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

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If these points were niceties, and an over-refining in doctrine, is it to be believed that the Apostles, John, Peter and Paul, with the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, would have laid so great stress on them? But the true life of Christians is to eye Christ in every step of his life—not only as their Rule but as their Strength: looking to him as their Pattern both in doing and in suffering, and drawing power from him for going through both: being without him able for nothing. Take comfort then, thou that believest! It is he that lifts up the Soul from the Gates of Death: and he hath said, I will raise thee up at the last day. Thou that believest in him, believe him and take comfort. Yea, when thou art most sunk in thy sad apprehensions, and he far off to thy thinking, then is he nearest to raise and comfort thee: as sometimes it grows darkest immediately before day.

APHORISM XVII.

Leighton and Coleridge.

Would any of you be cured of that common disease, the fear of death? Yet this is not the right name of the disease, as a mere reference to our armies and navies is sufficient to prove: nor can the fear of death, either as loss of life or pain of dying, be justly held a common disease. But would you be cured of the fear and fearful questionings connected with the approach of death? Look this way, and you shall find more than you seek. Christ, the Word that was from the beginning and was made flesh and dwelt among men, died. And he, who dying conquered death in his own person, conquered Sin, and Death which is the Wages of Sin, for thee. And of this thou mayest be assured, if only thou believe in him, and love him. I need not add, keep his commandments: since where Faith and Love are, Obedience in its threefold character, as Effect, Reward, and Criterion, follows by that moral necessity which is the highest form of freedom. The Grave is thy bed of rest, and no longer the cold bed: for thy Saviour has warmed it, and made it fragrant.

If then it be health and comfort to the Faithful that Christ descended into the grave, with especial confidence may we meditate on his return from thence, quickened by the Spirit: this being to those who are in him the certain pledge, yea, the effectual cause of that blessed resurrection, for which they themselves hope. There is that union betwixt them and their Redeemer, that they shall rise by the communication and virtue of his rising: not simply by his power—for so the wicked likewise to their grief shall be raised: but they by his life as their life.

Comment.

On the three Preceding Aphorisms.

To the reader, who has consented to submit his mind to my temporary guidance, and who permits me to regard him as my pupil, or junior fellow-student, I continue to address myself. Should he exist only in my imagination, let the bread float on the waters! If it be the Bread of Life, it will not have been utterly cast away.

Let us pause a moment, and review the road we have passed over since the transit from Religious Morality to Spiritual Religion. My first attempt was to satisfy you, that there is a Spiritual principle in Man,[123] and to expose the sophistry of the arguments in support of the contrary. Our next step was to clear the road of all counterfeits, by showing what is not the Spirit, what is not Spiritual Religion.[124] And this was followed by an attempt to establish a difference in kind between religious truths and the deductions of speculative science; yet so as to prove, that the former are not only equally rational with the latter, but that they alone appeal to reason in the fulness and living reality of their power. This and the state of mind requisite for the formation of right convictions respecting spiritual truths, afterwards employed our attention. Having then enumerated the Articles of the Christian Faith peculiar to Christianity, I entered on the great object of the present work; namely, the removal of all valid objections to these articles on grounds of right reason or conscience. But to render this practicable it was necessary, first, to present each article in its true Scriptural purity, by exposure of the caricatures of misinterpreters; and this, again, could not be satisfactorily done till we were agreed respecting the faculty entitled to sit in judgment on such questions. I early foresaw, that my best chance (I will not say, of giving an insight into the surpassing worth and transcendent reasonableness of the Christian scheme, but) of rendering the very question intelligible, depended on my success in determining the true nature and limits of the human Understanding, and in evincing its diversity from Reason. In pursuing this momentous subject, I was tempted in two or three instances into disquisitions, which if not beyond the comprehension, were yet unsuited to the taste, of the persons for whom the work was principally intended. These, however, I have separated from the running text, and compressed into notes. The reader will at worst, I hope, pass them by as a leaf or two of waste paper, willingly given by him to those for whom it may not be paper wasted. Nevertheless, I cannot conceal, that the subject itself supposes, on the part of the reader, a steadiness in self-questioning, a pleasure in referring to his own inward experience for the facts asserted by the author, which can only be expected from a person who has fairly set his heart on arriving at clear and fixed conclusions in matters of Faith. But where this interest is felt, nothing more than a common capacity, with the ordinary advantages of education, is required for the complete comprehension both of the argument and the result. Let but one thoughtful hour be devoted to the pages 143-165. In all that follows, the reader will find no difficulty in understanding the author's meaning, whatever he may have in adopting it.

The two great moments of the Christian Religion are, Original Sin and Redemption; that the Ground, this the Superstructure of our faith. The former I have exhibited, first, according to the scheme of the Westminster Divines and the Synod of Dort; then, according to the[125] scheme of a contemporary Arminian divine; and lastly, in contrast with both schemes, I have placed what I firmly believe to be the Scriptural sense of this article, and vindicated its entire conformity with reason and experience. I now proceed to the other momentous article—from the necessitating Occasion of the Christian Dispensation to Christianity itself. For Christianity and Redemption are equivalent terms. And here my Comment will be comprised in a few sentences: for I confine my views to the one object of clearing this awful mystery from those too current misrepresentations of its nature and import that have laid it open to scruples and objections, not to such as shoot forth from an unbelieving heart—(against these a sick bed will be a more effectual antidote than all the argument in the world)—but to such scruples as have their birth-place in the reason and moral sense. Not that it is a mystery—not that it passeth all understanding;—if the doctrine be more than an hyperbolical phrase, it must do so;—but that it is at variance with the Law revealed in the conscience; that it contradicts our moral instincts and intuitions—this is the difficulty, which alone is worthy of an answer. And what better way is there of correcting the misconceptions than by laying open the source and occasion of them? What surer way of removing the scruples and prejudices, to which these misconceptions have given rise, than by propounding the mystery itself—namely the Redemptive Act, as the transcendent Cause of Salvation—in the express and definite words, in which it was enunciated by the Redeemer himself?