may be; but the good qualities of his heart must be borne witness to by those in the present day who knew him best in private. Thus much may be said for the correctness of his intuitions and the clearness of his moral sense, that, through life, his associates, with few exceptions, were distinguished by high qualities of head and heart; from first to last of his course here below he was a discoverer and a proclaimer of excellence both in books and men.

MR. COLERIDGE'S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.

Their formation; misconceptions and misrepresentations on the subject. SUCH imputations as those I have had the painful task of discussing, are apt to circulate rapidly and meet a ready credence from part of the public, when they concern a writer whose opinions are obnoxious to various parties in politics and religion, and who has never secured the favor and admiration of the light reading and little thinking world. For one man who will fully and deeply examine any portion of the opinions, religious or philosophical, of a full and deep thinker, there are hundreds capable of comparing the run of sentences and paragraphs and being entertained by a charge of plagiarism: if some are grateful to him for light thrown, as their eyes tell them, upon truth, far more are offended because this same light reveals to them the untruth which they would fain not see in its proper hues and proportions; who not being prepared to overthrow his reasonings by a direct attack are glad to come at them obliquely, by lowering his personal character and thereby weakening his authority. The whole Romish world was bent on convicting Luther of Antinomianism, and as they could not discover it in his writings, they were resolved, if possible, to find it in his life, and as it was not forthcoming in either, they put it into both; they took all his rhetoric the wrong way up and hunted for unsoundness in his mind and libertinism in his conduct, as vultures hunt for things corrupt in nature.' The spirit evidenced in this procedure-that " ancient

I believe that Bayle's article caused a dead silence on the subject of

spirit is not dead;" religious writers, even at the present day, are far too prone to discredit a man's opinions at second-hand by tracing them to some averred evil source in his character, or perverting influence in the circumstances of his life. This seems

exceptionable, however gently done, first because it is a very cir cuitous and uncertain mode of arriving at truth; a man's opinions we know on his own statements of them; but in attempting to discover the means through which they have been formed, we are searching in the dark, or the duskiest and most deceptive twilight, and, having no clear light to guide us, are apt to be led astray by some ignis fatuus of our own prejudices and delusions. Let the opinions be tried on their own merits, and if this is beside the inquirer's purpose, and he chooses to assume the truth of those he himself holds, considering them too certain and too sacred to be made a question of, in the same spirit let him disdain to snatch an argument in their favor, out of themselves, from doubtful considerations. Alas! how many of those who hold this lofty tone, calling their own belief the truth, and other men's belief mere opinion, only because they have an opinion of the validity of a certain test of truth which others cannot assent to, will yet resort to questionable methods of recommending this their unquestionable creed, and bring elaborate sophisms and partial representations, fit only to impose upon prepossessed and ductile readers, to the aid of "practical infallibility!"

But the second and even stronger objection to this mode of proceeding is, that the desire to find the origin of a man's way of thinking in the facts of his history, brings the inquirer under great temptation to depart from strict truth in regard to the facts themselves, to mould them, often perhaps unconsciously, into such a shape as best suits his purpose.

the great Reformer's personal "carnality" for ages. Of late years it has been revived, and there is a faint attempt to bring up some of the old stories circulated against him, to the effect that he made liberty a cloak for licentiousness. (See on Luther's Life and Opinions Hare's Mission of the Comforter, vol. ii., pp. 656-878.) It was an "easy feat" to put Pantheism into the "bottom of Luther's doctrine and personal character” (Essay on Development, p. 84), because the bottom of doctrine is, one knows not where; and Pantheism, as modern polemics employ the term, one knows not what; but to fasten dissoluteness on his conduct is by no means easy.

Now in order to show that these inconveniences do attach to the principle itself, I will take my example of its operation from a respectable quarter, where no unkindly spirit is manifested in tone or language. The seventh number of the Christian Miscellany of July, 1842, contains fifteen or sixteen pages of short extracts from Mr. Coleridge's writings, which are entitled "Contributions of S. T. Coleridge to the Revival of Catholic Truths.” I would suggest, by the way, that if my Father had taught only as such eclectics from his works would have him appear to have taught, his contributions to catholic truth would have been meagre enough, and might even have told in favor of much that he considered most uncatholic falsehood; had his views been conpressed within the bounds into which an implicit faith in the formal theology of early times must have compressed them, his system would have been lifeless and unreal as that which he was ever seeking to enliven and organize; he would have done little towards enlightening his generation, though he might have aided others to strengthen particular parties by bringing up again for current use obsolete religious metaphysics and neglected arguments—a very different process from that of a true revival, which, instead of raising up the dead body of ancient doctrine, calls forth the life and substance that belong to it, clothed in a newer and more spiritual body, and gives to the belief of past ages an expansion and extension commensurate with the developed mind of our progressive race. Such was the revival of catholic truth at which he aimed, with whatever success, and to bring him in as an assistant in one of an opposite character, is, in my opinion, to do him injustice.

My immediate purpose, however, was not to notice the extracts themselves, but certain observations, respecting my Father, prefixed to them. They are contained in the little introduction, which speaks as follows:

"These excerpts are not brought forward as giving an accurate representation of Mr. Coleridge's opinions in all their modifications, or as specimens of his writings generally; they are rather the chance metal of a mine, rich indeed, but containing ores of every degree of value. They may, however, serve to show, how much he contributed by his elimination of powerful

truths, in the then unhealthy state of literature, to the revival of sounder principles. In doing this it is not surprising that one, who relied so much on himself, and was so little guided, at least directly, by external authority, should have fallen into some inconsistencies. These inconsistencies are rather the result of an undue development of certain parts of Christian philosophy, than the holding of opinions immediately heretical."

"The circumstances in his Christian course, which we may regard as having impaired his power of duly appreciating the relative value of certain Catholic truths, were his profession of literature, his having edited a newspaper, and having been engaged in a course of heretical and schismatical teaching. That he was rescued from these dangers and crimes, and to a great extent saved from their effects, is, it is not improbable, owing to the circumstances of his early education. He was the son of a clergyman, admitted into the Church, and taught its doctrines by his pious and simple-hearted father, was impressed by his instructor, the Rev. James Bowyer, with the unrealities and hollowness of modern literature, and during his whole life was the subject of severe afflictions, which he received in patience, expressing for his past and often confessed sins, penitence in word, and doubtless penance in deeds. Through those means he may have attained his happy privilege, of uttering the most important truths, and clothing them in such language as rendered their reception more easy to minds not entirely petrified by the materialism of the day."

For Mr. Coleridge's sake alone it might be thought scarcely worth while to discuss the accuracy of remarks, which are perhaps at this time remembered by few, and, like a thousand others of similar tendency, cannot fail to be counteracted in their drift, so far as it is erroneous, by the ever renewed influence of his writings, as the returning waters sweep from the sea shore what children have scattered there during the ebb. For the sake of

1 The reader will perceive that I use this simile of the sea to denote, not the size or importance, but the comparative permanence of my father's writings. That he has achieved a permanent place in literature (I do not say what, or where), I certainly believe; and I also believe that no persons well acquainted with his writings will be disposed to deny the posi

right principle, I must observe, that in seeking to strengthen our own faith by casting any measure of discredit on minds which have not received it, we rather show our zeal in its behalf, than any true sense of its intrinsic excellence or confidence in its power. When a critic or biographer has a man's whole life,whole body of opinions-under review, he may fairly enough,though it is always a most difficult process,-attempt to show how, and to what extent, his character and modes of thought were affected by external circumstances; but I cannot help thinking it very unfair to pre-occupy a reader's mind with two or three points of a man's life selected out of his personal history, previously to introducing a few of his opinions to their notice. Every man who is in error, who cannot see the truth when it is before him, labors under some defect, intellectual or moral, and this may have been brought out,—I think such defects are never caused or implanted,-by circumstances; but it is hardly fair play to impute such defects to a writer or describe them as having corrupted his opinions, when the nature of the opinions themselves is adhuc sub lite among Christians and good men."

My principal objection, however, to the statements I have quoted is that they are incorrect either in the letter or the spirit, or both. It is plain enough that the real aim of the Miscellanist was not to exhibit the amount of Catholicity in an individual mind, but to spread what he considered to be Catholic truth, and to this my Father's character as a man was made subservient. On first reading his prefix I regarded one of its assertions as a pure mistake, and on this subject received the following testimonial from

tion, except those who represent the Edinburgh Review, of twenty and thirty years ago.

2 I wish the reader to observe that I attach little or no importance to the remarks of the Chr. Miscellany, in themselves; as an index of a state of feeling in certain quarters, and an instance of what is daily practised, to the production of injury and irritation more than any real good, they are not insignificant. Personality is a poisoned weapon in religious warfare; and all religious statements in these days are necessarily a warfare, open or undeclared. Personal character should never be dealt with at second hand; it should be left to those who undertake the trouble and responsibility, while they possess the zeal, of the biographer.