Christian countries, I believe the third and the fourth evidences to be the most operative, not as superseding but as involving a glad undoubting faith in the two former. Credidi, ideoque intellexi, appears to me the dictate equally of Philosophy and Religion, even as I believe Redemption to be the antecedent of Sanctification, and not its consequent. All spiritual predicates may be construed indifferently as modes of action or as states of Being. Thus Holiness and Blessedness are the same idea, now seen in relation to act and now to existence. The ready belief which has been yielded to the slander of my "potential infidelity," I attribute in part to the openness with which I have avowed my doubts, whether the heavy interdict, under which the name of Benedict Spinoza lies, is merited on the whole or to the whole extent. Be this as it may, I wish, however, that I could find in the books of philosophy, theoretical or moral, which are alone recommended to the present students of theology in our established schools, a few passages as thoroughly Pauline, as completely accordant with the doctrines of the Established Church, as the following sentences in the concluding page of Spinoza's Ethics. Deinde quo mens hoc amore divino, seu beatitudine magis gaudet, eo plus intelligit, hoc est, eo majorem in affectus habet potentiam, et eo minus ab affectibus, qui mali sunt, patitur; atque adeo ex eo, quod mens hoc amore divino, seu beatitudine gaudet, potestatem habet libidines coërcendi ; et quia humana potentia ad coërcendos affectus in solo intellectu consistit ; ergo nemo beatitudine gaudet, quia affectus coërcuit, sed contra potestas libidines coërcendi ex ipsa beatitudine oritur. 13 With regard to the Unitarians, it has been shamelessly asserted, that I have denied them to be Christians. God forbid! For how should I know, what the piety of the heart may be, or what quantum of error in the understanding may consist with a saving faith in the intentions and actual dispositions of the whole moral being in any one individual? Never will God reject a soul that sincerely loves him, be his speculative opinions what they may; and whether in any given instance certain opinions, be they unbelief, or misbelief, are compatible with a sincere love of God, God can only know. But this I have said, and shall continue to 13 [Ethices, Pars V. De Libertate humana. S. C.] say that if the doctrines, the sum of which I believe to constitute the truth in Christ, be Christianity, then Unitarianism is not, and vice versâ and that in speaking theologically and impersonally, i. e. of Psilanthropism and Theanthropism as schemes of belief, without reference to individuals, who profess either the one or the other, it will be absurd to use a different language as long as it is the dictate of common sense, that two opposite scannot properly be called by the same name. I should feel no offence if a Unitarian applied the same to me, any more than if he were to say, that two and two being four, four and four must be eight. ἀλλὰ βροτῶν τὸν μὲν κενεόφρονες αὖχαι ἐξ ἀγαθῶν ἔβαλον τὸν δ' αὖ καταμεμφθέντ' ἄγαν ἰσχὺν οἰκείων παρέσφαλεν καλῶν, χειρὸς ἕλκων ὀπίσσω, θυμὸς ἄτολμος εών 4 This has been my object, and this alone can be my defenceand O! that with this my personal as well as my LITERARY LIFE might conclude the unquenched desire I mean, not without the consciousness of having earnestly endeavored to kindle young minds, and to guard them against the temptations of scorners, by showing that the scheme of Christianity, as taught in the liturgy and homilies of our Church, though not discoverable by human reason, is yet in accordance with it; that link follows link by necessary consequence; that Religion passes out of the ken of Reason only where the eye of reason has reached its own horizon; and that Faith is then but its continuation even as the day softens away into the sweet twilight, and twilight, hushed and breathless, steals into the darkness. It is night, sacred night! the upraised eye views only the starry heaven, which manifests itself alone; and the outward beholding is fixed on the sparks twinkling in the awful depth, though suns of other worlds, only to preserve the soul steady and collected in its pure act of inward adoration the great I AM, and to the filial WORD that re-affirmeth it from eternity to eternity, whose choral echo is the universe. ΘΕΩ ΜΟΝΩ ΔΟΞΑ. 14 [Pindar, Nem. Carm. xi., 1. 37. S. C.] BIOGRAPHICAL SUPPLEMENT TO THE BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. BY THE LATE H. N. COLERIDGE, ESQ., M.A. CHAPTER I. [1772 to 1791.] While here, thou fed'st upon ethereal beams, SAMUEL 1AYLOR COLERIDGE was the youngest child of the Reverend John Coleridge, Chaplain-Priest and Vicar of the parish of Ottery St. Mary, in the county of Devon, and Master of the Free Grammar, of King's School, as it is called, founded by Henry VIII. in that town. His mother's maiden name was Ann Bowdon. He was born at Ottery on the 21st of October, 1772, "about eleven o'clock in the forenoon," as his father, the Vicar, has, with rather unusual particularity, entered it in the register. John Coleridge, who was born in 1719, and finished his education at Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge, was a country clergyman and schoolmaster of no ordinary kind. He was a good Greek and Latin scholar, a profound Hebraist, and, according to the measure of his day, 1 [From a sonnet To Coleridge by Sir Egerton Brydges-written 16th Feb., 1837. S. C.] [He was matriculated at Sidney a sizar on the 18th of March, 1748. but does not appear to have taken any degree at the University. S. C.] an accomplished mathematician. He was on terms of literary friendship with Samuel Badcock, and, by his knowledge of Hebrew, rendered material assistance to Dr. Kennicott, in his well known critical works. Some curious papers on theological and antiquarian subjects appear with his signature in the early numbers of the Gentleman's Magazine, between the years 1745 and 1780; almost all of which have been inserted in the interesting volumes of Selections made several years ago from that work. In 1768 he published miscellaneous Dissertations arising from the 17th and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges; in which a very learned and ingenious attempt is made to relieve the character of Micah from the charge of idolatry ordinarily brought against it; and in 1772 appeared a "Critical Latin Grammar," which his son called "his best work," and which is not wholly unknown even now to the inquisitive by the proposed substitution of the terms “prior, possessive, attributive, posterior, interjective, and quale-quare-quidditive," for the vulgar names of the cases. This little Grammar, however, deserves a philologer's perusal, and is indeed in many respects a very valuable work in its kind. He also published a Latin Exercise book, and a Sermon. His school was celebrated, and most of the country gentlemen of that generation, belonging to the south and east parts of Devon, had been his pupils. Judge Buller was one. The amiable character and personal eccentricities of this excellent man are not yet forgotten amongst some of the elders of the parish and neighborhood, and the latter, as is usual in such cases, have been greatly exaggerated. He died suddenly in the month of October, 1781, after riding to Ottery from Plymonth, to which latter place he had gone for the purpose of embarking his son Francis, as a midshipman, for India. Many years afterwards, in 1797, S. T. Coleridge commenced a series of Letters to his friend Thomas Poole, of Nether Stowey, in the county of Somerset, in which he proposed to give an account of his life up to that time. Five only were written, and unfortunately they stop short of his residence at Cambridge. This series will properly find a place here. I COULD inform the dullest author how he might write an interesting book. Let him relate the events of his own life with honesty, not disguising the feelings that accompanied them. I never yet read even a |