, the scriptural grounds of which are few and of diverse interpretation, but which has been almost universal in the Christian Church. Enough, however, has been given, I trust, for the Reader to see and (as far as the subject is capable of being understood) to understand this long controverted Article, in the sense in which alone it is binding on his faith. Supposing him therefore, to know the meaning of original sin, and to have decided for himself on the fact of its actual existence, as the antecedent ground and occasion of Christianity, we may now proceed to Christianity itself, as the Edifice raised on this ground, that is, to the great Constituent Article of the Faith in Christ, as the Remedy of the Disease—The Doctrine of Redemption.

But before I proceed to this momentous doctrine let me briefly remind the young and friendly pupil, to whom I would still be supposed to address myself, that in the following Aphorism the word science is used in its strict and narrowest sense. By a Science I here mean any chain of truths which are either absolutely certain, or necessarily true for the human mind, from the laws and constitution of the mind itself. In neither case is our conviction derived, or capable of receiving any addition, from outward experience, or empirical data—that is, matters of fact given to us through the medium of the senses—though these data may have been the occasion, or may even be an indispensable condition, of our reflecting on the former, and thereby becoming conscious of the same. On the other hand, a connected series of conclusions grounded on empirical data, in contra-distinction from science, I beg leave (no better term occurring) in this place and for this purpose, to denominate a scheme.