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Content THE ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY OP RICHARD HOOKER AND SAMUEL TAILOR COLERIDGE A STUDY IN THE CONTINUITY OP HISTORICAL ISSUES W Rudolph Carl Flothow A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OP THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (English) June 1958 UMI Number: DP23018 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI DP23018 Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 - 1346 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA G RAD UATE SC H O O L U N IV E R S IT Y PARK LOS A N G ELES 7 'Plv D E s? F&Vi This dissertation, w ritte n by ...... ..RudLQlpli...CJ arl...mjQ.thQir...... * q ?- 7 £ under the directio n o f.h ±sG u id a n ce C om m ittee, ( J ^ * and approved by a ll its members, has been p re sented to and accepted by the F a c u lty o f the G raduate School, in p a rtia l fu lfillm e n t o f re quirements fo r the degree of D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y L T J > £ — GUIDANCE COMMITTEE cfifiirman ■ l « a v cji«A . C L l S ii /u w cli .. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I. INTRODUCTION ............ II. THE RADICAL THREAT TO CHURCH AND STATE . . III. PRINCIPLES OF OBEDIENCE TO CHURCH AND STATE ....... ................... . IT. THE PHILOSOPHICAL SUPPORT FOR CHURCH AND STATE ........ . . . . . . . . . . . T. THE PROTESTANTISM OF HOOKER AND COLERIDGE ........ .. i 1 ¥1. AUTHORITARIANISM IN HOOKER AND I COLERIDGE .. .... ... . i ¥11. CHRISTIAN HUMANISM IN HOOKER AND COLERIDGE ........ . ¥111. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I CHAPTER I I INTRODUCTION Samuel Taylor Coleridge was influenced for more than i I ! thirty years by German aesthetics and ideas* This influ- i r t ence has justly received much critical attention* Cole ridge’s close study of Kant, his passing interest in |Boehme, his “borrowings“ from Schlegel have all been care-1 fully studied. But the focus on his assimilation of German 'attitudes has drawn scholarly consideration away from the |strong influence of English attitudes and English thinkers • i on Coleridge. The possible nexus between Coleridge and menj like Berkeley, Boyle, Suarez, and Booker has attracted j little attention. “The whole English ancestry of Cole- I I ridge’s ideas,” proposes Rene Wellek, “needs closer exam- j 4 ft | ination." Specifically, the parallels in thought between J I the Essays on Bis Own Times, the hay Sermons, the Aids to j Reflection, the Constitution of Church and State and Richard Hooker’s Of the haws of Ecclesiastical Polity have never received even a preliminary examination? they j have been completely overlooked. It is my purpose in this study to direct attention to the relation between the ec clesiastical polities, or codifications of church 1 : “Coleridge,” The English Romantic Poets; A Review ;of Research. 2nd ed. (New York, 1956), p. 119* 2 principles, of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Richard Hooker. Coleridge is not usually regarded as an author of an ecclesiastical polity, nor has he ever “ been accepted by the Anglican hierarchy as an interpreter of the Church. (Anglican church polity is usually aristocratic, and it is always conservative* As such, it stresses the traditionalr the English way of sound empiricism. This was the tone of church polity even during the Elizabethan era when many of the Anglican divines were newly rehabilitated from Galvin— 2 istic tendencies. Coleridge belongs completely to no tra dition; many people; have found him to be more mystic than empiricist, and thus he would appear to have disqualified himself for serious consideration as a spokesman for the English church. He has no status as an Anglican despite his real influence on the theology of the nineteenth cen tury* However, a considerable segment of Coleridge *s iwriting does identify him as one earnestly making the church cause his own militant cause, and it is this writ— 1ing that has been overlooked by literary scholarship. A reason for this may be that apologetics are coolly J* K. Brook, Whitgift and the English Church (London, 1957), pp* 19-22, offers a most recent review of the assimilation by the early English church of the group of Marian exiles who had spent time with and been pro foundly influenced by Calvin*s church in Geneva. Parker, Cox, Sandys, Grindal, Jewel, and Parkhurst supposed the best Protestant church to be a strongly anti—Catholic one. But after a short while at home, they came to see that a, church closer in spirit to Rome promised stability while Calvinism, with its denigration of ecclesiastical insti— Ltutions, .threatened upset*____________________________ ____ 3 ! |systematic* Coleridge*s procedure for enunciating his ec- ) i Jclesiastical philosophy has always seemed! to commentator© i < jto be unsystematic, even chaotic* Bis search for a philo- I Isophieal resting place was scornfully evaluated by Robert Southey in 1808* Dr. Sayres would not now find him the warm Hartleyan that he has been;; Bartley was ousted by Berkeley, Berke ley by Spinoza, and Spinoza by Plato? when last I saw him, Jacob Behman had some chance of coming in*3 IBis quest for faith, though carried on most of his life, i ! t ‘ j ■and ultimately organized by him within his polity, has ! been subjected to twentieth-century criticism which is, at best, unkind* John Charpentier wrote: I Be was disappointed in all systems, and, short of found-! ing one of his own, took refuge in faith, much as women I flee to the cloister because love has not given them j their heart*s desire*4 Coleridge * s final move toward conformity, a move jwhich he was essaying early in his life, has been rather j coldly taken as a manifestation of arrant disorientation* Professor Fairchild states that "his piety rose as his E C iself-approval diminished*"^ And his literary debts, like his piety, have been treated with contempt* Joseph Warren Beach covered this matter with apparent The Life and Correspondence, ed. Charles Cuthbert Southey (New York, 1855), p. 401* j i j ^Coleridge the Sublime Somnambulist, trans* M. V* iNugent (Few York, 1929)> pi 295. ^Religious Trends in English Poetry* III (Few York, 1949), 272. relish: We are in a position today to outline the picture of another minor prophet furtively stuffing his shirt with other men’s wisdom and giving himself the air of an Aquinas or an Aristotle*6 Coleridge Jibed at the charge of following others too closely, hut refutation was beyond him. He complained to Josiah Wedgwood in a letter written in T8QT. I hazard' the danger of being considered one of those trifling men who whenever a System has gained the ap plause of mankind hunt out in obscure corners of obscure Books for paragraphs in which that System may seem to have been anticipated; or perhaps some sentence of half [aQ dozen words, in the intellectual loins of which the system has lain snug in homuncular perfection.? It is not my purpose to determine either the acknow ledged influence of German ideas on Coleridge or the se— Q cretive adaptation from others, German or not* We know that he relied heavily on notions and phrases of his 6 . "Coleridge’s Borrowings from the Germany" ELB. 9*37, March 1942. ^Collected Letters* ed. Earl Leslie Griggs, II (Ox ford, 1956), 700. Hereafter cited as Col. Letters. O Wellek, pp. 112-19, reviews the critical work that has traced German influences throughout the Coleridge can on. Coleridge’s plagiarism has been discussed, says Wellek, "since the time shortly after his death when De— Quineey, in lait’s Magazine (1839)» and J. P. Perrier, in Blackwood’s (1840), drew attention to the passages from Schelling which Coleridge used in the Rlographia Liter— aria" (p. 111). Since DeQuincey’s article, the Kantian in fluence has received two book—length treatments, and the influences of Fichte, Schelling, Jacobi, Schlegel, Stef fens, Schiller, and Herder have been to varying degrees ofj completeness treated in articles and books. J• Shawcross has summarized the effects of most of these in his criti cal edition of the Biographia Literaria. 3rd ed. (Oxford, J jcontemporaries, and wherever he used borrowed materials to supply what he himself was incapable of creating, his work is faultily derivative* This may have rendered his philo sophy incomplete; it did not, however, make it fragmen tary: Coleridge put too much of himself into the organi zation of his philosophy to permit us to judge the total as less than incomplete* The organization outweighs the objection that his philosophy is headless because he could only speak of his Logia and could never settle down to * J producing it. The magnum opus was another of the unful— j filled Coleridgean dreams, but had it been produced, it j j would probably have supplied no consistency that is. now ! lacking* As D* G. James said: Although Coleridge no doubt lacked ability to live and work in one orderly and systematic way, it cannot he doubted that his mind came to a clarity, power, and depth in religious and philosophical matters which placed him far above any Englishman of the early nineteenth cen-j- in philosophy. Coleridge’s philosophy. • .cannot be saidj to be confused in any essential.9 I The Logia was to have outlined with great detail the j l system of Christianity “considered as Philosophy and as to the only Philosophy.” It was, in other words, to have organized his ecclesiastical polity. But such organization [would have been supererogatory, for Coleridge from the l i j ^The Romantic Comedy (Oxford, 1949)> pp. 164-65. | ^Coleridge, Unpublished Letters, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs, II (Hew Haven, 1933), 130• Hereafter cited as Unpublished Letters._____________________ _________________ 6 very beginning had been deliberately assembling bite and pieces of ideas, working in the direction of Anglican con servatism, developing a consistent and completely English seclesiastical polity. The pattern came, not from Germany, Put from home. It is not as turning the stream of English philosophy out of its native channels that Coleridge habitually sees himself, in spite of his tributes to Kant, but as returning it to the bed in which it ran in the days of its greatness, the days of Hooker, of the *latitude men,’ and the Cambridge Platonists.11 The investigation of this important relationship between 3oleridge and his native tradition, particularly as it was infused with the ideas of Hooker, has been neglected though it has been suspected. The influence of Hooker’s teaching upon later gene rations is a fascinating subject of research. Hammond, Sanderson, and Andrews, Hales and Stillingfleet, Locke and Hoadly, Warburton and Tucker, Keble, Coleridge and Gladstone, make a list which is far from being com plete. 1 2 The "judicious1 * Hooker (Sir William Cowper first applied the epithet) may well have guided all of these. Generations? of Anglican theologians have looked back to the last decade of the sixteenth century as the period of the emergence of the Anglican via media. This way of deliberate compromise came out of an age of great churchmen and of shattering but great controversy. Hooker may be possibly the greatest ^1Forman Wilde, "The Development of Coleridge’s Thought," Philosophical Review. 28s 150, March 1919. 12 N Alexander Passerin D’Entreves, The Medieval Contri bution to Political Thought (Oxford, 1939), pi 116. 7 i I of the churchmen, for ''with Hooker controversy- becomes I something more than an ephemeral and personal interchange i I |of opinion*" In the estimation of R. 0* Murray, Hooker's jwork marks one of the singular great moments of the toril- | liant Tudor Renaissance* The last ten years of the sixteenth century witnessed not only the end of Elizabeth* s reign, but also the pub lication of Hooker's Of the laws of Ecclesiastical Pol ity* of the first works of Shakespeare, of a play of Ben Jonson, of the Faerie Queene of Edmund Spenser, and of the first Essays of Bacon.*4 Of Hooker's book Christopher Morris has said: His book is of major importance in the history of re— i ligion and of thought; it might well be called the ear— ! liest philosophical masterpiece written in the English j language*15 There would appear to be certain disheartening diffi culties attendant upon the effort to trace parallels be tween Hooker, "one of the greatest systematic thinkers of I his age" (Medieval Contribution* p. 88), and Coleridge, whose Constitution of Church and State, the work closest in phraseology and intent to Hooker's polity, manifests a "noticeable failure to maintain an even power of analy sis, " and at last frees itself from all restraints of I I ^George Philip Krapp, The Rise of English Literary Prose (Hew York, 1915), p. 143. j t i I " ~ The Political Consequences of the Reformation? Studies in Sixteenth—Century Political Thought (London,. 1926), p. 273. ^ Political Thought in England: Tyndale to Hooker (Oxford, 1953),p. 175. logic to rise in "metaphysical clouds" which "may hare i 16 their source in opium." On the surface, the polarity be tween the two men seems weak. However, when we follow the pattern of Coleridge*s metaphysics and theology, it be comes apparent that the years from the first Friend (1809) to the penultimate Aids to Reflection (1825) signal a steady progression toward an order and system in conser vative thinking that recalls the monumental structure of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Such a favorable appraisal is not original; it fol lows a recent critical approach which has already modified the traditional under-estimation of his thinking. Kathleen Coburn wrote in 1949s Fragmentary, 'atomic* as Thelwall calls it, is Just what Coleridge’s thought is not. Were it so he would long ago have been better understood, and probably systematically arranged and edited with a proper index and cross refer— j ences. The very comprehensiveness of his thought has an I organic character that makes it a never—ending process j of ’involution and evolution. This comprehensiveness has been interpreted by Charles j Richard Sanders to be a "burning desire to bring every thing into harmony, to discover a single principle to i which his mind might relate everything that came within 16 I Crane Brinton, English Political Thought in the ! nineteenth Century (Camb'ridge, Mass., 1949), P* 9. i 1'*7 1 Her edition of Coleridge’s The Philosophical [ Lectures (London, 1949), P« 39* This hereafter cited as Lectures. 9 18 it*” Coleridge averred that this single interest prevent ed his ever making a sweeping change in principles; he assumed that all would agree with him in his statement of consistency. Mrs. Henry Sandford noted in her Thomas Poole and His Friends: He would not himself allow that any change had taken place in principle, dating from his confirmed manhood,— and certainly X can perceive no discrepancy between the positions and conclusions of the Friend (1809) and what may be found in the Table Talk, except what the liveli ness of conversation necessarily gives. * The final harmony of ideas which seemed always to dazzle him with its promise of unity he spoke of as though it had really been achieved. ”My system, if I may venture to give it so fine a name, is the only attempt I know ever made to reduce all knowledge into harmony."2° He actually did |achieve a persistence of vision, standing unmoved by the typical Romantic drive, which sought the "picturesque, the violent, the improbable, the pathetic, the unattainably perfect" and which postulated "however much order is nec essary in moral and political life, anarchy is the natural i 18 Coleridge and the Broad Church Movement (Durham, North Carolina, 194^), p. 72. 19II (London, 1888), 304 20Complete Works, ed. W. G. T. Shedd, VI (New Yofck, 1854), 373* Hereafter cited as Works; all references, unless otherwise noted, are to this edition. 10 condition of aesthetic life."2^ And the unnerving ceaseless struggle, the elgentumlichkeit or the cult of isolative subjectivism which A. O. Lovejoy notes as descriptive as pects of romanticism exist only in the early Goleridge and here in but a minor strain.22 Coleridge's ideas are best understood when viewed as products of an atypical man who endeavored to draw things together while most of his con temporaries were trying to drive them apart. He was fas cinated with the possibility of reconciling the driving forces of rationalism and expanding capitalism with Angli can conservative ideals. He did not begin as a liberal and end as a reactionary; the constant fascination with the dynamics of reconciliation was with him from beginning to j end. So too were the tendencies to liberalism and conser- j vatism. I Coleridge is often remembered as a foolish pantisocrat in his French Revolutionary youth and a regenerate Tory in his old age. Both extremes have been exaggerated in report, and both elements were in him from the beginning to the end, never completely harmonized.23 Coleridge’s polity, like Hooker’s, operates from a moderate position. Moderation was pressed upon any 2^Brinton, "A Decade of Revolution: 1789-1799," in The Rise of Modern Europe, ed. William L. Langer (New York, m u r t : 2S&.------------ 22See his ”The Meaning of Romanticism for the Histo rian of Ideas,” Journal of History of Ideas. 2: 258 ff., June 1941. ^Kathleen Coburn, ed. Inquiring Spirit (New York, 1951), p. 301. 11 spokesman for the Ohureh of England from the time of Eliza beth through the reign of George IV. As we shall see, both Hooker and Coleridge were confronted by forces which i threatened the upset of all society; in the sixteenth cen- j tury it was the Puritan group which attempted to break ! | through the tradition and convention desperately maintained by the Church and State. The Jacobins and Dissenters ap peared to exert themselves in the same direction as the Puritans had, one which promised cataclysm for the nine teenth century. In both ages radicals drove for extremes. They brought in as evidence for the rightness of their ex ertions the corruption of the Church and State that enabled sin and folly to flourish in all men. Their means for re moving these was direct and absolutely devastating: change men by rebuilding the State and rejecting the Church. The Church, pulled together from Catholicism and in cipient Calvinism, naturally offered unhurried palliative methods for the blatant ills that could be modified, and it was able or perhaps lucky in the sixteenth century to pro duce a Richard Hooker, who could speak for moderation with out speaking essentially for the rights of proprietary in terest. Though the relationship of man to God and the veri ty of church dogma were the final interests of Hooker, he never minimized the crucial rapport between man and his government, bringing all human activities and relationships within the ambit of the Single Church-State structure of 12 the English nation. Coleridge followed this direction and restated principal tenets of Hooker*s polity. The closeness with which he followed and the force with which he restated are objectively ascertainable, though not proved by any thing so directly gratifying as minute point-by-point and phrase-by-phrase correspondences. Hooker is simply to be found all through the work that Coleridge produced once he took his irrevocable stand for Church and State a few years after the beginning of the nineteenth century. Coleridge did not, in the manner of Hooker, explore with finality and unswerving precision strictly defined topics in each of his books. He covered topics peripatetically, ranging about, speaking of an idea first in one of the essays contributed to the Morning Post, treating it more fully in the early Friend. picking it up again in a Lay Sermon, dropping it from, perhaps, the Biographia but returning to it in the Aids and savoring it in the Table Talk. Because of this maundering technique it will be unavoidable at certain junctures to cross the boundaries of Coleridge*s separate works if we are to grasp the significant unity of his ideas. These ideas are of a piece, singly organized (not in separate works but by an unshifting frame of reference) and singly inspired by the potency and outlook of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Coleridge*s initial orientation was favorable to such organization and inspiration for, as Basil Willey writes, 13 "his politics are religious, and his religion political." This fundamental dialectic which was in Hooker’s system as well tended to elevate rather than delimit Coleridge’s vantage point. For this very reason he was able to survey the whole human scene from an elevation above the reach of his English contemporaries, and to subject it to a critique more searching and comprehensive (though fitfully con ducted) than any it could receive from the Utilitarians or Evangelicals. . . ,2^ Religious politics or political religion was the moderate solution for the threatening religious enthusiasm and po litical rebellion of the anti-government forces, the radi cals, of the sixteenth and the nineteenth century. At the end of the sixteenth century the crossfire of ideas from the spiritual and the worldly camps had begun to increase in violence as the old Catholic order was upset. The Reformation struggle was, at heart, political as I much as theological. On the one hand was the genesis of the ’omnicompetent state,’ on the other was the claim of corporations to act freely within it. It was character istic of the century that the corporations which took up the struggle were religious. . . .2* Here political religion was the great concern of English men, for it promised stability; it was government-sponsor ed and only the government had the means during the last perilous thirty years of Elizabeth’s reign to organize all ^Willey, Nineteenth Century Studies (London, 1959), p. 44. 2^F. J. Shirley, Richard Hooker and Contemporary Pol itical Ideas (London, 1949), p. 225- 14 men in mutual defense of the country. Unpolitical or "pure” religion was sponsored by the Puritans, but it was apparent that the Puritans were working against national organiza tion, and it seemed that they denied security and promised only chaos. This juxtaposition of the two varieties of re ligion may create the impression that while the Puritans strove to refine English Christianity, Anglican Churchmen denigrated it to simple expediency. Many of them did; many of them acted unilaterally as controversialists in favor of an established institution which, with its absurdities, had to be perpetuated. Archbishop Parker gladly shed his Cal- vinistic proclivities in favor of what he took to be the I 1 "reverent mediocrity" of Anglicanism because he feared the j j sectarian spirit with its unstable factionalism. (Whitgift j and the Church, pp. 20-23). Richard Hooker defended the church on a more condign basis; he was "the first to make of Anglicanism something more than a political expedient, and the first to give it ai positive intellectual content" (Political Thought in Eng land, p. 174). Coleridge was the exceptional Anglican de fender of his age; he brought to light the truths and ex cellences of church principles that the other proponents of the church overlooked as they endlessly struggled with de ism and Evangelism. John Stuart Mill asserted: t To Bentham it was given to discover more particularly those truths with which existing doctrines and institu- 15 tions were at variance; to Coleridge, the neglected truths which lay in them.2® Sadly enough, the Anglican church of the early nineteenth century had lost or had wasted the power to intelligently j dispute the extreme claims of both the rational deists and j I the fideistic Evangelists; it was baffled at having to find that particular answers were insufficient; what was whnted was an enunciation of universal principles. Coleridge prom ised these, but he went unlistened to. And without such I principles, spoken or felt by the church, Anglican spokes men were left unfit to create a new synthesis to control the rampant energies of the nineteenth century. Surprise has sometimes been expressed that the Church { should not have been more effective in giving inspiration; and guidance during the immense economic reorganization to which tradition has assigned the not very felicitous name of the 'Industrial Revolution.' It did not give it, because it did not possess it.27 i Failing to identify principles, men who spoke on be half of the church relied upon the time-proven cry of "the jChurch is in danger." To protect the ecclesiastical estate they urged on such partisan productions as John Robinson’s Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All Religions and Govern- I ments of Europe (1797) and Mrs. Trimmer's Family Magazine, which promised to bring virtue— and church attendance— i Of\ Dissertations and Discussions; reprinted as Mill on Bentham and' Coleridge, ed. F. R. Leavis (London, 1950), p. 40. 27r. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (Mentor, 1952), p. 163. i 16' back to the family, and which ran for just eighteen numbers in 1788 and 1789. They were profoundly grateful for Thomas » Gisborne’s Duties of Man (1793), a tome that made its de fense in a last chapter entitled "Considerations submitted the Persons who doubt or deny the Truth of Christianity; or the Necessity of a strict Observance of all its Precepts.” These were typical of the ineffective measures the church used to ward off the critics and separatists; they also offer proof of the strong link between church and po litical affairs during the years of Coleridge’s work. It is this identity of the church with the government, of the commonwealth with the religion that bears the name "Eras- tian.’ ’23 Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century there had been many defenses of the joint Church-State partnership based upon the Erastian theory. In 1644 The Humble Petition of the Ministers of the City of London was aimed against that principle of dissent which held that the ecclesiastical and the secular branches of government oper ated in unholy alliance. Through many erroneous opinions, ruinating schisms and damnable heresies (unhappily fomented in City and Country) the Orthodox Ministry is neglected; the people seduced; 28Thomas Erastus (1524-1583) is known only for giving his name to the political view that the state best deter mines the form of religion acceptable to the total people. Hooker, in company with Jewel and Whitgift, extended the term to include any state where citizenship was completely identified with membership in a state church. 17 Congregations torn asunder; families distracted; rights and duties of relations, Nationall, Civill and Spirituall, scandalously violated. . . .2° j For ages before the violent censures of the anonymous Mar tin Marprelate (1588-89) there had been a tradition of re- ligio-social criticism and rebuttal. The writings of Martin Marprelate only restated an issue i which had been raised by Hildebrand five hundred years before; for the advance of centralization had reproduced in England something of the same conditions which pre vailed at Constantinople when it became a centre of ex change.-*0 Tawney, in his Religion and the Rise of Capitalism views the controversial and dynamic Puritanism as simply another eructation of dissent, a kind of dissent which bound re ligious with social orientation. In reality, as is the case with most heroic ideologies, the social and religious aspects of Puritanism were not dissentangled; they presented themselves, both to sup porters and opponents, as different facets of a single scheme, (p. 195) Coleridge and Hooker were, as Erastians, prepared to detail two kinds of religion: a religion that prepared men*s souls for eternity, and a religion that conditioned their minds for temporal obedience as Englishmen. Erastian religious emphasis is but one parallel by which we may fol- 2^Quoted in Umphrey Lee, The Historical Backgrounds of Early Methodist Enthusiasm. Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, ed. by the Faculty of Political Science of Columbia University, No. 339 (New York, 1931), p. 45. 30 Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay (Vintage Books. 1955), p. 216. 18 low the influence of Hooker on Coleridge. But this is not the most substantial parallel since Erastianism frequently found expression between 1600 and 1800. Other elements in common between Hooker and Coleridge are these, and they hold a greater validity because they are to a degree unique in both men, sometimes transcending, sometimes escaping the focus of the average Anglican spokesmen: 1. They both rise above factional broils in their at tempts to resolve differences and promote adherence to the Church and State; their work is much broader and more philo sophical than other equivalent attempts in Anglican church history. For example, both begin with an advocacy of first principles. Hooker writes that Solomon’s attention to the nature of issues rather than to mere particularizations ’ ’ was of natural furtherance the most effectual to make him [eminent above others.”- ^ 1 He makes an obvious reference to |his own work when, continuing his comment on Solomon, he says: **For he gave good heed, and pierced every thing to the very ground, and by that mean became the author of many parables” (II, 15). Coleridge, as early as 1795* was positive that authors had to evince ’ ’the necessity of bottoming on fixed prin ciples, that so we may not be the unstable patriots of pas- 31Qf Qf gociesiastical Polity, in Works, ed. John Keble, 7th ed. (Oxford, 1888), IT, 15. Hereafter cited as E. P. sion or accident, nor hurried away,” as he feared, "by names of which we have not sifted the meaning, and by ten ets of which we have not examined the c o n s e q u e n c e s ."32 2. They both fully develop their theology before they construct their polity, and the theology derives greatly from Scholasticism. In Coleridge, Scholasticism is modified by Platonism, but there is a debt to Aquinas in Coleridge’s work that has received little study. This will be treated in Chapter Four. 3. They both write in the tradition of Realism, stress ing Realism’s postulate of a corporate universe and refut- j ing the atomistic tendency of the radicals of their age. Both rely on the universal categories in epistemology and in politics to support their Erastian church theory. 4. Both use a new approach to Biblical criticism to undermine the anticorporate interpretations of scripture by the dissenters. Both attempt to reconcile disparate en ergies {in this case faith and rationalism) as they ac knowledge the function of history in Biblical criticism. Coleridge is confronted by the old Puritan code of "reform without tarrying" under the aegis of both Dissenters and Radicals. Each of these groups emphasized individual rights when the matter of reform was touched; one of the most 32 Essays on His Own Times Forming A Second Series of the Friend, ed. by his Daughter (London. 1850). 1. 7. Hereafter cited as Own Times. [significant rights was the freedom of individual Biblical 'interpretation. Hooker and Coleridge repudiated this right, because scripture, when subjected to individual whim in in terpretation, could so easily be made to justify any party, whatever its divisive effect on the social bond. 5. Both escape the limitations of strict Anglican con servatism because both are deeply influenced by the warmth of Christian Humanism. Chapter Seven will deal with the part that this modifying force played in the shaping of the two polities. Modern critics who dismiss the usual Anglican apologetics as blatant reiterations of platitudes have no slight body of facts to underscore their criticism, as we shall see in Chapter Three. Therefore attention to Chris tian Humanism is essential for appreciating the uniqueness !of both men since it established the difference between I i I their enlightened apologetics and the apologetics of most I t Anglican thinkers. As Christian Humanists, both combined duty to the state with responsibility to the individual Christian self. The pedestrian defenders of the Establish ment were unable to study the individual sympathetically since they overlooked him in their haste to superintend and regulate the group. Chapter Seven, in addition to pointing j out the elements of Christian Humanism in Hooker and Coler-j idge, also treats the recurrence of ideas in Coleridge that are usually associated with the Renaissance arcana. These are the angel-beast drifts in man, the struggle of reason ! 21 with passion, the periodic interpretation of history, the fear of mutability, the near-mystic dedication to synthesis, the dread and abhorrence of chaos. 6. Both contrive to elevate the Church of England in the esteem of Englishmen by rejecting both extreme ration alism and enthusiasm, and by inculcating a new philosophi cal attitude. The attitude may be termed a spiritualized empiricism, a reasoned progress toward faith. We shall see that it is not, as a critic of Coleridge has inferred, a mere lapse into "sentimental pragmatism” (Religious Trends in English Poetry. XII, 318). 7. Both try to overcome a fatal intellectual dualism that existed for the medieval as well as for the modern world, a dualism pointed out by Bacon and elaborately delineated by Ernst Cassirer. This is the split in man’s i attitudes that directs his critical rational faculties ' toward science and withdraws them from politics. A result of t the dualism has been that in the world of science man has approached a definition of principles as well as some j control of energy. "But in man’s practical and social life the defeat of rational thought seems to be complete and irrevocable" (Cassirer, p. 2). Perhaps the efforts of Hooker and of Coleridge to reverse the defeat sets them apart most completely from their contemporaries. 22 The study of the ecclesiastical polity of Coleridge, with its connection with Hooker's work, will follow these basic parallels. I believe that such connection will be fully illustrated by the end of this dissertation, though ; not necessarily by Coleridge's references to his employment iof Hooker's ideas. There are some of these, to be sure; however, it would be nearer the facts if we consider the influence of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity in the early nineteenth century simply to be such a pervasive one that it was virtually inescapable for Coleridge to have advancedj toward a conservative ecclesiastical position without beingj i directed by Hooker. This rather modest estimate of the con-! nection between the two thinkers will prove, through suc ceeding chapters of this dissertation to be close to under statement. But it is better, in view of the lack of numer- ous repeated admissions of obligations by Coleridge, to i study what can be proved, rather than to evaluate only what i can be hinted. It is necessary before moving into the next chapter that the other authors of polities between the time of Hooker and Coleridge be mentioned here. In the early nine teenth century there were several who might intrude here as possibly influential on Coleridge. Van Mildert of Dur- ham, Marsh of Peterborough, and Horsley of Rochester were j theologians and were sufficiently High to have brought Col eridge's interest up to the plane of High Church politics. 23 Charles Daubeny went beyond these; he produced his Guide to the Church (1799) in order to reconcile all contending church parties. And William Warburton, some fifty years earlier, had fully applied the Erastian tradition to cur rent church politics. However, whatever titles and chronology might suggest, the Anglican spokesmen who came after the Elizabethan age exerted negligible influence on Coleridge. Indeed, Cole ridge had small use for most of Hooker's own contemporar ies; he referred to Bichard Bancroft's technique and tone in controversy as "the bursting spleen of this Bancroft."33 Daubeny and Warburton were one-sided rationalists who seem ed embarrassed for their faith and made every effort to in fuse Christianity with an otiose pseudo-scientific constit uent that it would have been ashamed to admit possessing. Warburton attempted to combat rationalistic deism by claim ing for the church a purely rationalistic orientation and emphasizing anti-fidian doctrine (Lee, p. 70). We might recall here that Coleridge developed his metaphysics in violent reaction to the ultra-rational thought of the eighteenth century.34 The possibility that the theologians of his own time ^%otes on English Divines, ed. Derwent Coleridge (London, 1853), I, 127, Hereafter cited as Divines. ^Herbert l. Stewart in "The Place of Coleridge in English Theology," Harvard Theological Review, 11:12, January 1918, points out, though, that Coleridge must not 24! j « exerted anything approaching a measurable influence on him is smaller than the possibility that Restoration and eighteenth—century theologians provided congenial atmo sphere’ for his developing polity. Coleridge reacted to the religious expediency of the nineteenth century as he idid to the rationalism of the eighteenth. A church which merely proposed quiet unthinking obedience and which allowed doctrine to go unperceived in a dark ignorance drew withering critical fire from the dissentient believ- ■5,5 ers and a studied rejection from Coleridge. He contin ually commented that the Anglican hierarchy lacked wise i I j 1 I men and that the common level of Anglicans, the parish j 1 priests, lacked conviction. In sum, he turned away from | 1 the attitude and the conventional philosophy of nine- ! j teenth-century theologians, finding in the past a fuller j j range for his own speculation as well as for the defense j 1 ; | of the English church. As Vernon F. Storr noted: J English philosophy (Coleridge is an exception) remained 1 1 i j be taken merely as an anti-rationalist since he worked to I conserve both faith and rationalism in a discreet balance. I 35 I '^Yngve Brilioth, Ihe Anglican Revival: Studies in the Oxford Movement (London, 1925), p. 9, minimized the existing merits of the church. He wrote "the state of the Church fabric answered to the nature of the service* Often enough, green mould crept over leaning walls." And j Arthur Jay Klein in Intolerance in the Reign of Elizabeth Queen of England (Hew York, 1917)» p. 94 asserted t h a t ! one of the continuing disqualifications of the church j from its inception was that it "emphasized few aspects ofj religious conviction." English, clinging to a narrow empiricism, or meeting the sceptical attack of Hume with appeals to common sense.3° Before we consider the singularity of Coleridge’s con tribution to nineteenth century church polity, it will be necessary to mention the irregular appearance of the eight books of the Ecclesiastical Polity. The first four, and pos«- sibly all eight, books were written before 1593* Only the first four books were printed in that year, though the title page of the first edition indicates a projected eight books. This first edition was synchronized with the passing of the Conventicle Act and with the execution of the Puri tan dissenters, Penry, Barrow, and Greenwood. Book Five ap peared in 1597, aad when Hooker died in 1600 he left the remaining portions in manuscript. A select committee was j i appointed to edit the manuscript and to issue the final books. Whether these books are all the work of Hooker, ] j whether they were considerably altered by Sandys and Lance lot Andrewes, members of the committee, or whether Book Seven, published in 1662, is all the work of John Gauden are considerations beyond the focus of this study. Cole ridge treated all eight books as uniformly the work of Hooker, and this serves as the best guide for any compari son of the polities of Hooker and Coleridge.37 The claims j I j 3^The Development of English Theology in the Nine teenth Century l#00-ld60 (London, 1913).P. 2 ” 3?Sandys was one of tiie Calvinistically-inclined di vines ^who accepted, possibly with great reservation, the — . 26 that have been made against the final three books have, at one time or another, been answered with evidence to prove the books* authenticity; because of the ever-changing sta tus of the books, D'Entreves in his Medieval Contribution seems to assume too inflexible a position when he writes? The publication of the last three books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity long after Hooker's death, as a weapon ofecclesiastical and political controversy, and the doubts as to the authenticity of these books which ensued, have greatly hampered an exact valuation of Hooker's position, (p. 88) Ihe bibliographical discrepancies in the controversial books (noted by nearly three hundred years of commentary) share a basic characteristic with the discrepancies in *58 Hooker's biography: they tend to cancel one another out./ 4nd not even posthumous controversy can obscure the clarity of Hooker's work. middle path of Elizabeth's church. Andrewes was an Armin- dan; both had cause to alter Hooker's work since it was so extremely Anglican. Cf. C. J. Sisson, The Judicious Mar riage of Mr. Hooker and the Birth of the Laws of Ecclesi- jastical Polity (Cambridge. 1940)", p. 98. Shirley is one Who rejects the seventh book as the work of Gauden. Cf . v, 44 ff., and the Appendix to Chapter II, pp. 53-57. j ^8Isaae Walton first raised the question of the re liability of the last books. He felt that the Puritans had changed them since they are so moderate in tone. However* moderation is the standard of Hooker, and he does not seem to have abandoned it in the first five books. Book Seven, the one which Shirley rejects, was accepted by Keble in his {first edition of Hooker's Works (1836), but it was rejected iby Isaac Disraeli in his Amenities of Literature (1868). Book Eight, also rejected by Disraeli, was accepted by keble, though he would not accept Six, which, in turn, was pronounced to be genuine by Shirley. The definitive edition of Book Eight by Raymond Aaron Houk (Few York, 1931)» is, of course, premised on the genuineness of the book. 21 The clarity of Coleridge's work is quite a different matter, since some suspect that Coleridge substituted ob fuscation for thought, and that he was not above obscurity as a means to persuade his audience that the less pene trable the style, the more sublime the ideas* This, how ever, cannot be established, and there is still a good possibility that metaphysics seemed to demand for Cole ridge an extraordinary prose. This is how he justified his less clear passages. He also defended his prose, and this is important here, by recalling the name of Hooker as a shibboleth. He stated that whenever a philosopher seeks anything beyond the mere surface world, he communicates this search in his writing. We know this, he said, when such a mind as Hooker’s the judicious author, though no less admirable for his perspicuity than for the port and dignity of his language. . .saw nevertheless oc casion to anticipate and guard against ’complaints of obscurity.’39 And a last, most significant reference to Hooker was made fifteen days before his death by Coleridge who had been made to feel by this time that everything he had be gun he had left unfinished. This summarizes the relation ship that will be in evidence throughout this study: I am dying. . . .Hooker wished to live to finish his Ec clesiastical Polity:— so I own I wish life and strength had been spared to me to complete my Philosophy. For, as God hears me, the originating, continuing, and ^ Biographia Literaria. ed. with his Aesthetical Es says J. Shaweross, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1949), I, 64-65. Hereafter cited as Biographia. 28 sustaining wish and) design in my heart were to exalt the glory of his name; and, which is the same thing in other words, to promote the improvement of mankind.40 ^ fatole falk and Omni ana, ed. T. Ashe (London, 1888), p. 378. Hereafter cited as Table Talk. ___ _____________ ! CHAPTER II I i , i THE RADICAL THREAT TG CHURCH AUD STATE j A striking instance of the continuity of historical issues is to he found in the "boldness with which the more radical Puritan thinkers anticipate the governing ideas of the romantics" (Fairchild, III,, 13). The roman— I ties to whom this reference is made were influential | though in the minority; they were members of the radical J opposition, men like the youthful James Mackintosh (1765- j 1832), John fhelwall (17©4-1834), William Bone (178G- j 1 i 1842), and the better-known Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) and William Godwin (1756-1836)* They worked seemingly to provide an illustration of the persistence of classical Locial complaints, for they rephrasedl the discontent and restiveness that was already tradition by the medieval and i I I renaissance periods* They were opposed in this by eonser- ' vatives of the mature romantic group* | The romantics who were anticipated by the Puritans j f demanded traditional reforms and the removal of abuses that had given already a profound timbre of pessimism to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in England* They re applied tested principles, and there was neither strain aor anomaly in the application because the essential ----------------------------- , ------------ 30 orientation of the romantic and the renaissance discon tents was the same: it was a nominalistic one. The term "nominali s t i c " as it is used here means that the Puritan and romantic radicals denied the physi cal existence of universale, of corporate structures like "church," or "state," or "society." Such structures! were the results of many individual things Joining together and being labelled with the term "universal." But the universal was no more than a fiction, a construct of the mind, or, as William of Occam (c. UQOMs. 1359) affirmed with the assurance of one who founds a school, a compos ite based upon single atomic experiences. "It must be maintained undoubtedly, Occam had written in the Expo- sltio Aurea et admodum utllls super artem veterem. "that anything imaginable whatever, which subsists by itself, is without any addition to it a singular thing and one in " t - number. . . ." j In the Summa totius logicae he had flatly pronounced that "everything is either one thing and not many, or It is many things." If it is many things it is "several singular substances" (p. 35). The universals that men could point to, could join, could be forced to support by 1 Quoted in Meyrlck B. Carre, Realists and Nomina lists (Oxford, 1950), p. 118. 2 Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Philotheus Boehner (Few York, 1957), p. 35. coercive policy were not universale at all. The govern ment, abstractedly taken as a universal was positively evil. William Godwin, arguing from a nominalistic po- i i jsition, affirmed in his Political Justices I i ^ I Above all we should not forget, that, government is, ab- ! stractedly taken, an evil, an usurpation upon the pri- i vate judgment and individual conscience of man kind . . . .5 Physical associations or groupings thwarted the growth of social good. To be sure, there was society, but it was not to be understood as that which enveloped the individ ual members, giving them a distinct and cohesive identity.! i The first business of society, of government, was to main tain the individuals* "spheres of discretion" (I, 218). Associations, instead of promoting the growth and dif- j fusion of truth, tend only to cheek its accumulation, and render Its operation, as far as possible, unnatural : and mischievous. (I, 28?) j Godwin, with other radical dissenters of the age, did! | i not completely deny existence to all universale; he merely |refused to acknowledge physical universale* The unseen universale, ethical concepts to which men had deferred since the beginning of human history, were elevated to a lofty place in the programs of radicals and reformer®. The ethical universal® were constantly contrasted with the physical, state—supported ones; they were supposed hateful to the government. Thus the concept of the "good " K , • ' Enquiry Concerning Political Justice And Its Influ ence on Morals and Hat)cinessi ed. P. E. L. Priestley f Toronto,-1.94<5) ,- II,. . 2. Z.______________________________ _ 3 2 ; of the people" appeared to he delimited by the government; while, on the other hand, the corporate Church—State was Jealously nurtured and protected, The distinction between the external, unpopular uni versale and the cherished ethical and inner ones lay im mediately behind the Puritan and later the romantic radi cal stress on the individual ego. It concretized the notion that society was but a convention, an artificiality, and that it was atomic rather than organic* In more doc trinaire terms, society was self-interest amalgamated* The individual, the real thing, gave up part of his li berty, pierced his own "sphere of discretion" in order to effect a momentary state of mutual self-defense* But he was assuredly not thus become a unit in the organic total, in the "universal •" Be was always an individual who had chosen to bond himself with others for a specified list of; privileges and benefits. When these did not proceed in sufficient number from the bond, he could dissolve the bond and seek a more advantageous relationship with a society better equipped to satisfy individual needs* If economic upset made life uncomfortable under one kind of government, there was in the nominalism of Puritans and I romantic radicals alike a direct Justification for im mediate and convulsive reform* In this chapter X shall point out dual examples of continuity between the ages of Booker and Coleridge, j --------------------------------------- 331 j ! .First, I will deal with the social background of both ages^ i a background of extreme distress and lower class displace-J ment. Second, I will draw attention to the striking simi- | jlarity between, the reactions of some radical thinkers of j jboth ages to that distress and displacement. They were re—j | i 'actions which, at some inevitable point, relied upon the nominalistically conceived world to deracinate the powers and oppose the manifestations of a corporate society* In doing this, they directly, however unwittingly, prepared the way for the conservative element to construct a de fense of corporations, a traditional defense against nomi nalism, namely one based upon realism* This was Hooker’s defense, and it was that of the mature Coleridge. It will be explained fully in subsequent chapters; however, it will first be necessary to chart the early radical paths that Coleridge took up to the final years of the eight eenth century* This young Coleridge will be more easily followed when his early work is placed within the context of the shattering events and strident debate that threat ened, for a time, the peace of England. I* DISTRESS AND DISPLACEMENT; THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Here I would like to review the age of Coleridge, an age as fully represented by the late eighteenth as by the early nineteenth century, before turning to the age of Hooker. I "believe that when a later period is studied, when its significant social and political aspects are de fined, and then the period is placed next to an earlier age, the impact of continuity is better realized than if a progressive chronology had arranged the earlier before the later one* What may strike one as unique to the period closest our own time is seen to be reiterative when one turns from the near past (in this case 1775-1825) to the distant past. And it is this reiteration that proves the continuity of historical issues. The fifty years balanced on either side of the pivot al 180G were, like so many others, years of trial for people without ready capital and with limited talents t© perform tasks suitable for sustaining life. “The first fifty years of this present century," wrote Hussell Gar- nier, "were destined to prove of what grit the British farmer is composed."^ The skilled and semi-skilled were tried similarly by an apparently malignant and officious society. "The working classes suffered as citizens, if the word can be applied to a class so ruthlessly shut out in the cold. . . Though England had increased the value of her foreign commerce during the last ten years of the ^History of the English Landed Interest. Its Qus- toms Laws and Agriculture (London. 1895), p. 4^3. 1 5 J. L. and Barbara Hammond, The Skilled Labourer 1760-1832 (London, 1927>, p. 99. eighteenth century, and though production in hoth industry and agriculture rose between 1790 and 1815* real wages dis— played, a disheartening tendency to fall* A good part of the people fared well enough through the years of the war with Napoleon as they had, indeed, done through much of the eighteenth century, a century of no real aggravated j I economic distress* But rural workers at the end of the cen tury appeared excluded from the comforts of an assured minimal income* Iheir wages would have heen sufficient to provide comfortable existence two or three decades ear lier, but the rise in prices from 1793 on locked them be- j tween the forces of spiraling costs and unyielding fixed I i standards of pay* Such was the disparity between cost and j income for a large bloc of people that in 1797 Frederic Morton Eden, a gentleman agriculturist and sociologist, proposed to study the phenomenon of the rapidly growing ' ‘poor” class to see what could be done to stem a threaten-; ! ing ruination of all who depended upon the land for sub- i tenance. The difficulties, which the laboring classes experi enced, from the high price of grain, and of provisions in general, as well as of cloathing [sic] and fuel, dur ing the years 1794 and 1795, induced me, from motives of benevolence and personal curiosity, to investigate their condition in various parts of the kingdom*? to* W* Bos tow, British Economy of the Nineteenth- Century (Oxford, 1948), p. 13* ^The State of the Poors Or An History of the labour ing Classes in England From the Conquest to the Present"* on,—1797), -I,—i» — This high price of grain was due, first, to the chronically had harvests over the war years and, after 1815, to the protective tariff on imported grain. The tar iff was a program of price support, legislated as the no— I i torious Corn law, and was so patently the work of minority interests that liberal observers who wrote eighty years after the fact were still enraged when they looked hack to the perpetration of the law. To keep rent high— that was their one object. That could only be done by making the produce of the land as dear as possible, and that could only be secured by shutting out foreign competitors, and thus ^protecting* home-grown produce,® Jephson emphasized the control of parliament by special interest groups. The consumer was thought nothing of, was of no conside ration whatever in those days; the landed interest* or to be more precise, the landlord interest, was the pre dominant one; and inasmuch as the landlord interest was | overwhelmingly predominant both in the Bouse of Com- ! mons, and in the Bouse of lords, legislators took very good care of their interests, (p. 274) Though we bear in mind the separation in time be tween Jephson and the period he dealt with, as well as the bias that marked his study, the Corn laws and the sel fishness that produced them have been taken as classic ex amples of the degree to which one powerful group could seize control of the legislature and force it to its bid- Q Benry Jephson, The Platform, its Rise- and Progress (Hew York, 1892), I, 275. 37 Corn laws, • .had been on the statute book since the closing years of the seventeenth century. . . .When four-fifths of the population lived in the country and England raised a surplus of grain for exportation, such laws were not unreasonable. In the closing years of the eighteenth century, when the agricultural population ceased to be in a majority and the importation of grain exceeded the exports, the com laws increased the price of bread consumed by all to benefit one class in the community*9 The price of other staples kept pace with the rising cost of bread. Between 1760 and 1840 the price of wheat had trebled, but the price of meat, butter and fowl had quadrupled. In 1812.wheat was 155s. a quarter, and the ac companying increase in other commodities was even more drastic. Those who had merely hung on through the war years, seeing in the distant peace a hope for economic stability, were shaken onee more by events which they could not control, nor foresee. "Beace is felt, " wrote Jephson,. "by almost all classes as a calamity" (I, 283). Government expenditures for the war had kept much of the food from the home market. This, in addition to the displacement of rural workers that had followed the in corporation of the small strips of arable land into larg er single holdings, had forced hunger upon a number of families. But disaster rather than the momentary pinch of hunger confronted a great proportion of the people with the prospect of peace and the consequent withdrawal ^W. E. Lunt, History of England. 3rd ed. (Hew York,, 1945), PP* 629-30. | 38] | iosf government; money. The Kendal Chronicle for May 14* its 1; 4, reported, MHbrses, 15 per cent lower, no more feeing J I wanted for the cavalry; and cattle more than 20 per cent I 1 & ! from the discontinuance of the contracts, * . ,M After j I the Peace of Vienna, 50*000*0001* of government funds were j cut from the economy (Jephson, I, 283). And by the end of 1815 wheat prices had dropped to 55s. 9d« a quarter. The Com laws were enacted to hold up the prices of the pro duce and so to maintain the worth of the land. But the ! effects of the laws, on the one extreme, and the cold wet seasons of 1816 through 1818, on the other, reduced a large segment of the lower class to the starvation level, j Unskilled and irregularly employed rural workers who had j sustained life during the war by carting off some twenty thousand bushels of stolen produce every Sunday morning while the landlords were asleep now ate sorrel weed and j t s i - . i t I roots. The rural class, small landholders and migratory workers* never recovered their traditional comforts* small comforts such as proprietorship of a cottage* pos- i |session of one or two cows, a section of land for growing ^Quoted in S. MacCoby, The English Radical Tra dition IT65-1914 (London, 1952), p. 304. ^John Middleton, View of the Agriculture of Middle sex: With Observations on the Means of its Improvement. And Several Essays on Agriculture in General (London. 1798), p. 461. See also J. L. and Barbara Hammond, The Village Labourer 1760-1832 (London, 1911), P« 218. r ~ 3 9 ' the family’s vegetables. These closing years of the eight eenth century with the first two decades: of the nineteenth were years of the shift from an agricultural to an indus trial economy. A gigantic displacement of capital forced f the shift, and the avowed free trade program of the gov ernment in 1823 signaled its general acceptability. Its effect on the already displaced rural worker was to fur ther lessen his value to the community, to drive him into unremunerative labor in the factory, to break up his fam ily unit, to provoke his feeling of helplessness, and* fi nally* to prod him to discontent and rage. Corn haws and nascent industrialization destroyed the rural stability in| the brief span of a man’s life* a period more terrible for; its shortness since ruination came in swift blows and not by gradual withdrawal of privileges* Eraser’s Magazine in 1830 reflected with considerable feeling: The proprietors of the soil have acted with a total dis regard of the consequence®, absolutely like insane men* and the labourer has been driven to distraction. He is everywhere treated like a beast of burden. As to the union of the sexes. . .in order to save the sum of five pound® many an unfortunate male devil is compelled to marry and attach himself to a parish prostitute for life. Domestic industry is not encouraged, but actually restrained. * * .Ho portion of the soil is given to the poor for domestic culture. • • .Machinery has: driven the distaff into oblivion. Spinning and knitting by the winter fireside are now almost unknown. The cottage wheel now never turns to the happy song, nor is the cot tager ever heard to whistle over the osiers which he makes into baskets. Nothing is heard but the plaint of poverty, the murmur of deep sorrow, the muttering threat of indignation and vengeance* To this* oh, Sod! we have come at last!; (p. 574) ----------------------- 40 She displaced crowded the cities, and the cities were not able to support them. They went without work, and, since many of them could not afford food, they found their solace in the cheap gin which the Pitt government had first j made available during the war in its campaign to injure the export of French spirits by lowering the duty on English ! ] alcohol. This gin flooded into gin-shops which sprang up j in all the heavily populated towns, shops which catered to drifting, jobless laborers; men who could! not buy bread or meat could manage the small expenditure of a penny or two when struck by the signs which promised: ' ’ Drunk for a * 12 penny. Dead drunk for twopence. Clean straw for nothing." \ These were the ugly spots in the age of Coleridge, an age of dispossession, of naturally declining land values that had to be supported by Corn Daws, an age of the wholesale abandonment of villages, and the passing of an agrarian world which had practiced farming "by a community for its own maintenance on cooperative conditions.1 * J But the age was not singular in its lack of equity, its nimble response to the stimulus of shifting capital investment, nor even in its bland destruction of the agri cultural lower class. These characteristics had marked, to 12S. C. Carpenter, Church and People. 1789—1889: A History of the Church of England from William Wilberforce to '\Eiuix Mundi1 * (London. 1933), p. 27. T3 J. L. and Barbara Hammond, The Rise of Modem In dustry (New York, 1926), p. 82. 1 I jsome degree, the eighteenth century* And they had not been1 ! | I submerged even by the religious frenzy of the seventeenth* But particularly in the age of Hooker the characteristics had combined to produce that same strain of impassive mal-i i I ignity so typical of the age of Ooleridge, and had made j the sixteenth, like the late eighteenth and early nine teenth century, a period remarkable for the displacement of agricultural workers and the growth of a poor class rather than for calm stability and undeviating order* It is for evidence of the similarity of issues in the two ages that I should now like to turn to the sixteenth een— II* DISTRESS AND DISPLACEMENT: ■ i THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY i The glorious English renaissance was, like all rare 1 and beautiful things, best understood by those who had both time and means to indulge themselves in appreciation* Appreciation followed prosperity, and prosperity through the Tudor epoch was not confined to a single social stra tum* It was an epoch marked, wrote Edward P. Cheyney, by "the decay of the old nobility and the growth of the ab- ! < i solute monarchy, of the increase of wealth and the ex tension of commerce, of the growing prosperity of the prosperous and the utter misery of the poor.Wealth jflowed to some, and with it a spreading awareness of the i richness of human existence. Bait the glory of the renais sance must haw "been unperceived by the rural workers* just as rustics in 1798* left to their narrow indurating tasks* could hardly have been aware that a thin volume of ! poems had opened a new vista of poetry and had lifted the native diction up to the threshold of the Romantic Age. In the sixteenth century, as in the later period, the i displacement began with the consolidation of small plots of farm land. The rural workers could not cope with con— i i solidation* As Gheyney stateds j It was the incapacity of the great mass of the people to! conform to conditions so rapidly and so fundamentally changing that made this time of transitions so hard for the lower classes, (p. 2t) To the eternal distresses of poverty was added the fright ening experience of the loss of place. R. H. Tawney said in his Religion and the Rise of Capitalisms To the immemorial poverty of peasant and craftsman, pit ting, under the ever-present threat of famine, their pigmy forces against an implacable nature, was added the haunting insecurity of a growing, though still small* proletariat, detached from their narrow niche in village or borough, the sport of social forces which they could neither understand, nor arrest, nor control. They were displaced because great sums of capital were | tA ^Social Changes in England in the Sixteenth Century. Univ. of Penna. Series in Philosophy literature and Ar chaeology, Vol. 17, Mo. 2 (Boston, 1895), p. 7* 15(Mew York, 1926), p. 1t8. > j wagered on the completeness of their displacement* Eng land had heen driven to the crushing expense of protrae— jtedL war against Philip II in the Netherlands and in i [Prance, as well as upon the sea (just as she was to he I jinvolved two hundred years later against Napoleon)• The i fiscal policies of Henry ¥111 and the Protectors of the j ! young Edward VI had not prepared England for such rigors. Tawney said of this* By the middle of the sixteenth century the English Gov ernment, after an orgy of debasement and confiscation* was in a state of financial collapse* . . . (p. 70) The government, in order to recoup, contrived to make the countryrs resources attractive to capital venture. Eco nomic stability came before military prowess if investors f 6 were to be interested* Enclosed! or consolidated farm land could be more profitably managed than the old scat tered individually managed plots. The balance, if there ever was one, swung in favor of the large corporate farm, and in disfavor of the traditional small independent tenant* Under the stimulation of investment, farms were grouped in union, commons disappeared, and new scientific (though rudimentary) agricultural techniques superseded the old ones. i The emergence out of medieval peasantry of prosperous ! cultivators, occupying two or three times as much land as their grandfathers, is a proof that holdings of a considerable size can be managed successfully. . * .For 1 !6 Conyers Read, Social and Political Forces in the i Engl ish_ Ref o rmat ion.-(Houston, 1955),—pp.-&5-^€>*- ...—--- another thing, the inequality which has appeared among the holdings of different tenants implies the growth of a state of things in which innovations in the customary | methods of agriculture are much more likely to he made i than they were when all the tenants were organized in j fairly well-defined classes**'? | Two evils resulted from the shift in the pattern of j i 1 jagriculture* One was the loss of the village commons, and ! Jthe other was the increase of flocks of sheep. Of the jfirst, Tawney wrote in his Agrarian Problems | To appropriate common pastures without compensation may ! ruin a whole villages it is to seize a piece of free | capital without which cows and horses cannot be fed, and I thus it is virtually to confiscate the beasts, which are i the peasant*s tools* When that is done he must either re-assert his rights, or throw up his arable holding, or hire pasture for a money rents sometimes— a bitter thought— he must hire grass-land from the very man who has robbed him* (p. 241} The second had perhaps a greater tenure; it was a ubiquit ous evil* The struggle for control of pasture lands be tween the agricultural and the sheep-raising interests is reflected in every century of every country*® history. To be sure, the conflict has periods of subsidence; it is overshadowed by greater struggles, by foreign embroilments* by gigantic political machinations, by civil wars. But the division ©f farmer and shepherd that is given symbolic treatment in the Cain and Abel tale is the division that may be discovered germane to much of the misery of the poor in England in the sixteenth century. "Where 60 per sons had their livings, now one man and his shepherds ^'Ta. H* Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (London.— 1912) ,- p.-157*------- — — — — -* 45 bath all, " mourned an anonymous and typical rustic of the mid-sixteenth century (quoted by Conyers Read, p. 43)* It may not have been primarily sheep-raising that forced the rural class to abandon established holdings* As Ghey- ney stated,. "The increase of sheep-farming, inclosures, turning out of tenants, consolidation of farms, the rise of rents, were all closely and necessarily connected" (p* 77)* But a new demand for wool made this single occu pation appear responsible for upsetting the lower classes. Hew emphasis was placed on getting men off the land, and getting sheep on in their places. In addition, the anti sheep group produced the most: resounding literature of protest, and counted upon the persuasive pen of the ir repressible, querulous foe of Catholicism, Simon Pish (d. 1531), who admonished king and ministers freely as he restated all the old: complaints against the nobles, the 18 clergy, the greedy, the sinful, and the sheep herders. 18 The social protest of the age, from the first to the last, was traditional eomplaint made current by new application. More*s Ptooia (1515) pointed up the same abuses that fifty years later George Gascoigne (e. 1539- [1577) was to indict. And More and Gascoigne sounded what nad been customary complaint by the time of the Peasants* Revolt (1381). Henry Osborn Taylor noted in his thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century (Bew Yorlc^ 1920): ("Turning the pages of Gascoigne, one hears the resonant jechoes of ancient denunciations— of mankind, of knights and bourgeoisie, and so often of the Church" (p. 50)* Wye- liffe and Langland*s criticism of these are well-known, Wt the same criticism appeared in countless lesser-known [places too. See, for instance, Thomas Wright's edition of fourteenth and fifteenth century political poems and songs (London, 1859-61). One of Fish's Supplications, the Decaye of England by the j i Great Multitude of Shepe (1550), argued that the twilight j jof England's military might was fast approaching because ! |the yeomanry^ who supplied the archers for the army were j Ikeing despoiled by the encroachments of the flocks, I i As we do thynke, we have two losses more that we have | not spoken: the firsts loss© is for laeke of koushold I kepynge mayntenance of tyllage* It is great decay to ar— S tyllaryt for that do we reken that sheperde© be but yll j artchers,^9 ! The yeoman fared about as well in the town© of the i ! i isixteenth century as the rural workers in Coleridge's time I jwho could afford gin, but not food, The displaced, wrote i iTawney in the Agrarian Problem, pull down "whole quarters i into slums,; spread disease through congested town dwell ing®, and disorganize the labor market by crowding out the native artisans'* (p. 275) • The artisans, though still ac corded a measure of respect in Elizabeth's time, were iforced into competition for Jobs with starving men who 20 would work for next to nothing. And in the end the ar tisans also had to relinquish their snug; redoubt, for the guild system toppled when tried by the force of a labor force so easily moved at the bidding of the merchant or the new industrialist. The artisan, the rural worker, the yeoman, all ^In Four Supplications. EETS, Extra Series, lo. 13 (London, 1871 i 5, p. TOG* 20 Charles W. Comp, The Artisan in Elizabethan Lit erature (Hew- York* -1924) > — p.- 57*----------—--- — -------- 47 without capital to invest, now had not even talents to sell at a competitive and fair price. Their income veered downward as prices climbed, leaving them in a position analogous to that of the displaced of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Brooks Adams wrote of their distress: The reduction of the acreage in tillage must have les sened the crop of the cereals, and accounts for their slight rise in value during the second quarter of the sixteenth century. Nevertheless this rise gave the far mer no relief, as, under competition, rents advanced faster than prices, and in the generation which reformed the church, the misery of yeomen had become extreme.21 And, as in the later period, the distress was given a pro voking contrast by the well-to-do, who seemed to exist and to wax on the torments of the lower classes* The brilliant age which begins with Elizabeth gleams against a background of social squalor and misery. . • • An Earl of Pembroke has been given immortality by Shakespeare. But the first of his name had founded the family on estates which had belonged to the Abbey of Wilton, and by his exactions had provoked the Wiltshire peasants into rebellion. . • .The gentle Sidney’s Ar cadia is one of the glories of the age, and it was com posed in the park at the Herbert's country-seat at Washerse, which they had made by enclosing a whole vil lage and evicting the tenants. (Agrarian Problem, pp. 193-94) The climate of the ages of Hooker and Coleridge was not one favoring universal content and order. Both periods saw the major shift of financial interest from the slow- changing agricultural tenantry to the progressive 21 The haw of Civilization and Decay: An Essay on His tory (New York, 1896)> p. 203* j jeorporate farm, and from farming in general to a burgeon— ing manufacture. Attendant upon the jolting displacement pf the lower elasses, falling wages, and rising prices ! i was an obvious self-interest which motivated the class in ipower to strengthen its position at any expense while all j •the others could fall as they might. To such patent self- j Peeking there was a terrible resentment, a hostility to j I ! jevery form of established authority since authority ap parently favored the drastic separation of haves and have- nots, in the age of Booker this hostility was expressed i principally by men speaking against the ecclesiastical I authority, in Coleridge rs age hostility was laicized. But religious or secular, the basis for discontent was very .close in both ages; in fact, it drew together both re ligious: and lay opponents of the government who came to be Lailed simply "radical" in outlook. These two varieties of radicals usually favored simi lar principles since both issued from the same rejected jclase of society* They were discouraged or, rather, driven from affiliation with government principles by reason of their financial disability. Conservatism and material com fort traditionally contribute to the same total world out— i look, while "established wealth and position is rarely for I 22 long at home in English Protestant Nonconformity," j ^^Evelyn Douglas Bebb, Honeonformity and Social and Economic life, 1660-188Q (London, 1935), p* 57* 49 This was true not only of one, hut of both ages. Indeed, Basil Willey does not hesitate to draw the line of influ ence straight from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth century.. Dissenters, having no social or political persuasions to orthodoxy (they were disqualified for all public pre ferment, and for graduating at Oxford and Cambridge), were exposed in a unique degree to the contemporary winds of doctrine. . .there was nothing to prevent them from becoming, as many of them did, more and more ’Lib eral.* For is this surprising, for these people, the descendants of the Puritans, were naturally disposed to welcome whatever made for ’liberty* in every sphere*2^ It is to this group of dissenters who so effectively sta ted the discontent of the lower classes that I will now direct attention. As I treat the group of the late eight eenth century, I will retell some of the early events of Coleridge’s life. The retelling is necessary here since Coleridge, before eighteen hundred, numbered himself among the radical dissenters* III. PROTEST AND THREAT: EIGHTEENTH TO NINETEENTH CENTURY Perhaps the most easily demonstrated link between the age of Hooker and that of Coleridge is the sense of urgeney and of panic in high places that was generated by the threatening force of a well-directed class struggle. Thomas Cartwright (1535-1603), the prototype for English 23 The Eighteenth Century Backgrounds Studies^ in the Idea of Nature in the Thought of the Period (.New 1fork. 1Q5Q), p. 182. Hereafter cited as Eighteenth Century._____ 50 Puritans, confidently noted in the sternly sectarian A View of Popish. Abuses, one of the many tracts for which he was responsible during the 1570*8, "The leopardous time is at hand.* • . ."2^ The Bishop of Carlisle had written to Cecil in 1562t Every day men look for a change and prepare for the same. The people desirous of the same.do in manner openly say and do what they will concerning religion and other matters right perilous, without eheck or pun ishment. 2 5 There had been riots in Kent in 1550, in Buckinghamshire in 1552, and there were to be more in Oxfordshire in 1594* Considering the uncertainty of the times, the riots were read as insurrections, and the Puritans^ announced pro gram of a general blood-letting brought the heat of in- 26 temecine war closer. The years prior to the nineteenth century were par ticularly unsettling ones for the middle and upper classes because the want and the misery of the peasants and ar tisans seemingly prepared the way for a step already taken 2^In Puritan Manifestos. A Study of the Origin of the Puritan Revolt, ed. W. H. Frere and C. B. Douglas (London.' 1954), p. 21. 2**Quoted in Henry Herbert Birt, The Elizabethan Bel- jgious Settlement: A Study of Contemporary Documents (Lon don, 1907)• p. 522. 2^Walter Travers (15487-1635), Hooker*s first real opponent, called for remedies "sharpe indeed and unpleas ant but holesome notwithstanding and profitable." A Full and Blaine Declaration of the Ecclesiastical Discipline"* of the Word of Sod." and of the Declining of the Church of England from the Same. 2nd ed.(London. 1617). p. 9o. in France. These were the years of cowering under the sym bol of the French Revolution, a symbol extended and made dangerously vital to the English through the ceaseless radical references to the liberty, the peace, and the well-being of French peasants which dated from the mom entous events of July 14, 1789. The London Corresponding Society, founded in 1792 at the Bell Tavern, Exeter Street, Strand, led by Thomas Hardy, an old-time radical, wrote to all good Frenchmen soon after its foundings Gas ting far from us; the criminal Prejudice artfully in culcated by evil-minded Men and wily courtiers, we, in stead of natural Enemies, at length discover in French men our Fellow Citizens of the W o r l d .28 The society addressed other such organizations at home and pointed out continually the parallel between the French Revolution and the 1689 English Revolution.2^ The French, the message usually ran, t t like our brave ancestors 4 of the last Century. . .have driven out the Family that would have destroyed them. . ." (Report from the Com mittee of Secrecy. Appendix B) . This identity between the 2^The society has been termed the "first distinc tively working-class political body in English History. * ' Gr. B. H* Cole, A Short History of the British Working Class Movement (Few York, 1927), p. 46. 28In First-Second report from the Committee of Sec recy. to Whom several papers referred in his Ma.iestyts message of the 12th of May. 1794 (London* 1794), Appen- dix C. pq -'The other most significant society was the So ciety for Constitutional Information, founded in 1780. 27 52 revolutions was given special emphasis in Tom Paine*© Rights of Man. and it formed the point of departure for the sermon which the dissenting minister, Richard Price, preached on November 4, t789* It was this sermon* entitled: A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, that was the im mediate cause of Edmund Burke*© celebrated refutation of the principles of the French Revolution* Burke*s Reflections on the Revolution In Prance ap peared! Just one year to the month after Dr. Price’s sermon. It is perhaps the best known document from these times of impending civil strife and international warfare. Its suave rhetoric and scintillant common sense have won the field in the estimation of succeeding generations of literary critics; references to the radical rebuttals of Burke’s masterpiece which poured from the press are few* But in terms of the influence of publications, the Re flections was fairly beset by the duple discharge of some thirty-eight separate works which instantly followed Burke’s single charge* Critical praise notwithstanding* the lesson is clears the displaced, the desperate had won a voice* A radical press had been evolved, one to amplify the inchoate frustrations; and demand© for restitution by the numberless and easteless who felt, with some ^ Rights of Mans Being an Answer to; Mr. Burke’s At tack on the French Revolution, in The Complete Political Works of Thomas Paine (Kew York. 18T7), p. T3* ---------- 53 justification, that they had heen intentionally demolished by landlords, manufacturers;, the peers, and the church* What had been splintered groups of disenchanted men were given union and coherence, first of all, by the societies which have been mentioned, and, second, by an active and expanding radical press* The two admirably complemented one another* Both acted upon the knowledge that unem ployed men were most apt to try and discover political abuses, and to connect the abuses in a causative relation ship? to their woes* Societies and press were aware that "you cannot get them to talk of polities so long as they are well employed* ' * y Political theory followed hard upon the empty larder. As William H. Wickwar noted in his The Struggle for the Freedom of the Press; Bays and months of enforced idleness, following on long hours of labour, gave men and women an ignorant interest in politics, and it was rather as rebels than as sub jects that they demanded the enfranchisement that is the essence of civic right*52 It was not as ignorant, but as well-informed and menacing ly organized, rebels that the discontented people began tc> make their political wishes known. With organization they achieved, an attention from the ruling class that had been traditionally denied them. As MacCoby wrote: This unprecedented political phenomenon which had ap parently been presented to the nation and the world— W. Rostow, British Economy of the nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1948), p. 120* 32(london, 1928). p. 50*_________________________ ____ 54 f i j the evolution of plebian polities from the gathering of 1 inarticulate and Hooligan Wilkes or Ho Popery mobs to the disciplined/ assembly of tens of thousands who, hav- i ing created their own party organization, now put for- • ward their claim to a preponderant voice in framing na- j tional policy, (p. 95) i /Although the trip by coach from Manchester to London in 1784 took twenty-four hours, the trip for the news by word of mouth from party headquarters to men awaiting it in outlying areas was a matter of a few hours. People in these areas were not cut off* from communication with pol itics for ‘ 'every important town had its radical publisher and bookseller. » . The pervasive influence of this radical press is seen in the fact that the papers were passed about among several readers, and no one active in political affairs on any level would have overlooked the opportunity to broadcast the recent declarations of the party. As R. K. Webb affirmed* It has been calculated that London papers were read by thirty persons, and provincial papers by eight to thirty, (p. 33) Though publishers of radical literature ran the risk of trial under the charge of sedition throughout the 1790*8, they turned out an unremitting stream of paper® * XA and pamphlets. They made themselves well-known among the people; they became identified as leaders in the march 35R. K. Webb, The British Working Class Reader 1790- 1848? Literary and Social Tension (London. 1955), p. 48. ^^Wickwar is best for a complete list of all the material printed by the radical press. 55 toward reform. And they popularized the other leaders, the men who opposed the tyranny of landlord and government policy, as dedicated friends of the masses, The effect of the words of William Cobbett (1766—1835), William Hone (1780-1842), John Wade (1788-1875), Richard Carlile (1790- 1845) on the reading lower classes was to stimulate both the disenchanted reformers and the dispossessed workers. Opponents of the government that had passed the Seditious Meetings Act,- the Treasonable Practices Act, the Combina tion Acts,, and had suspended the right of habeas corpus deserved recognition, and they were accorded a somewhat privileged place; they had the heart and the best wishes of the economically ruined, the politically unsettled. When Sir Francis Burdett, the leader of the reform-con scious group in commons, was endangered by troops sur rounding his house in order to arrest him for his part in the criticism of commons, the people stirred themselves to a swift retaliatory gesture, one ehronicled in the Hew Annual Register for 1810, Several acts of outrage were resorted to by the multi tude which had continued to increase. The soldiers were pelted with mud and stones in great quantity, • ,they determined to endure the assault no longer, and charged the multitude sword in hand, , , .(Quoted in Those who had fallen before the naked sword added a note of authority to the charge of government brutality and in— * sensitivity to the wellbeing of the English people. And they were, after the "Peterloo Massacre1 1 in Manchester in j HacCoby, P. 56 1819, to inflame all devoted government erities, some of the upper house members, and the poet Shelley, who wrote The Masque of Anarchy to mark the bitter incident. However, obviously enough, the fear of the "mob" that characterizes the age of Coleridge did not proceed from the number of citizens sacrificed to government bullets and bayonets. The fear grew from the grim lesson so ear nestly supplied by the French as they slaughtered their ■515 gentility* ^ It multiplied as the English populace demon strated a willingness for violence through the years 1795 to 183©? so direct was this lesson that Thomas Erskine, the advocate for radicals brought to trial for sedition in 1794, admitted: "The ruling principle of the present mom ent is most naturally the terror of revolution. . . *M^6 The London Corresponding Society pledged, in 1794, to at tain "The Recovery of our rights, and the complete Reno vation of the Liberties and Happiness, which as Men we are entitled to, and, as Britons, we have been taught to ex pect" (Heport from the Committee of Secrecy. Appendix E). This was to be repeated with varying degrees of vehemence by all of the societies, and it was, unfortunately, liable 2 C -'''Between March and August of 1794 two hundred thou sand were incarcerated, nearly seventeen thousand death penalties inflicted over a seventeen-month period. Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror During the French Revo lution: A Statistical Interpretation, harvard Historical Monographs, Ho. 7 (Cambridge, 1935)» p* 143. 36 ^ A View of the Causes and Consequences of the Pres ent War With France. 25th ed* (London. 1797)y p. 131. ----------- — _--------------------------------------------------------5T to interpretation in the light of attempted attack on the King and! his minister, Pitt. The ruling class was con vinced. by the evidence that the intentions of the radicals were in violation of law and established principle* On October 29, 1795, when the King was on his way to the House of Lords, he was mobbed by people who protested the hunger and the short wages which, they believed, were results of war* The crowd now pressed closely round, the coach, and his majesty, in considerable agitation, signified by waving his hands to the horseguards on each side, his anxiety that the multitude should be kept at a distance. • • • The King finally reached Lords, but upon leaving there for Buckingham he was once again surrounded by people shout ing, "Bread! Bread! Peace! Peace!" and as the State Car riage passed the Ordinance-office, someone fired an air- gun at it, breaking the glass but not harming the King's person* The account in the Annual Register supposed the gun to be fired "with a view to assassinate him* (Chronicle for October 29, 1795). During this period a mob stormed about Pitt's house. On Monday night, a mob again collected at Charing—Cross, when after making everyone pull off their hats as they passed, they proceeded to Mr. Pitt's, in Downing Street, and broke several windows of his house; but the guards being immediately called out, and appearing in sight, very soon dispersed them. The mob afterward went over Westminister-bridge, and paraded to St. George's Fields, where they attacked the Royal George public—house. . • * (Quoted in MacCoby, p. 91) The people who marched in midnight forays against Pitt and who threw stones at soldiers were not necessarily the -------------------------- . --------------------------- 58 same people who swelled the ranks of the corresponding so cieties. But to the government there was no visible dis tinction. John Wade had proclaimed hotly* “The nation is the most wretched. . .its government the most corrupt,, its clergy the most rapacious. . * This was in 1820:* twenty—five years after the mob unrest that threatened the King. But it was another year of welling insurrection* a year that saw the publication, in January* of a cartoon which pictured a clerical • ’ magistrate with a drink- blotched nose, • ’ and which harshly called for “Blood! Blood!! Blood!!! I Threat, antagonism* violence had not diminished* Between 1815 and 1820 how near was Great Britain, as G. 33. H. Cole asked, "really on the verge of insurrection?" It Cpannot) be doubted that there were many among the working-class Radicals who would have appealed to force if they had seen in its use any prospect of success. (p. 97) The reports submitted to the Committee of Secrecy during the final years of the eighteenth century had frequently carried intelligence of the weapons that were being pre pared by the uneasy masses for the onrushing class war. One letter to the House included "Four drafts of Pikes* or Spear Heads" (Report from the Committee of Secrecy. •^The Black Book? or Corruption unmasked (London* 1820), p. 1. ZQ In Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Pre served in the Department of Prints and 33rawlngs in the British Museunu ed. Mary Dorothy George, X (London, 1952)* 2' — ~ 59 Appendix 1)* And during- the period of which Cole spoke, masses of people frequently met to consider what were the possible rewards of a violent aggression against the rul ing classes. The government kept something of a watch on the proceedings, and “reports were made of the quantity of pikes, or firelocks, and of bullets which could be pro vided for the intended rising," as the Annual Register summarized it in 1817 (General History, p. 68). Ten years of peace did not bring social stability, for in 1830 the same publication carried reprints of the handbills that were being circulated in immediate response to the new police force of Robert Peel. These indicate that the wrath of the populace had not dimmed nor diminished since the days following the successful revolution in Prance. One bill proclaimed in bold face: "To arms, to arms I li berty or deathI“ It carried instructions for the insur gents • London meets on Tuesday next, an opportunity not to be lost for revenging the wrongs we have suffered so long? come armed!, be firm, and victory must be ours!!! (History of Europe (18303 PP* 159-60) It is after we have reviewed these threats that the response of the government in suspending habeas corpus and in pursuing a course of litigation against those it held as seditious appears as something of a conditioned reflex. Displacement, exelusion from traditional occupa tions and from long-tenured land holdings, poverty, star vation, these had jarred a considerable poetionofthe J so people* The people had announced their restiveness by dis organized' riots; later* they developed organizations, raised leaders, established a press* Finally they evolved to a level where they could be effectively directed by a radical Ideology* This came from a corps of radical theo rist® whose idea® were broadcast by popular speakers (the "demagogues" so frequently deplored by Coleridge)* The people were made to feel that there was a body of prin ciple and a real tradition on the strength and precedence of which they could make demands of their rulers for equity, Justice, and some degree of material comfort* The corresponding societies, by constantly calling the prin ciples and tradition to mind, united the people in a fast ness which endured the shocks of every government counter offensive measure* A visitor from London could hear in Sheffield the same points made, the same rights referred to that gave his London radical organization its charter to> represent the people. There was a systematic and com plete identification of the radical ideology with the pro gram® and the objectives of the radical organizations. In the area of theory, as in participation, the people were backed by what they felt to be established, incontro vertible principle. The radical attack upon the government was stiffened by its steady alliance with the ideas of Paine, Priestley, Godwin, Bentham, and the lesser known Mackintosh. As we review the body of ideas that these 61 were responsible for in England, we will gain an insight into what the youthful Coleridge found attractive in a popular branch of political theory at the time that he was briefly sympathetic to the radical program. The principal question, that radicalism in the eight eenth and nineteenth centuries, as in the sixteenth cen tury, asked of the government was: By what right does the present established power rule? This was an unanswerable question, for the government could only answer that it ruled beeause it had always ruled, that it held tradition al power, that its laws, just or not, had to prevail be cause they were derived from de facto power. The split be tween conservative and radical in the age of Hooker as in the age of Coleridge was based upon this simple contrast— the conservatives held the power while the radicals held the logic* The one controlled the country while the other merely won the argument. At the time, however, the gov ernment was not so certain of its control, for it seemed to have lost the sympathies of the majority of the lower classes. And these were the people who could have forced a change suddenly and violently. The radicals pressed home the arguments for the ehange, and success appeared but a year or so away. Success didn’t come, not so suddenly as the radical theorists and visionaries had believed it would come. When it came ultimately, it came after 1832, precedent by precedent. In the heady years of the 1790*8* 62 none who read Paine, or who joined the societies, or even who shared copies of radieal pamphlets supposed that the great class shift could he far off. When we read Paine and the others today, we also may sense the provocative ur gency of that time, and may perhaps wonder that the shift did not come as predicted. It had all appeared so direct and so logical. The people were unhappy. Theirs was an unhappiness, generated directly hy the misdoings of a single antago nist* it was simple, therefore, to identify the source of the unhappiness and to urge an attack against the foe» Everything that Paine, Godwin, Mackintosh wrote added up to thiss Modify the form of government, or replace the government, hut, at all events, make the people happy. Paine’s Rights of Man. an enormously popular and influ ential work whose first part alone had sold two; hundred thousand copies hy 1793, put it bluntly. "Whatever the form or constitution of government may he, it ought to have no other object than the general happiness® (p. 206). Joseph Priestley had already made the point in 1768s "That the happiness of the whole community is the ulti mate end of government can never he doubted. . . 30 Essay on the First principles of Government. And on the Nature of Political. Civil, and Religious li berty (London. 1768), p. 59. 63 General happiness was to be codified in the system of Ben- tham and the utilitarians, and the people were to beeome unabashed hedonists, at least in the realm of theory* According to Paine, the people deserved happiness since they, ultimately, were the power upon which all gov ernment was based. Society for Paine was a type of joint- stock venture in which every man put on deposit some part of his natural rights (p. 45). Soeiety was not organic; the social organization was not a result of divine fiat, nor were all the parts of the organization frozen into one timeless pattern. Glasses could be shifted in position. In order to support this major contention, Paine, like a host of earlier thinkers (the Puritans would have to be includ ed here), opposed the compact theory to the organic theory of society. His view of law complements this com pact theory since he advocated Hatural law* natural law is that body of universal and eternal edicts sprung from the author of ereation and recognized by man, regardless of social status, as divine, true, and immutable* Positive law is, by contrast, man-made and relative? it is known to men only in their conformity to social mores. Hatural law is known in society or out of society, and it is known through the working of the reason. A society which incor porates Hatural law into its legal code is much closer to? the ideal society than one which bases law solely upon hu man legislation. "All the great laws of soeiety," wrote _ ------------------------------------------------------6'4 Paine, "are law® of nature" (p. 155)* The state of nature, since it is governed; solely by Hatural Law, is a state of good, a state of independence for all wbo live in it* It is not bad and tyrranical as Bobbe®, staunch conservative theorist that he was, had consistently maintained. Paine *s idealized nature neutralized one considerable argument for the efficacy of human society. Man could get along without society; he eould find happiness in simple nature while he was more likely to discover the antithesis to happiness in society. "Poverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life."^ With this enormous dis qualification, government assured but a minimum benefit to the people* He wrote in the Rights of Mans Government is no further necessary than to supply the few cases to which society and civilization are not con veniently competent; and instances are not wanting to show, that everything which government can usefully add thereto^ has been performed by the common consent of so ciety, without government, (p. 155) fhe class that had traditionally benefited from a structured society was, in Painers opinion, also non-es sential. He subscribed to a labor theory of value* fhat is, the value of any good or service was to be measured by the amount of labor that had gone into the production of that good or service. Paine, in employing the labor theory, divided society into two main classes, the class that la bored and produced and the class that consumed the fruits ^ Agrarian Justice, in Political Works, p. 479* _ _ _ . . &5j of the labor and did not produce. Since capital growth was not termed productive, the financiers and the landed gen try were termed simply "hon-productive." The Rights of Man argued: When the valleys laugh and sing, it is not the farmer only, but all creation that rejoices. . • .Why then does Mr. Burke talk of this house of peers, as the pillar of the landed interest? Were that pillar to sink into the earth, the same landed property would continue, and the same plowing, sowing, and reaping would go on. (p. 224) The peers were more apt to create war than any other real condition or any useful commodity. Paine sensed the di rection of his readers* sensibilities when he linked re form to the disappearance of all wars. He also antagonized the right wing when he spoke of the age as one particular ly well-suited to social upheaval* From what we' now see, nothing of reform on the political world ought to be held improbable. It is an age of Revo lutions, in which every thing may be looked for. The in trigue of Courts, by which the system of war is kept up, may provoke a confederation of Nations to abolish it. (p. 1“ ' In this, Paine may have implied a temporary anarchy that was needed to usher in the new government by the pro ductive classes. Priestley positively denied anarchy, but Godwin embraced it. He withheld recognition of any organ ized society. The government of his time he termed, "this monstrous edifice** (Political Justice. II, 4?)* Political conformity for him was but an aspect of evil, for it made men submissive to all kinds of authority. It turned men into hypocrites because they had to quell the natural 66 impulse and reasonable desire, for liberty in order to fit themselves into a social pattern, lastly-, as he stated in the Political Justice, conformity on the part of the total populace served to raise the least enlightened group to a position of commanding authority, This group that he de plored was the clergy with its spiritual power (II, 233). Godwin, like Paine, was a relativist as he denied all organic wholes. Governments, like constructs such as ob ligation, contracts, even natural right© were to be al tered or abolished by change. In place of the organic whole, Godwin, like the majority of radical thinkers, sub stituted the entity of the atomic individual. The tempo rary compact theory of government subscribed to by the radicals was an outgrowth of this stress on the single unit as opposed to the artificial organic total. The indi vidual was placed in opposition and counterdistinction to “universale" in the state. The radicals of Coleridge^s age attempted to dissolve the constituted authority of govern ment by denying reality to government. There was in place of the entity “government, “' an omnibus term “government” that was believed to communicate something positive and desirable to those who used the term as though it had a real referent. In reality there was no connection between the term and the group of inbred selfish men who held the power of rule. They were not “government1 1 j they were mere ly men who appropriated a term and attempted to -- 67 hypostatize it. The radical thinkers denied as well any universal re ality to the term “dissenter*” There was no single and corporate group of dissenters; there were, instead* indi viduals who wished to right the wrong created hy other in dividuals who, hy accident of birth or by chance, drew money and privilege to themselves. On this atomic and; per sonal level, the struggle for control of the government was resolved in a man-to-man battle* And the winner was to be the more powerful contestant; he was not the winner by dint of "universal" qualities or prerogatives. As we shall see in the next chapter, it was this emphasis on the individual rather than on the organic whole that guided the Puritans of the sixteenth century in their assault on the centralized authority of a universal church and state. It was this emphasis that led to Martin Lutherrs break with Rome and that established as intrinsic to Protest antism the notion of the sufficiency of the individual responsibility for redemption. When Paine and Godwin and Mackintosh urged legislation of reform for the benefit of individuals rather than of classes, they proved the con tinuity of a historical issue. In Hooker*e period the individual had been balanced against the vested group, and all of the attacks against the Church of England stressed the case of the one against the many. Radicals of the late eighteenth century recalled the unfair balance. 68 proving as they did their receptiveness to ideas from the 4.1 [ past as well as to ideas from one another, They created an unaltering climate of ideas, for they shared a common | •fund of principles, There was, as a result, a goodly rep etition in their writings. The themes were easy to follow ' since they were sounded again and again. The people were unhappy. They had lost their places; their income was in- Luffieient to provide the necessities of life* From Lon don to Bristol there was similar unrest, and from Paine to Mackintosh there were identical points of argument. The people, whether they were aware or not, were thoroughly in doctrinated when they read a radical paper* a section of J i Paine, or when they browsed through the consciously liter- j ate Vindiciae Gallicae of James Mackintosh. ' ' nur 11 """ J This work, which appeared in 1791, was an extended and sometimes ponderous answer to Burke’s Reflections. In I lit there was the abjuration of the existing rule, of all j I i government, in fact, "All the governments that now exist j j I in the world,” the author heavily opined, “(except the Baited States of America) have been fortuitously formed, ^1Elie Halevy, The Growth of Philosophical Radical ism. trans. A. D. Lindsay (London, 1928), wrote on this ipoints "Bentham did not invent the moral arithmetic, the elements of which are to be found in Maupertuis, in Bee— caria, in Hartley, and even in Hobbes. He did not invent jfche principle of utility, the formula of which is to be found in Hume. He did not invent the formula of the ’great est happiness of the greatest number’ which occurs in Hutcheson, in Beccaria, and in Priestley" (p. 33). ------- . ---------------- 69 They are the produce jjslc] of chance, not the work of art. Here there was also the division in classes be tween the producers and the non—producers. So egregiously is this recent origin of titled Nobility misconceived, that it has been even pretended to be necessary to the order and existence of society; A nar row and arrogant bigotry. • . .The august fabric of so ciety is deformed by such Gothic ornaments. The massy Doric that maintains it is labour. . . .(p. 78) And if there was continued under—evaluation of the value of the productive classes, then the way was; clears No important political improvement was ever obtained in a period of tranquility. The corrupt interest of the Governors is so strong, and the cry of the people so feeble, that it were vain to expect it. (p. 106) Men who expressed themselves thus were labeled “radical," or "Republican," or "Jacobin." There was a duplication of terms, perhaps an evidence of the heavy onus put upon those who violently disagreed with govern ment policy; they were so profoundly evil that simply one term of opprobrium would not characterize them in all their sins. These men not only criticized their native land, they worked to destroy its traditional class struc ture? they even professed an admiration for their coun try's: age-long foes, the French. They admired what the French, had perpetrated in their massive blood-letting and general assault upon everything decent and orderly. ^ipdiclae Gallicae. Defense of the French Revolu tion and its English Admirers against the Accusations by the Right Hon. Edmund Burke; Including Some Strictures on the late Production of Mons. de CaloBmie. 3rd ed. (London. 179 T), P. 122. ____ _____________ 7Q Anyone who exhibited a slight: sympathetic interest in rad icalism, and who was able to get his sentiments into print, was likely to be directly identified as a radical himself* The young Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who had found1 the way to publication, wrote his brother George in T794: People have resolved, that X am a Democrat-—and accord ingly look at every thing I do through the Spectacles of Prejudication. In the feverish Dietemperature of a bigoted Aristocrat*s brain some phantom of Democracy threatens him in every corner of my Writings. (Col, letters. X, 125) Me might as easily have borne the weight of the term Republican. In a letter to his fellow conspirator, Robert Southey, written in July of 1794, he opened with a cheery '•Health & Republicanism" (Col, letters. I, 83). Coleridgers polities, from early youth to the year of 1798 were, judged by the standards of the day, radical and even seditious. But whether they were ever directed toward the same objectives as those of his contemporary dissenters is liable to some question. John Thelwall, the famous radical, established something of a working re lationship with Coleridge in 1796, visited him at Nether Stowey, must have discussed politics with him, but con cluded in a letter written in 1798 that Coleridge was hardly to be seriously taken as a conseientous opponent of the government* The letter ran: Mount him but upon his darling hobby-horse, *The re public of God*s own making, * and away he goes like 71 hey-go-mad, spattering and splashing through thick and thin and scattering more levelling sedition and con structive treason than (U ever dreamed ©#*43 Whether we accept Thelwall*s protestation of relative in nocence or not, Coleridge must have appeared to some mem bers of the government as potentially very dangerous since he was spied upon by hired spies in 1797. His writ ings at this time were strongly critical of the admini stration and the Establishment. His schemes for an ideal community in the Hew World exclude all ties with the corruptive errors and tyrannies of the old. Like Paine, the young Coleridge saw evil residing in society, and not in natural man in his uninhibited natural habitat. When Southey asked whether he might not take his brothers to the pantisoeratie community on the banks of the Susque hanna, Coleridge fervently denied the request with* “Are they not already deeply tinged with the prejudices and errors of Society?0 (Col. Letters. I, 10?)* Lespite his adherence to what might be termed the party line, Coleridge’s opposition to the government was more the result of the ebullience of youth than of the deliberate rejection of established practices. He did not feel nearly so deeply as Wordsworth the sense of the tra gedy of France after 1793, for he had never believed ful ly in the promise of 1789. Hanson has perspieaciously ^Quoted in Lawrence Hanson, The Life of S. T> Cole ridges the Early Tears (London, 1938), p. ^41. 12 compared! Coleridge with Wordsworth; his is a comparison: which cuts heneath the external circumstances of the late years of the eighteenth century, circumstances which might tempt one to generalize ahout the early radicalism and the later conservatism of Coleridge, Coleridge came to Wordsworth as a profound and salutary surprise,. * * .Although at a superficial glance it might seem that the French Revolution would affect them simi larly, in the event its effect proved as different as their characters* Whilst Wordsworth's- republicanism drove him into scepticism, Coleridge lost none of his re ligious convictions, turning merely against the hired priest and to the: Unitarians, under whose wing he might enjoy both the expression of advanced political sympa thies and the aesthetic satisfaction of a nature natu rally religious* * • .Later whilst Wordsworth was fight ing in silence and without much success the disgust and bitter shame he felt for his country, Coleridge was sail ing impetuously into the very teeth of treason in his en deavours to stir up the city of Bristol against Pitt the oppressor— and enjoying himself uncommonly well in the process. The fact was that Coleridge, sustained by his innate religiosity, skated with much noise but little real danger to his peace of mind over the deep waters of the revolution* (pp. 182-83) When we review the radical years of Coleridge, we see that he espoused all the proper causes, that he hated the right tyrants, but that he did all this with more gusto than con viction. To begin with, Coleridge was properly impressed with the significance of July 14, 1789* In his poem "Bestruction of the Bastille"1 (1789)* he fervently askedr "Shall France alone a Despot spurn?" The answer was quite in line with that supplied by Dr. Price and scores of others. ---------------------------------------------------------73“ Let favour’d Britain be First ever of the first and freest of the free. ^ He recognized and was exuberantly appreciative of the lone warrior pitted in gallant battle against the orthodox. He wrote his brother George that he knew the notorious Wil liam Frend in January of 1792* Frend (1757-1841) was a Unitarian church reformer, an advocate of freedom for all who battled the abuses of the established church and tried to reform its liturgy. When he was tried and expelled by Cambridge in 1795 for printing ’ ’Peace and Union recommen ded to the Associated Bodies of Republicans and Anti-re publicans, " a pamphlet highly critical of the Anglican Church, Coleridge sat in the court and, upon the delivery of Frend*s defense, rose in the midst of silent students and auditors and applauded Frend’s sentiments. He him self was not at this time a particular enemy of the church. But he was not its defender either. Chapel atten dance inconvenienced him. He wrote George Coleridge on January 13» 1793, that he expected a slight perquisite of the Chapel Clerk’s Place at his school, but that this would involve regular visits to the chapel. Such a pros pect depressed him (Col. Letters. I, 46). He was not depressed, however, by his lack of rel igious faith. In this he was one with Paine, Godwin, and ^ Complete Poetical Works, ed. Ernest Hartley Cole ridge (Oxford, 1912), l” J 11, Hereafter cited as Poems. 74 the rest of the political and religious dissenters and critics* He wrote George in March of the next year that when he was in the military service (a career which ex tended from December 2, 1795, to April 7, 1794), he had met an individual who had thought him interested in "On tological Disquisitions*" But, a© the young Coleridge con fided to his elder brother with the proper bravado, "He was deceived— " I have little Faith, yet am wonderfully fond of specu lating cm mystical schemes— Wisdom may be gathered from the maddest flights of Imagination, as medicines were stumbled upon in the wild ~ - . He needed now only a fellow thinker with whom to corres pond and to plan something properly anti—monarchical and clerical. He was in need of change; he had been forced to affect a self-discipline when he had returned to school after his experience with the dragoons? he had been con strained to practice rigid economy, and he was still deep ly in debt to his college tutor. He met Southey in Oxford in dune of the year and, if we may judge by the dispatch with which Pantisoeracy was proposed and gleefully accep ted, the trip to the banks of the Susquehanna was the thing needed to abolish both discipline and frugality. By duly Coleridge was moving about the country preaching the new doctrine of Pantisoeracy, preparing for the trip by gaining, in theory, adherents and support. He wrote to Southey on July 15, bursting with enthusiasm over the 75 program for the elimination, of private property in the utopian community projected for the far side of the Atlan tic* HtiLs letter concluded with eelerityt “X have positively done nothing hut dream of the System of no Property every step of the way since I left you— till next Sunday* Heigh©!— * (Col, letters. I, 51)* With sueh boisterous op position confronting it, the system of private property was clearly in for a crucial struggle* Two months later he gloated to Southeys “Pant iso cra- cy— 0 X shall have such a scheme of it I** (Col, letters* I, 59)* By the end of the year he had pretty clearly oriented himself to the radical position* Me had espoused the cause of religious dissent, noting in the poem “Priestley1 * the contrast between true religion and Catholic—indoctrinated Though rous'd by that dark Vizir Riot rude Have driven our PRIESTLEY o'er the Ocean swell; Though Superstition and her wolfish brood Bay his mild radiance* impotent and fell? Calm in his halls of brightness he shall dwell t For lo! RELIGION at his strong behest Starts with mild anger from the Papal spell, And flings to Earth her tinsel—glittering vest, Her mitred State and cumbrous Pomp unholy? And JUSTICE wakes to bid th* Oppressor wail Insulting aye the wrongs of patient Folly? And from her dark retreat by Wisdom won Meek NATURE slowly lifts her matron veil To smile with fondness on her gazing SON! (Poems. I, 81—82) Again he had lauded the work of the French Revolution, and this after the mass executions of 1795. Xn a poem titled "la FayetteH i first published in the Morning Chronicle of 76 j December 15, 1794, he chanted* : ' . • .in thy Country's triumphs shalt rejoice i And mock with raptures high the Dungeon's might. . * . j (Poems. I, 82) He also announced his antipathy for the chief minister of Ltate, William Pitt,, a "dark scowler" who "kiss'd his Country with Iscariot mouth* * *" ("Pitt," in Poems. I, 83), and recorded Ms anti-monarehical sentiments in a better to Southey in July* "The Cockatrice is emblematic jo f Monarchy— a monster generated by ingratitude on Ab surdity" (Col* Letters. I, 84). The early part of the next year he was off with his 'customary verve giving lectures on the slave trade and the com laws, and pointing out the evils of the Hair Powder pax. He delivered in February at the Plume of Feathers in f Wine Street in Bristol three lectures which, as a group* j \ [constitute his stoutest foray against the government* These lectures, published in Bristol in 1795 as the Con- ciones ad Ponulum. were brought out under his daughter's I supervision in the Essays on His Own Times (1850), and I after the passage of time they still chart clearly the pattern of normal dissent from conformity that so many l young men prided themselves on during the insecure years just after the French Revolution* The lectures are still something of a repository of radical precepts and revolu tionary sentiments* They cover nothing more than might be [found in a score of other places, but they are inclusive* _ 75 Coleridge made an eftort to ©ever everyone*® sins in bis lectures* The leaders were inept: "The folly of the rulers of mankind grows daily more wild and ruinous: Oppression is grievous-—the oppressed feel and are restless. The speakers for the government* Burke and Pitt, were venal and insincere; their speeches were compounded of "mystery concealing meanness"' (p* 55)# She church that stood only Because supported hy the state was the fosterer of a "re ligion of mitres and mysteries, the religion of pluralities and persecution, the eighteen—thousand-pound—a—year re ligion of episcopacy"* (p* 57) • Coleridge was not misled in these lectures by the ideal of the English Constitution* Be would not accept the thesis of an early and perfect document which had tempo rarily been brought to a course of expedience by the in stability of the times* The constitution Coleridge termed "that scheme of cruelty and imposture" with not an approx imation of the ideal in it Cp* 45)* The constitution, with all the other bases of the state, was corrupt, to be contrasted with the perfections of foreign states* The American Revolution was a "holy Rebellion" (p* 45), and interests that ran counter to those of England were per force ethical and desirable: "The four quarters of the globe groan beneath the intolerable iniquity of this ^Page 53* All references to the Coneiones are to the first edition* _ , 1S nation t1 1 (p. 66) . Coleridge by 1795 had gone as far as lie might go; the rest of his career as a radical brought no new theorems* no new antipathies. Be had said it all in these lectures. Bis "Religious Mu sings," which was written for the most part in 1794 and published in 1796, was a bit of a tour die force, but even here there was nothing that had not been expressed in the goneiones. The poem is significant for the extent to which the young goleridge felt it nec essary to identify himself as an enemy of the established church, though, again, this had been in the goneiones. One recurring note in the poem, repeated from the lec tures, and to be found later in the Watchmanr was the com plaint about a church which by itself was inadequate to win public support and thus had to be propped by the civil arm of the government. This was fairly common among radi cals of Coleridge’s youth, as it was among the radicals of Booker’s time, and its recurrence through his early work gives something of a continuity to the political philo sophy of his youth. As a matter of fact, this incompati bility of civil might with spiritual process is the most significant idea that he takes from his early period to re-> state in his mature work. Be was never to reconcile the King and his army coming to the defense of the church. He was never-to accept easily the clerics in the role of civ il minions; when they functioned in that role they were, 77 like any nobles, the burden of the people. He wrote in the "Religious Musings”: Warriors* and Boris, and Priests— all the sore ills That vex and desolate our mortal life. And when the elergy supported one nation against another in a war, it became 0 blasphemy I to mingle fiendish deeds With blessedness! (Poems. I, 116) These extracts from the early words of Coleridge could hardly lead one to discover the incipient conser vatism that was already shaping his attitudes and pre paring him for his final political and. philosophical po sition. Coleridge, if we read these correctly, had! every thing In common with the radicals and stood as one devoted or pledged against the Establishment. Bike other avowed critics of the Establishment he was against both the church and the state, reserving approval only for the atomic individuals who favored "justice” and "truth.” These are the sentiments of the Coleridge who represents the callow romantic, the youth of unclenched hope in man, of uncommitted powers. As we shall later see, there was already some cynicism and some unradieal predilection. But for now the type is what is necessary herei he was a radi cal type, and he did not lack companions. It is the type that supplies the final bit of continuity between the six teenth and eighteenth centuries in this chapter. In order __________ i 78 I -to demonstrate this, it will be necessary to conclude now i with some discussion of the radicalism of the age of Hook er* lit. PROTEST AND THREAT ' THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY i The economic unrest of England in the sixteenth cen tury was not, as we have seen, unique to. one period* There r M .... .1. .... .... before* The one factor which could possibly give some new emphasis to the unrest of the sixteenth century was the i religious one; in England there was perhaps some new | awakening of the realization of the perils of the flesh, j i some new reaction to the corruption and misdirection of i i I the religious institutions* Still, an interpretation of ' i the social stress of that age which began with religious jrather than political dynamics would be wrongly posited* Religion was important. It must have been in that age of j Luther and Helancthon and Beza and Calvin. But the coupe— ' i tition for the control of the English state during the sixteenth century was a competition of the world!ly-wise, of those who knew the value of works over prayer and who reduced everything to a common and substantive factor of secular might. Elizabeth knew that she faced but one truly determined and eapable foe. She knew, moreover, that she needed friends to help her withstand that foe. The -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 gr toe, the Puritan party, threatened her in the temporal as in the spiritual realm? it struck at her state through her church* In order to interdict this thrust of force, she raised her secular power to a height equal to that of a spiritual one andL then guided her church by strictly pol itical tactics* She result was, as Conyers Bead stated! In England what we call the Reformation was in its begin-r nings a political rather than a religious movement? it had to do- rather with the government of the ehureh than with its theology, (p. 4) All of the stirring religious events of the age somehow became interpreted by the English for their political sig nificance* The Reformation in England was singular amongst the great religious movements of the sixteenth century* It was the least heroic of them all— the least swayed by religious passion, or moulded and governed by spiritual and theological necessities, from a general point of view, it looks at first little more than a great politi cal change.4e The Puritans did not have to accept a church evolved from such a premise* They had a heroic church of their own which they preferred for a national establishment* They f©rwarded the claim for their own church to supersede that of Elizabeth, and they did this 3ust as the radicals two hundred years later were to move for the control of th body politic* They were completely successful in the sev enteenth century, and they were nearly so during the *^Johm Tulloeh, Rational Theology and Christian Phil osophy In England In the Seventeenth Century. I CEdin burgh, 1874), 37. 80 lifetime of Elizabeth* One would imagine by the manner in whieh some express themselves, that the discontented were a small fraction who, by some unaccountable means, in despite of the gov* erament and the nation, formed a majority of all Par liaments under Elizabeth and her two successors, • . • The Puritan party acquired strength by the prevailing hatred of Popery* and by the disgust whieh the bishops had been unfortunate enough to excite. This contributed, with the prevalent tone of public opinion, to throw such a weight into the puritanical scale in the Commons, as it required all the Queen*s energy to counterbalance*^ J* E* Neale affirms the same facts “Elizabethan England, as mirrored in the House of Commons, was overwhelmingly Puritan in its sympathies* Though some of the followers of the discipline were men of means, were influential in law and in higher polities, many came from the lower order® and Joined forces Just as the less worth levellers of the late eighteenth century were to band together in riot and s elf-aggrandisement * The elergy aside, some men were attracted to Puritanism by its simple and austere regimen of life, some because it furnished a potent political tool, some because they could express thereby a sincere social protest, and still others-—a great mob of violent and restless spi rits, foul-mouthed revilers and anarchistic agitators*, the Jacobinists of the sixteenth century— because they could express thereby their hatred of all law, order, and decency.49 *^Henry Hallam, The Constitutional History of Eng land. from the Accession of Henry Vll to the heath of George il (London. 182?). I. 257* ^^Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments (London, 1953), p. 418. ^Frederick Morgan Padelford* “Spenser and the Puri tan Propaganda," Modem Philology. 11:85* July 1913* ai It is quite apparent that we cannot view Puritanism as simply a religious outburst* The economic upheaval was in part a motivating force for what has been identified as a religious movement* The shift in economy had created a class of displaced! and starving people* They wanted a change, and so they organized to facilitate change* They brought in the plan for change under the banner of re ligious reform, but it was restitution of rights that they strove for* They began with the church, but they clearly worked for a reformed state as well* The Initial impulse of Puritanism was desire for reform in spiritual matters* • • *This reform, in turn, might be narrowly conceived to establish the authority of one's own class in place of the traditional authority*-in the program of the Presbyterians to substitute Whig author ity for Tory authority, or, broadly conceived, to secure the real democratization of government? in the progress of the Independents and their political allies, nothing less than to convert England into a republic* It is in the light of these fact® that a definition of Puritanism should be framed* Puritanism, then, was the effort to secure reform, either partial or complete, in spiritual ©r in political matters, or in both* (Padelford, pp* 32-33) The social as well a® the religious aspect of Puritanism was generative behind the radicalism of the sixteenth cen tury* Tawney, in his Agrarian Problem* emphasized the partnership of the secular with the spiritual energy in Elizabeth's time* M f It is not until the rise of Puritanism that either religious or economic radicalism becomes a popular force* (p. 339)* The force promised to unseat the Queen, just as the 82 kings of Coleridge * s age were unsettled by the foreign and domestic developments which appeared directed, to a frightening degree, by lower class unrest. Puritanism strove for effects that Lutheranism in its first rash of religious enthusiasm had never considered. Where Lutheranism had been socially conservative-, defer ential to established political institutions, the ex ponent of a personal, almost a quietistic, piety, Cal vinism was an active and radical force. It was a ereed whieh sought, not merely to purify the individual, but to reconstruct Church and State, and to renew society by penetrating every department of life, public as well as private, with the influence of religion. (Tawney, Religion and Capitalism, p. 91) This striking difference was the result of the varied application of Christian certitude made by Luther and Calvin. As Roland Bainton states: "The great text for Luther was, *Thy sins are forgiven,* but for Calvin it CQ was, *If Cod is for us who can be against us?*" Under this phylactery Puritans on the continent and in England were willing to make rebellion, advance war, and substan tiate persecution. Naturally, crowned heads would have to fall* Though the battle could wage as far as the realm of theology, the close fighting would come where the control of the throne and the kingdom was to be decided. Elizabeth was in need of no tutoring on this point, and so she made sure that religious recusants were, when it was necessary for the peace of her reign, punished for political rather ^®The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (Boston, 1952), p. 114. 83 than fop religious recusancy. Her minister Burghley func tioned with this sense of political reality always as his guide* Conyers Head wrote* In helping Elizabeth to establish her church in England. pxe~] had been chiefly guided by reasons of state* •» » Hfe accepted the principle of an established church as a political necessity, and regarded dissent as a dangerous hind of rebellion*?* She ease was similar with Elizabeth's prelates; they were chosen not so much for their theological perceptibilities as for their sensitivity to the rigors of the secular conflict for power* Bancroft's position Of london was typical of the routine life of an Elizabethan bishop*, like most prelate®, he had been a pluralist, and, on taking higher office, re signed some eight rectories and prebends* like them, he owed: his promotion to political influence, and to his promise to support the Cecils, father and son, under all circumstances* It was significant that his ecclesi astical function® were to be secondary in importance to his political, that he was to display not administrative ability in ecclesiastical affairs, but discretion and tact in the performance of certain onerous and delicate duties of a quasi-political character which the Privy Council had been in the habit of entrusting to the Bishop of Irondon. 52 John Greenwood and Henry Barrow, congregationalists who were hanged at Tyburn April 6, T593, were put to death, not for their non-conformity, but for the erime of sedition* Barrow had spent several months in prison, writ ing tracts critical of the Church of England and getting ^^Walsingham and Burghley in Queen Elizabeth's Privy Council, M English Historical Review. 28*56-37, Jan uary 1.913* - * 2Roland G. Usher, The Reconstruction of the English Church (Hew York* 1910;» 1> 114* ______________________ QA them smuggled out to a publisher in Holland. The fact that his criticism of the church could be made the basis for a charge of sedition illustrates the ease with whieh Eliza beth confronted all of her opponents, clerieaX or secu lar, so long as a majority ©f the people were reasonably fearful of rebellion and depended upon the Queen for the security of peace and their property. Since Elizabeth's antagonists came from the minority, she had only to iden tify the minority, overlooking the division of ecclesias tical and political radicalism, and to deal with it as circumstances favored. As William feller wrote* What she chiefly wanted, after all, was to be queen of England and live. She had the common sense t© know that her people would permit her to do this provided they also were permitted to live and go about their accus tomed affairs with as little interference as might be* So, without troubling to be either logical or zealous, she made herself safe.53 Her safety brought about the secularization of the Angli can church, however, and this, while it offered her abso lute mastery oter the church, still provided! the way for the Puritan thrust to find an unprotected ehink in her ar mor. The Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity of 1559 had es tablished her as • ’Supreme Governor” of the Church of Eng land and had fixed the form of worship and doctrine. But the Elizabethan Settlement, the effect of these two acts, The Hise of Puritanism Or. The Wav to the Hew Je rusalem As Set Forth in Pulpit and Press from Thomas ‘ 5hrt— wrlght to John Lilburne and John Milton. 1570!—1^45 (Hew lEork, 1938), p. 7. ------------------------------------------------ 8 5 was such a thing of “moderation and studied ambiguity*1 as Bainton put it (p. 2©8) that none could have scrupled to attack the church by reason of its unsullied sanctified origin* fhe church was patently and recently founded in T559* Since it was bom by act of parliament* it came through a majority approval; it was not invested with a divine one. As Pv J* Shirley pointed outs fhe Church of England was built upon these two Acte* and the foundation of the relations of Church and State were thereby laid. It is of the utmost importance to remember that these laws were the work of the laity alone, (p. 7) fhe laity had made a church under the directive of their Queen, but could they not unmake one if the first proved inefficacious^ Elizabeth opened the way for this argu ment to be effective when she established a complete pol itical control ever what should have been a purely eccles iastical area or redoubt of her government* It was this very argument that was to be advanced against the state as well as the church in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Since radicals In that age denied the organic and divine origin of the government, they opened the way for any kind of alteration in the form of the government, secular or ecclesiastical, fhe more closely we study the code ©f the Puritan radieal dissent, the more we are struck by its similarity to the code of the radicals of Coleridge*s age. Both groups began with the individual, denying reality to physical universals which they termed constructs. Both groups were concerned with reform of the 86 church as well as the state of England, and though the Puritans made their greatest advance against the Anglican church, they also offered a complete new social program* Galvin was primarily concerned with metaphysics, with sal vation and with sin,hut there was never a chance to re strict his message to the moral area* Ihe discontented English saw in The Institutes of the Christian Religion an organization of principles that could create a new and happy temporal state in England, fhe Puritans as political thinkers quickly forgot the evil of all men, and were soon discovering the evil only in their conservative opponents, exalting, in the meantime, the reason and right of rule in themselves* fhe Puritans, like the later radicals, knew that the time for reckoning was swiftly approaching. M$he fact is, * * wrote Galvin, "that no genuine piety remains in the world* (I, 58) • Walter Travers wrote from England* Every man is not able to judge of the divers gifts, which are.. fit for a hot purpose, and as it were made and appointed of God, especially in this age and in these daies, wherein all things are so corrupted that the most part following the pleasures of this life, are smally earefull for the right use of spirituall gifts. . . . (Full and Plain Declaration., p. 29) fhis was repeated fey John Wade two hundred and fifty years later with little attempt at alteration of the intrinsic messages the times were perilous for the sinners* Wade *‘ A great part of II, Chapter t is devoted to his demonology in the Institutes, trans. John Allen, 6th ed* (Fhila., t91t)* --------------------------------------------------------------- 87 proclaimed;* “The nation is the most wretched* * .its gov ernment the most corrupt* Its clergy the most rapacious • » • *“ (p* t). Jeremy Bentham Judicially reviewed the enormities of the age, and the self-righteous vigor of5 the cc Puritan edges: every word. fhe following, then, are the abuses in the defense of: which all churehmen are enlisted: (t) perpetuation of immorality in the shape of insincerity; (2) perpetuation of absurdity in subj eets of the highest importance; (3) extortion inflicted on the many for the benefit of the few? (4) reward bestowed on idleness and incapacity to the exclusion of labor and ability; (5) the matter of corruption applied to the purposes of corruption in a constant stream; and (6) in one of these kingdoms a vast majority of the people kept in degradation avowedly for none other than the above purposes* One of the doggerel rhymes of William Hone, publisher and radical author, ran along; fhe Church is, now the King can’ t see— What a© church ever ought to be* fhe Church has been, by right peculiar* Th* handmaid of each wicked ruler* * * * fhe vice which reigns in station® high She sees with half-averted eye* • * *57 fhe first Puritan threat was made on philosophical grounds, and Paine, with the radical theorists of the age, worked from a stable ground of constant idea* But there ■^Halevy clarified the connection: “Not to go back to the sages of Greece, it would even be possible to estab lish certain analogies between the moral temperament of the Utilitarians and that of the Puritanical sects which modem England has produced* (Radicalism* p* 493) • eg Handbook of Political Fallacies, rev. and ed* Harold A. larrabee (Baltimore, 1952), pp* 41—42* •^"fhe fotal Eclipse," in Facetiae and. BBisoeilaniee (London, 1827), II, 18. . m were many radicals like the youthful Coleridge who merely mouthed; words* fhe Puritans with whom we are concerned here were all thinking men. There was the other variety toe, hut our interest is in the Puritans who threatened the stability of the realm on other than hastily or un— philosophically considered grounds. Circumspect Puritans felt they had to oppose a government that they knew was wrong because they were, individually, of much greater authority in the eyes: ©f Cod than any government* The doc trine of Predestination and Effectual Calling provided a philosophical background to the opposition of corporate authority. Each man was either a member of the Elect or was excluded! from hope of eternal reward* If he was one of the Elect, he would prove his election, according to the doctrine of Effectual Calling, by performing some great and vital duty. Me would perform this by himself, without the aid of his fellow men* Me struggled against perdition and for good as an individual; it was purely personal, and it tended to break down any semblemee of the corporateness of society* If man was to he saved by himself, there was no reason for his risking the waste of his individual vi tality in wasteful conformity to the body politic. At the final appearance before the wrathful God, mam alone, not in social union and companionship, would be judged. Man alone would be saved according to his devotion to his duty* Walter Travers stated this directly: 89 In vaine then shall men dreame of pardons, dispensations and priviledges: All shall he called to aocompt to de clare with what faithfulnesse and diligence they have done their dueties. . » .(p. 21) This was the emphasis ot William Godwin, Brooks Adams wrote on this point* bringing into clear focus the con tinuity' of the ideat The opposition of Mssenters to the government did not arise exclusively from their legal disabilities. Bissent had a close affinity in its philosophy with that of the Revolution. Calvinism, or dissent of the stricter sort* was rather thinly masked in much of the fundamentals of the Godwinian philosophy. . . .The idea that the inde pendence of the individual mind Cisl inviolate by all external authority is simply the transposed and exag gerated Calvinist!© doctrine of determinism, and the ab solute autonomy of the individual soul. Godwin*® teach ing that men have no rights but only duties, has a dis tinctly Calvinistie tinge, (p. 19) John Wade pressed home the isolation of the individual in ethical matters. Bart of his emphasis derived from con ventional complaint* the church was failing in Its duty to the people who were being forced to support it. Be wrote in the Black Booh: "To church and state the people owe little but their calamities. Even for their religious and moral character* they are indebted solely to themselves** (p. Ml). This split of the corporate society into countless atomic fragments had the effect, In the sixteenth cen tury* of putting each man in competition with his neigh bor, regardless of the neighbor*s standing in the commun ity. For the Buritane, the magistrates had to demonstrate their fitness for their high callings. The clerics had to w give evidence of the capabilities as ministers of God* Thomas Cartwright defined the criteria of the worthwhile minister and his spiritually endowed church. The outwards markes whereby a true Christian church is knowne, are preaching of the word purely, ministering of the sacraments sincerely, and ecclesiastical discipline which consisteth in admonition and correction of faults severlie. (p. 9) This naturally made it difficult for the Elizabethan ap pointees wno were in their places more as a result of ful filling political than spiritual needs. Thus with Eliza beth^ achieved political stability came an accompanying loss of ecclesiastical face, a loss which in a few short decades was to spin the control of the church and the state out of the hands of the annointed monarch. It was becoming difficult even before the end of the sixteenth century to maintain an absolute control over men who found the sanction for revolt in the sins of bishops, the non-preaching of clerics, the maintenance of vestiarian abuses derived from the Roman Anti-Christ. law was not going to be enough to force obedience, for the Puritans, like the radicals who were to follow, shifted from man- made or positive law to divinely ordained law. The radi cals called for a return of Eatural Law, and the Puritans ushered in their reforms under the protection of God- given law. Both were the same; both displaced traditional rule by the implication that pure law exists prior to so ciety. This medieval eoneept, the Lex ante civis. , , 91 provided a sufficient weight to counterbalance the demands of the magistrate for obedience* fhe magistrate could foreb obedience to positive law, which was temporal, but the good man must always give first due to Natural Law, which was eternal* fom Paine was to write that since man was primarily ruled by Natural Law, he should always heed! the dictates of this law first* Calvin wrote the same: If they command any thing against him £God3, it ought not to have the least attention; nor, in this ease, ought we to pay any regard at all to that dignity at tached to magistrates; to which no injury is done when it is subjected to the unrivalled and supreme power of i. (II, fhe particular danger here for Elizabeth was in the group that deemed its actions conformable to the rule of Natu ral Law, and that could afford to spurn man-made law* Cartwright wrote: It is true that we ought to be obedient unto the civil magistrates which governeth the church of God in that office which is committed unto him, and according to that calling. But it must be remembered that civil mag istrates must govern it according to the rules of God prescribed in his word, and that as they are nourised [sic].so they be servants unto the church. * * *58 fhe civil magistrates were, by precept of Natural Law, equal to private citizens* fhe ecclesiastical magis trates were also quickly demoted to a common stature by this law* fhe Puritans denied the Anglican ministers any extraordinary sacramental powers, fhe appointed minis ters were held to be men much like their neighbors, save, 58In John Whitgift, Works, ed. John Ayre, Parker Society. Ill (Cambridge. 1851). 189*______________________ 92 perhaps, in the one re gar# of their extreme depravity in laying claim to supernal powers which they did not pos sess, Cartwright vehemently asserted: To say that any magistrate or p?leric3 can save the life of blasphemers, contemptuous and stubborn idolaters, murderers, adulterers, incestuous persons, and such like which God by his judicial law hath commanded! to he put to death, I do utterly deny, and am ready to prove, if that pertaineth to this question* (In Whitgift, Works., X, 270) Calvin himself had denied all inequality of an ecclesias tical hierarchy. Ho one officer of the church was supposed 5Q to be of unequal power* * As a result, all believers were on one common level, and anyone who supposed himself any higher was guilty of the damning sin of pride* Haller notes on this point: There' was* » *a concept of equal it ariamism implicit in Calvinism which transcended aristocracy and which the necessity the preachers were under of evangelizing the people brought steadily to the fore* They had to try to make everybody at any rate wish to be saved, wish to be lieve and to be of the elect. Wishing, however, is next to believing. Xt became difficult not to think that election and salvation by the grace of God were avail able to everyone who really desired them. Moreover, once the Calvinistic preachers admitted, that the only true aristocracy was spiritual and beyond any human criti cism, they nad gone a long way toward asserting that all men in society must be treated alike because only God knows who ia superior* (p* t?8) The political application of this equalitarianism was not long in coming, for Calvin himself said in the Institutes: The vice or Imperfection of men therefore renders it safer and more tolerable for the government to be in the hands of many, that they may afford each other mutual ^See the Institutes. Book 17, Chapters T, 5, 4* 93“ assistance and admonition, and that if any one arrogate to himself more than is right, the many may act as cen sors and masters to restrain his ambition. (II, 778) Walter Travers fuickly took this to mean that all po wer of rule in society was from the people* This was the underlying theme of Doeke, Paine, Priestley, Wade and nine-tenths of all the radical authors of the nineteenth century. Travers put its For as In common wealthes not onely such where the people is to be made Soverayne, or a few, but also even where the Kingdom of one is to be established before it be conferred, all the power is in the peoples hands, who of their free will chose Magistrates unto them, under whose authority they may after be governed* and after wards not all the people, but onely the magistrate* cho sen by them, administer and geveme the affaires of the Commonwealth; so it cometh to passe in the establishing of the Church* (p. 28) Such a view of the source of power rules out com pletely the theory of the Divine Right of Kings. It brings government from the church and state level to the local level. It is behind all the energy of the later working men *s societies; men can organize with a will if they be lieve that they really have the right to dictate their form of government, or, at least, the right to reject min isters who harm them, and to select ministers who serve them. The intense and vital type of character developed by the application of the idea of local self-government to ec clesiastical or temporal affairs is a power to be reckoned with by the State. . . .60 A. P. Scott Pearson, Church and State* Political Aspects of Sixteenth Century Puritanism (dambridge* 19^8), p. 105. We have seen how? the radicals of both centuries found the power in the people; we should! also note how they took power* authority, and tradition from the ecclesiastical hierarchy* Cartwright, in An Exhortation to? the Byshone to Beale Brotherly With Ihevr Brethren* stated* “Bishops liv ings ought to be abated: their great circuites cutte shorters and them selves made equall to their brethren! is this to overthrow a whole state* . * ?“ (In Puritan Mani festos* p* 63)* In fact, it was* but Cartwright pretended he did not see this concomitant*. Be would have pulled the clerics out of their union with the secular half of the government; in this, he was a separatist as so many of the Puritans and radicals were* Gravers complained along the same line: "Our Bishops are Justices of peace* and have authoritie to see the Queen's peace kept, and to call the breakers of it into prison and bond®1 * (p. 40)* fhey also received “the same title© of State and Honour, that are given to the Hoble—men* * *[>nd3 they do unjustly* and without: any cause* and contrary to their duety* desire and usurpe these things* • *“ (p* 4t)* Hone, in the nineteenth century? wrote: Our holy pastors; Cannot truly serve two masters* Clergymen in the Commission! How unbecoming*© their condition! (Hr 21) Hie radicals of the nineteenth century were not to be restricted to matters principally secular: they were g5 dissatisfied with all aspects of the government, and the church qualified as a fair target for their ridicule and .criticism* Priestley for one wrote against civil abuse and ecclesiastical dereliction* Of office-holding clerics he stated: "As teachers of the religion of Christ*, whose Kingdom was not of this world, can [clerics] have any business to meddle with civil government?" (First Prin ciples, p. 1t&)• The Puritans disputed not only hierarchical author ity* hut also any symbols of that authority. They would have done away with the outward badge of the regular priesthood; high or low* no man had a right to drape him self in popish vestment* For why do they command a cope and a surplice to be used indivine service? or a tippet and a square cap to he worn daily, but because they thimke it is of some author- itie with the people, and bringeth some estimation to their office, and to make their persons, and! is thought to be ©f great force, to make a man to be grave and of authorities (Travers, p* 69) duet as the external badlge® of spirituality, the system of sacraments was intended to impress the people, turn ing their attention from the real business of the good minister, preaching and disciplining* Travers bridled at the sight of clerics "laying their hands upon the Priests” awfiting the infusion of the Holy Ghost. This Hno man gave them, no nor could give them, unless it were extra ordinarily, this being proper to those times and to the apostles onely" ( p. 35) • 96 lone doggerel ran along the same critical line. This Is a Priest* lade according to law; Who, on being ordain'd, vow'd, by rote, like a daw, That he felt himself call'd, by the Holy Spirit* And making there his profession and boast* Receiv'd, from the Bishop, the Holy Ghost* • • • 'Gainst his spiritual Gath, puts his Oath of the Bench, And, instead of M s Bible, examines a Wench, • • (I, 73) The Bible that Hone mentions was of utmost importance to the Puritan, for the scripture alone contained all the church ceremonies and polity that were needed. Anything that appeared in a church ceremony that did not have spe cific precedent in scripture was, according to both ages of dissenters, a corruptive innovation* Cartwright assert ed, I say that the word of God containeth the direction ©f all things pertaining to the church, yea, of whatsoever things can fall into any part of man's life* C In Whit gift' s Works. I, 190) While Travers wrote* By fetching the Discipline of the Church from men and from the Canon law, we doe wrong to Christ our Prophet and our Prince and open a spring and fountain ©f errors in the Church, let us therefore stop those pits, and goe to the fountains of the word of God* (p* 37) Two hundred years later Joseph Priestley scored the pre lates for their support of the state on “perversions of scripture*t t Hothing can more justly excite the indignation ©f an honest and oppressed citizen, than to hear a prelate, who enjoys a considerable benefice, under a corrupt government, pleading for its support by those abomi nable perversions of scripture, which have been too ------------------------------. 97 common on this occasion. • . .(p. 2?) Cartwright had idealized the work of parliament, seeing it as in abandoning all popish remnants both in ceremonies and regiment, bat also in bringing in and placing in God * s church those things only which the lord himself in his word eommandeth* (In Puritan Manifestos, p. 8) Priestley called: let the church of England then, before it is too late, make a farther reformation from popery, and leave fewer of the symbols of the Romish church about her. • » • (p. 121) If this “old rotten liturgy” were not reformed soon, sta ted Henry Barrow (1559—1593) in his Brief Piseevery of the False Church, then stem measures would be certainly justified* And Priestley said, without seeming t©> fear the repercussions, "with respect to the high church party in this country, I may be considered as in a state of „ 62 open war* " In both Puritanism and radicalism it seemed but a pause between discontent,, dissension and then revolt* The pause was hardly sufficient to allow the government defense to prepare itself for the onslaught. The reason for the quick success of the Puritan cause may have been either the inability or the unwillingness of the govern ment to take a well-defined stand; it seemed easier to g* In J* R* Tanner, Tudor Constitutional Documents A* D. 1485-1603 (Cambridge, 1923), p. 188. ^2An Appeal to the Public On the Subject of the Riots in Birmingham (Birmingham, 1791) > p. xx* -------------------------------------------------------------------------98 give in now and again, but this overlooked the stem fact that "the demand for liberty, when attended by some meas ure of success, constantly merges in a demand for pow— er*w- ^ This i® A* S. P. Woodhouse's interpretation of the Puritan success. According to Herbert Barling Poster, the Puritans succeeded in their seizure of power because, Mwith real political insight,* they grasped the possibili ties of their theology in the sphere of political action* The Calvinistie tenets of vocation, representative “res ponsibility to Sod and the people," fundamental law of God and man, and the compact theory gave marvelously di rect support to the drive on the church and the state.^ In the meantime, the redoubts of the church and state were left largely unprotected, the government apolo gists depending, as they had done for so many year®, on the people's conditioned response to traditional author ity* By the time they responded to the distressing fact that authority as a substantive and effective argument for peace and propriety had disastrously faded, the race for the eontrol of the country was well under way* The startled response of the government forces to the radical threat will be taken up in the next chapter* ^ “Milton, Puritanism, and Liberty,n University of Toronto Quarterly* 4:484, July 1955* 64H'phe Political Theories of Calvinists Before the Puritan Exodus to America,® American Historical Seview. 21:502, April 1916* CHAPTER III PRINCIPLES OF OBEDIENCE TO CHURCH AND STATE Those who are inclined to think of the end of Catholic ceremony and ritual coming shortly after Henry's divorce j from Katherine of Aragon are given something of a turn when j confronted with the facts of Henry’s last official appear ance in state before the English people. For Henry the re cusant king, the Office of the Dead was read; the candles symbolizing the Catholic apostolic faith burned at the head of his coffin; a solemn funeral Mass was celebrated; and three Requiem Masses were chanted after his body was re moved to Windsor. There was nothing in this to give comfort to the rabid protestants, nothing to promise a speedy turn j to the religion of Luther. Luther was opposed to all ceremony; he hated all spir itual legerdemain, and thus his system never really had a chance of coming to full flow during the Tudor dynasty. The Tudors, with their high regard for finance, could see lit tle advantage in initiating the system of one who could be characterized in this fashion: "For the arts by which men i amass wealth and power, as for the anxious provision which accumulates for the future, Luther had all the distrust of a peasant and a monk." (Religion and Capitalism, p. 82). ■ ■_ ____________ I Henry had repudiated only the papal power: he had want- jthis power for himself, in addition to the continuance of I the Catholic ceremonies and appurtenances. Nothing was a j better visual aid in bolstering up a throne than heavy pomp ! and age-old pageantry. Luther denied the validity of all j i this. He went, on to repudiate not only the papal power but * also free will, scholasticism, corporate realities (Henry knew that his kingdom was a corporation if nothing else), canon law, finance, and the ecclesiastical caste system. In other words, he abolished precisely everything that Henry wished to retain, while he retained everything that Henry did not care about. He cast out transubstantiation yet re- ! • > \ tained eonsubstantiation.x This may have been important to > t theologians, but it certainly was not to Henry. What was j important was that Luther did away with the notion of di- vine office on earth. He began with the priesthood, but an ingenious reformer could use the same argument to do away i with the king. Do not be led astray by the question whether the man who gives you the sacrament is holy. . , .For the sacrament does not belong to him who administers it, but to him to whom it is administered.* The strong equalitarianism implicit in the system comes out in this: ^■Roland H. Bainton, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1952), pp. 201 ff. ^Works. V (Phila., 1915-1932), 280. 1 T01 As many of us have been baptized are all priests without distinction. . . .The priests, as we call them, are min isters chosen from among us, who do all that they do in our name. {II, 279) There was in the system also an overpowering anti-intellec- tualism. The message seemed to be that men should be humble I ! intellectually, that they should learn only enough to in sure salvation. "I know and confess that I learned nothing from the scholastic theologians but ignorance of sin, righteousness, baptism, and the whole Christian life."^ Man! came to be saved as much by Scripture-directed emotion as \ by intellectuation; logic was nugatory. The danger in this for the state, as Henry saw it, was that highly individual j emotion could not be checked by any standards that the gov-j ernment might wish to apply. A man who justified his actions s by faith, really by emotion, could not be brought to any I j 'allegiance that did not "feel*1 right to him. The corporate j jstate could never successfully argue with a truth of the heart. And so, most dangerous to the throne was this in- I dividualism of Luther, individualism which, in the words of Tawney, in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, "was not the greed of the plutocrat, eager to snatch from the weak- i ness of public authority an opportunity for personal gain." By contrast: It was the ingenuous enthusiasm of the anarchist, who hungers for a society in which order and fraternity will ^The Bondage of the Will. Trans. Henry Cole (Grand Rapids, 1931), P» 20. reign without ‘the tedious, stale, forbidding ways of custom, law and statute,* because they well up in all their native purity from the heart. (p. 81) Senry saw the danger, and so he retained the forms and as such of stabilizing and traditional Catholicism as he could Jpon Henry*s death Hugh Latimer was sent to the tower and Tohn Barnes to the stake. Cranmer had, by 1547, lest much of his influence, and anti—Pro testant legislation was be ing worked out in parliament* Even transuhstantiation was again being taught, though the name was omitted, and priests were required once more to be celibate. Elizabeth had the Catholic support cut out from under aer by the Papal Bull, Regnans in Excelsis. issued by Pius S T in 1570, which pronounced anathema on all Catholics who supported her claim to the throne. And we do command and charge all and every the noblemen, subjects* people, and others aforesaid that they presume not to obey her or her orders, mandates, and lawsf and those which shall do the contrary we do include them in the like sentence of anathema. . . .4 Even if she had wanted to be Catholic, she could not be. "fhat was to weaken her claim to legitimacy and the throne. For practical purposes she was therefore a Protestant of the variety best calculated to serve her material ends.'*'* And this variety was the model she impressed upon all English Protestantism, a pliant model which established ^Quoted in fanner, p. 146. Included in this edition are rather complete notes which place the Papal Bull with in the context of the age in an illustrative manner. Knappen, fudor Puritanism (Chicago, 1939), p* 168 what has been called ever since the Anglican Via Media* the unenthusiastic, rigorously self—protective* inhibited middle way. If it generated no great faith, at least it fostered the peace. Still, the loss of a stirring confes sion and a heroic reforming spirit gave the English Refor mation its blandness which has led critics to wonder if it really was a reformation. But of more importance here* the attitude of the middle of the way led apologists for the ehurch and the state (both were indissolubly linked) to skirt logic and principle and ideal in their effort to support at any cost the Establishment and to rest their ease always upon undifferentiated de facto power, This was as true of the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century as it was of the Elizabethan and the intervening years X) Z ' j the first two sections of this chapter will cover the | traditional Anglican apologetics, and the third will trace out the details of Coleridge*s growing concern with apolo getic© and his maturity into a conservative spokesman* ^odeled after Hooker, for the Establishment. I. AUTHORITARIANISMt THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY The displacement of one stabilizing tradition, Cathol icism, and the desperate yet partially unperceived need fer another to replace it constituted the peculiar condition of 104 sixteenth-century Anglicanism prior to the advent of the Ecclesiastical Polity of Richard Hooker. The authors of apologetics were all aware of the need to skirt Rome on the one hand and Geneva on the other. Returning from exile on I the continent as so many of them did, however, it was diffil cult for them to maintain equal distance from both danger ous poles. Some of the returning Marian exiles and some of those whom the exiles tutored upon their return home were apt to lean decidedly in favor of Calvinism when they came , | to frame the Anglican polity. So widespread, indeed, was the esteem with which England i held the teachings of Calvin that English Anglicanism was; normally, at one with Geneva on doctrine, and at serious i odds with Geneva only in respect to the rites and govern-1 ment of the church.® The rites and government were what concerned Elizabeth most, and these should not be underestimated, but we must note here that the first regulation of Anglican principles, the Thirty-Nine Articles, bore unmistakable traces of the \ I system of Calvin.? Elizabeth kept close watch on the rites, ^William P. Holden, Anti-Puritan Satire 1572-1642 (New Haven, 1954), p. 13. ^The Articles were apt to pick up many conflicting theologies during the years of their development. They were Lutheran and ten in number in 1536. Archbishop Cranmer in 1537 based upon them the Lutheran The Institution of a Christian Man called the Bishop^ Book which shaped the 1552 Forty-Five Articles; these became the Forty-Two Arti cles of 1553 which were revised in 1563 to become the Thir ty-Nine. In 1571 they were given a final revision and be came the Articles as we know them today. |but allowed the theology to take shape much as it would, i J"There is much in the Articles which, though it need not be i taken in a Calvinistic sense, may be taken in that sense,” writes E. J. Bickell in his A Theological Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Ghurch of England.** Following are some of the more striking illustrations of Bickell’s contention. The sixth Article, for instance, states: "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man. . ." (p. 125). This did away with the Catholic instituted priest hood. The ninth Article asserts in Calvinistic fashion that "man is very far gone from original righteousness. . ." (p. 171). Eleven contains a strong statement of the doctrine of the justification by faith, a doctrine which originated in Luther and which broke from all traditional ecclesiastical superintendence by stating that man saved himself without external aids when he came to realize the urgency of his own need for saving faith. The doctrine, at the same time, relieved the individual of the charge of working for salva tion since it rendered him helpless and a supplicant for mercy from God. Without this essentially undeserved mercy man would be condemned. We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit 8 Revised by H. J. Carpenter, 3rd ed. (London, 1955) p. 16. 106 of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings, (p. 199) Article twenty-nine calls for the congregation of the Elect, a Calvinistic body if ever there was one. nThe visi ble Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men. . .7 the Article begins (p. 229). And some of the intense dia lectic of Calvinism is obtruded into the thirty-third Arti cle which recalls the harsh operation "of Excommunicate Persons, how they are to be avoided" (p. 314). j In the main, the Articles were raised as a barrier i I \ against Calvinists and any who would "disturb the Church j with schism or the realm with sedition" (p. 17). Such was ! their effectiveness that the Puritans made concerted ef forts to remove them by parliamentary action in 1572 and 1604* Article twenty was written directly in refutation of Puritanism* s proposal for the dissolution of centralized i jecclesiastical power. Under the modest heading of "The 1 Church’s Authority in Doctrine" the Article set the Angli- i can line, beyond which no man could safely venture and hold his place. In addition, these separate Articles set about discrediting the theology of the Discipline: the second which proclaimed that Christ died for the sins of man and not, as Calvin had held, "only for the Elect"; the ninth which emphasized that man is "very far from original righteousness" and not completely depraved; the sixteenth which stated that man who had received the Holy Spirit "may 107 rise again” and not that he ”must rise again” as Calvin had it; and the seventeenth which stressed that we can have but a vague laiowledge of predestination. The remainder of the Articles represent the concerted effort of the Church of England to legislate for itself ecclesiastically and polit ically within the context of the reformation. They elevate the royal power: ”We give not to our princes the minister ing either of God’s Word, or of Sacraments. ...” Such is not a definitive power, but this is: ”They should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal. . ." (p. 420). And they stand to force dissentients to conform in the ex pression of faith. Solifidianism led inevitably to spiri tual levelling, but the faith that manifested itself in giving alms, performing good works, and obeying the rulers assured the tenure of the established rule. Thus Article Twelve demands an externalized faith, "a lively faith [that] may be as evidently known as a tree discovered by the fruit” (The Thirty-Nine Articles, p. 207). This faith was further inculcated by the homilies that were issued re gularly by the English rulers from the time of Edward VI. These homilies, like the Articles, promoted a religion of unmoving authoritarianism, a religion that stood only by means of a controlled dissemination of ideas. As in the Ar ticles, disobedience was equated with the most heinous sin, and obedience with the richest virtue. The homily ”Against 106 Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion” intoned: "With the breach of obedience, and breaking in of rebellion, all vices and miseries did withal break in, and overwhelm the world.”9 Reform was treated in this manner: "I»ewd remedies are far worse than any other maladies and disorders that can be in the body of a commonwealth" (p. 555)* Authoritarianism was exacted by controlling the press, by restricting the flow of ideas, and by an avowed use of physical repression in the case of the more disturbing in dividual spirits. However, the general peaee was secured without anything approaching a large-scale persecution. There was no need for it. In 1559 only one hundred and ninety-two out of a total ninety-four hundred clergymen re fused to take the Oath of Supremacy.10 This fitted in per fectly with the plans for the control of the country that issued from the Tudors. The throne desired a peaceful con trol, and this was their attainment through, first, a con trol of ideas and, second, through a carefully fostered well-directed nationalistic fervor. The fervor was stimu lated by the erection of the paragon Belphoebe, the vestal Elizabeth, and by a constant dinning of the praises of ^Printed in Homilies appointed to be read in Churches, ed. J. Griffiths (Oxford, 1859), pp. 550-51* l°Henry Norbert Birt, The Elizabethan Religious Settlement. A Study of Contemporary Documents (London, 1907), p. 121. mother church. The people from 1559 on were made to identi- j jfy themselves with the best interests of Elizabeth and of i her bishops. On the basis of such identification the au thority of Ghurch and State, controlled always by the ■ throne, rose beyond reach of any radical critics. Six teenth-century conservatism gained its character of author itarianism by turning for all prescripts to the ruler; whether the matter was secular or spiritual, the ruler was assumed to have a final grand authority. This complete i- dentification of the two authorities broke down in the sev enteenth century. In the eighteenth century the spiritual potency was again somewhat diminished, but later in the i polity of Coleridge it was partially restored. j Sketched in rough terms, authoritarian conservatism ; ♦ lassumed the organic formation of political life; society is! i ' |a total of complex parts without strong or weak points. The i totality gainsays possible division; there can be no class war, only rebellion, because the classes are but parts of some total much larger than themselves. The classes are to be differentiated, but they all share in one dependency up- i on the central authority of the Church with the State. So ciety regards reform as it regards rebellion; both work against the organic unity of society by attempting to shift i parts as though they were self-contained units. But there could be no alteration of relationships within the social organism; once the inner unity is disturbed, the organism becomes qualitatively different from what it had been be fore the change. It is always better to accept things as !they are, to preserve the organism, than to upset society by introducing modification which must prove fatal to the existing balance. Ultimately, this political attitude is optimistic since it plans for the future with the institu tions of the present. There is no threat of an insecure or an uncertain future. However, many of the adherents of this authoritarian system seemed to forget the positive aspects j and to urge an obedience to the Church and State that was blind, constrictive, and absolutely submissive. Sir John Cheke (1515-1557) is one sixteenth-century example of ob durate conservative. He, in company with Stephen Gardiner, j Thomas Starkey, and Edward Hall defended only the place andj l j the privilege of English rule; authority became the raison i I d*etre and not the mode. Gardiner*s A Lamentation In Which Is Shewed What Ruyne and destruction cometh of Seditious rebellyon (1537) stressed high tone as it indicted the low er classes. It farre passeth Goblers crafte to discusse, what lordes, what byshops, what counsaylours, what actes statutis and lawes are moste mete for a common welthe, and whose judgement shulde be best or worst, concernynge matters of relygion.11 Sir Thomas Smith advised against change as change in his De: Republioa Analorum (1583): ^Facsimile Edition ( London , 1537), Aiii. 11 1 Certaine it is that it is always a doubtfull and hasar- dous matter to meddle with the chaunging of the lawes and government, or to disobey the orders of the rule or gov ernment which a man doth finde alreadie established. i2 Archbishop Matthew Parker (1504-1575) preached conformity to the throne and to the church, and, according to Strype's biography, the great reason that made our Archbishop so earnest in urging conformity was, to keep up a veneration to law es tablished, and to maintain the authority of the Prince* Both which when neglected by the subject, nothing but tu mult and confusion would follow.13 This was the feature that tied the corporation together: the Church and the State, the magistrate and the cleric, all were holders of the might that could make the obedient man happy and could promise him heaven, or that could break l | jthe rebellious man and assure him of eternal torment. An |attack against the Church was an attack against the State; the rebel who thought he only struck at the State found he had to face also the wrath of the Church. It is in the light of this complete and satisfying partnership that we must read the defenses of the Establishment through the age of Hooker as well as the age of Coleridge. It is this part nership that gave government spokesmen from John Whitgift (1530-1604) to William Pitt the assurance that a sin l2Subtitled A Discourse on the Commonwealth of Eng land (Cambridge, 1906), p. 13 • ^^The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker The First Arch bishop of Canterbury In the Reign of Q.ueen Elizabeth (Ox ford, 1821), II, 424. 112 against any part of the corporation could rightly be pun ished by all members of the corporation. Whitgift knew that the Puritans could not defend against his charge of lay as well as ecclesiastical connivance: ’ ’ Your doings tend not only to contention, but to confusion; not only to disobedi ence towards the laws of the prince, but also to dangerous errors, yea, to the overthrow of religion. . • And they could not. Nor could radicals two hundred years later confute Pitt’s definition of the church ”as by law estab lished” as ”so essential a part of the constitution, that whatever endangered it, would necessarily affect the secu rity of the whole; and therefore that it ought to be guard ed with the most watchful jealousy. Such assured joint authority did not, unfortunately, bring out the spirit in the church nor the sense of fair play in the state. The establishment defended itself for two hundred and fifty years by repeating the same injunc tion: we are all in danger, the times threaten us. In the sixteenth century it was local unrest and sedition. It was pauperism that had to be suppressed lest it ignite the whole feverish and restless countryside. Tawney in the Agrarian Problem treated pauperism as a b^te noire of the age: ^Storks, ed. John Ayre (Cambridge, 1851), III, 489. •^Annual Register (1790), History of Europe, p. 75. Tiie special feature of sixteenth-century pauperism is j written large over all the documents of the period— in l Statutes, in Privy Council proceedings, in the records of Quarter Sessions. The new and terrible problem is the in crease of vagrancy. The sixteenth century lives in terror of the tramp, (p. 268) In the nineteenth century it was a fear of reform that imight introduce a French Revolution at home. I i Ordinarily the ruling classes might have been inclined to make some concessions to the liberals, with the hope of averting a popular uprising. But those in power had seen the Revolution start in France with the introduction of relatively mild political reforms, only to proceed to the most drastic and cruel measures. . . .Liberal opinion was stifled, and a powerful opposition to theories of politi-l cal reform became the basis of a new and inflexible con- j j servatism.16 I i ■ i jconservatism was lodged in the age of Coleridge in the samel kind of authoritarianism that had been the hallmark of the last years under Tudor rule. And in this later age, just as i in the earlier, the people maintained the climate of fear j |suitable to the sustenance of extreme authoritarianism. The! I ; Edinburgh Review in 1820 took note of "the strange passion 1 for political alarm that seems so deeply rooted in the people of this country, excited almost at the will of their rulers. . . . nl7 Charles Fox may have been genuinely dis tressed to hear of supposed nearing violence: "the asser tion is, that there exists at this moment an insurrection in this kingdom. An insurrection! Where is it? Where has ^ M a u r i c e j, Quinlan, Victorian Prelude. A History of ! English Manners 1700-1830 (New York, 1941), p. 68. j -17"Ihe Recent Alarms," 33:202, January 1820. it; reared its head? Grood God! an insurrection in Great Bri;- 18 I tain! M What he meant to imply was an insanity in the gen eral alarm over imagined threats and suppositious revolts* Hat many had a like clear sense of the speciousness of the j alarm* Robert Southey was sure destruction ringed the land i i about, all of it due to "the folly of a besotted faction, and the wickedness of a few individuals1 1 (life and Corres pondence* III, 335) ♦ Crane Brinton wrote in his English Political Thought: Englishmen of the time were certainly aware of that sense of crisis which is one of the signs of revolu tionary change* * * .To yield to the demands of men like Cobbetf seemed almost like yielding to Wat Tyler. (pp. 1T-12) It appeared that all were pledged to defend against "men of desperate fortunes" who were "glad to find an excuse for their approaching ruin, in the aggravated distresses of their nation. . * *"1^ Unthinking conservatives, and there were many, took this general fear and sense of alarm as a secure majority approval for any maneuvers, no matter how crass how un just, that could be plotted for the defense of the status quo. They thus proposed unmodified authoritarianism for a i populace that had outgrown obedience to such benighted j I t ^ Hansard*s Parliamentary Debates. XXX, 14. | IQ I ?Plain Thought of a Plain Man. Addressed to the Com-j mon Sense of the People of Great Britain: With a Pew Words* En Passant, to the Uncommon Sense of Mr. Erskine (London* 1 1797), p. 27. I government policy. Here began the conditions that were to lead Coleridge, when he did turn to the defense of the Church and the State, all the way back to the work of an Anglican theologian and political theorist who proposed I obedience to the Establishment on the premise of human rea-j ! son, not on the hope of widespread, generalized human fear. His turning will be better understood once we have briefly reviewed conventional conservative polity of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. II. AUTHORITARIANISM: EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES The government position during the time of Coleridge I I was advanced by the very developments in communication that! also aided the radical movement. The lower and middle i classes had brought themselves to a ready concurrence with radioal doctrine in the workingman*s papers; they were lit erate and they subscribed to publications that the various jorganizations indicated as being suitable to their reading needs and their political growth. Therefore, the government reasoned, bring them material favoring the government’s position and their newly acquired literateness would make them conservative supporters of Church and State. Through the eighteenth century the government tried the experiment j i with the reading public. They went in for publishing and 116 for sponsoring publication; they created a supported and private press. The amount of money spent on the Press by eighteenth- century ministers was not inconsiderable. The Committee of Secrecy appointed to inquire into the conduct of Sir Walpole in 1742 discovered that over 50,000£ of seeret- serviee money had been paid to pamphleteers and treasury newspapers during the last ten years of his administra tion.20 Aspinall further indicates that during the nineties the government annually spent 5000£. on its subsidized press (p. 68) . The plight of readers seeking objectivity in their newspapers was extreme; there were really no unfettered or uncommitted papers, Aspinall has asserted. During the last decades of the eighteenth century, when j newspapers were beginning to play an important part in ! politics, they were not independent and responsible or- ! gans of public opinion. • . .The great majority of Don- j don newspapers accepted subsidies either from the Gov ernment or from the opposition, and were tied in various other ways to the Party organizations, (p. v) i i Some government-subsidized papers were created to simply combat reform principles; these were The Patriot. The Re former* s Guide. The Searcher, and the Anti-Jacobin. Their ample piety ran along lines like this: We believe the Resources of the Country to be not only unexhausted, but abundantly flourishing. . • .The public spirit, the industry, and the good sense of the Inhabi tants of this wealthy, powerful, and Happy Kingdom will bring happiness to all.21 20A. Aspinall, Politics and the Press c. 1780-1850 (London, 1949), p. 67. 21The Anti-Jacobin. November 20, 1797. r "" ~ _ 1 1 7 i The December 30 number of the Ant 1-Jacobin mixed up the measure of prose with a snatch of verse* The import was J ! the same, however* ( Let France in savage accents sing j Her bloody Revolution; j We prise our Country, love our King, Adore our Constitution* • * • | . | The division of labor that channeled: some papers to I the task of refuting principles assigned others the res ponsibility of demolishing the characters of prominent re- i formers and radicals* Examples of these were the Anti—Cob-j | bett and W* H. Sbadgett*s Shadgett *s Weekly Review of Cob— bett* Wooler. Sherwin and other Democratical and Infidel Writers* We should note particularly the attempt to link i immorality and religious aberration with men whose poli tics were censurable* A man who disapproved of the State | must, undoubtedly, have plotted the destruction of the i j Church, and1 hence was an infidel* Workingmen who listened J to such fomenters of unrest and disobedience must lose their souls as they Jeopardized their political rights* Arthur Young, who headed the Board of Agriculture (estab lished in 1793) for three critical years, supposed that reclamation offered the way out of economic and religious tumult* Me too knew what came from resorting to "an ale- house kitchen to hear a newspaper read*" It was “atheism, deism, irreligion, and contempt of all duties, human and divine, whioh has pervaded the nation like a pestilence."22 jMisinformed as Young’s hopes were for an agricultural ren- j aissance (the Board of Agriculture was abolished in 1819 and free trade in the twenties cut England loose from the limitations of agrarian economy), they were as realistic, in eertain points, as the wishes for stability of Pitt, Burke, Canning, and Castlereagh. Conservatism of this pe riod was, like much of the radicalism, limited by its con- I cern with a reaction to specific abuses. Neither wing of j belief produced a policy of universal appeal. The radicals j and the conservatives were proud of their common sense; buti though common sense may clarify an atmosphere, it rarely discovers principles. There was little grasp of principle in one group’s shouts of outrage over the fact that it had i been slighted or duped by its fellows. There was little i I more in the response on the part of the government that held that the slighting or duping, if it was indeed going on, had been going on for so long that it would have been dangerous were it to cease. Such a reaction to direct ac cusation was typical of the traditionalists of the eight eenth and nineteenth centuries. It was supposedly empirical and rational, but it was neither. Edmund Burke, one of the great conservatives, was just as irrational in his way as 22An Enquiry Into the State of the Public Mind Amongst the Lower Glasses; And on the Means of Turning it to the Welfare of the State (London, 1798). p. 10. 119 William Cobbett, wlio proudly pointed out Jtiis own "inability to allow facts to influence bis judgment. . ." (Brinton, Nineteenth Century, p. 67), and who spent years drumming up interest in a return of the jolly pre-reformation days.23 Peter Munz, a most recent and perceptive commentator on | conservatism, has gone so far as to contrast Edmund Burke's attitude toward institutions with that of Richard Hooker in order to illustrate the emotional and irrational appeal that things established had for Burke. "Values and institu tions, to him, were not good because they could be justi fied by a rational and absolute principle, but because they had evolved historically."24 By contrast, "Hooker's histor ical sense was anything but irrational.' His understanding of law as something that has to be adjusted continuously to |varying circumstances is based on the purely rational re- |flexion of St. Thomas to that effect" (p. 196). And this, ! as we shall see, was embodied by Coleridge in his appraisal of law. Burke rejected abstraction, for abstraction held the eighteenth century in inactive bondage; he supplanted i 23a History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland Mew York, n.d.).offers this: "1 will now show not only that the people were better off, better fed and clad, before the 'Reformation* than they ever have been since, but that the nation was more populous, wealthy, powerful and free before than it ever has been since that event" (p. 374). 2^The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought (London, 1952), p. 196" . ' abstraction with facts, but with facts that held their greatest force for one predisposed to believe in them, and thus he too demonstrated the full authority of subjectivism i that held in thrall most of the thinkers of the early nine-| ! ] jteenth century. Basil Willey spoke of this thralldom: i i Burke belongs also to the 'romantic* reaction inasmuch as he rejects the abstract intellectualism into which the eighteenth century had evolved, and which in his time was being pushed to revolutionary conclusions. (Eighteenth Century Background, p. 244) However it is stated, Burke's fallacy was to believe most strongly in those principles that were found to have some warm association with some idea, notion, experience that t was felt to be "good." Theory by itself led nowhere, and Burke was hastening • • .with high disdain, Exploding upstart Theory, insists i Upon the allegiance to which men are born— *2* |He had written in his Reflections. as though supplying suit able text for Wordsworth, "old establishments are tried by their effects. If the people are happy, united, wealthy, i and powerful, we presume the rest."2^ With no more to go on, he assumed the inviolability of de facto power and establishments; he wanted to believe. If the cost in labor exceeds the value of payment, he urged, !then this need not imply a weakness in the existing system. 25william Wordsworth, The_Prelude, ed. Ernest de Se- lincourt, 2nd ed. (London, Book VII, 528-30. 2^W©rks. Bohn Library Edition (London-, 1855). XI» 460. 121] It is no one’s fault if some fail and some prosper. So long as all appears well-ordered, and all feels to the majority "right” or "good," then no one can or ought raise a voice 5 in wrath or protest. Rather, the unprosperous should lower theirs in prayer. ' Good order is the foundation of all good things. To be enabled to acquire, the people, without being servile, must be tractable and obedient. • . .They must labor to obtain what by labor can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportional to the endeavor, they must be taught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal justice. (II, 558) Like Bernard Mandeville, Burke supposed the necessary connection between individual selfishness and social pros perity because they were coeval. This gave a brutal edge I s to his empiricism. He stated in Thoughts and Details on j ( Scarcity that if a farmer worked his help to exhaustion and if the crop was the greater for it, all was in bal ance. "But, if the farmer is avaricious?— Why, so much the better. . . ."^7 This would insure greater profit to the laborers down the line, despite their momentary discomfort. And he exhibited much the same celerity with distressing facts when he turned to consider the gin-drinking problem. Gin, he admitted, "is not nutritive in any great degree. But if not food, it greatly alleviates the want of it" (p. 164) • He moved with similar dispatch to the annoyance of 2?The Writings and Speeches, ed. W. Willis and F*. Raffety (New York, 1901), I, 141. 12- 2 the growing poor class. "Patience, labor, sobriety, frugal ity, and religion should be recommended to them; all the rest is downright fraud" (p. 135). Burke, whatever his reputation for political theory, was unable to suppose a value in anything with which he was unfamiliar or for which he had no long-tenured sympathy. He favored institutions; God, love, order, home were all pre cious to him. But, to whom are these not valuable? A man may worship his God, protect his family, inculcate love, deify order, but if he builds an empiricism upon these merely so that they may prevail always despite real econom ic and social conditions, can his activity be termed philo- i sophical? This was substantially the activity of Burke and j i of many of his contemporaries. This conservative following, because it subscribed to the validity of the church and the I family bonds with all the other "civilizing" bonds as ! though such subscription gave proof of unique philosophical capacity, cut itself off from any real stabilizing princi ples, principles that might have given specific definition and enduring support to the conservative position. Instead, conservatism recalled the glories of the past so that the terrors of the present might be surmounted. There was a supposed inviolate continuity of comfortable controlling principles from Old Testament time, through the age of Al fred the Great, down to the expanding era of Pitt and Burke. The continuity simply had to continue on into the___ 122 future, and if repression or mute authoritarianism was necessary to insure this, they would be forthcoming. As Maurice Cohen has written on this: "Glorification of the past. . .cannot prevail unless cumulative human enter prises such as science be either suppressed or relegated to an inferior position in man’s scheme of values."2® Sim ilarly, the glorification denied the effort to discover underlying principles in conservatism, and the church and the state were defended solely on the basis of their de facto power. The Annual Register in 1819 reflected the con servative bias for existing things with the consequent animosity toward new, promised things when it said: Are we to live in entirely new times? Are we now to hold up to the world, that the constitution which we have hitherto venerated for its antiquity, and loved for the blessings it has conferred, is of no value? (History, p. 130) The best answer would have been that there were, indeed, values in things of tradition, but that the values had been forgotten by the very men who should have been aware of them; they had been forgotten by the spokesmen for the church and state. They were not rediscovered fully until Coleridge turned away from the false freedom that radical ism seemed to promise him and faced up to the task that no one else would attempt: the task of reluming conservative principles, rededicating the Establishment to the service 2^The Meaning of Human History (LaSalle, 111., 1947), p. 262. J ! " 124 < of tJie people. His was the unacknowledged work of informing whoever would listen and could understand why the Establish ment had to be supported, not simply what the Establishment could do to those who didn't support it. It was unacknowl- ed and, largely, lonely work since it was so generally mis conceived in its motive. III. COLERIDGE AS CONSERVATIVE Coleridge's signal opposition to the great Reform Bill of 1832 seems to have characterized him forever as a polit ical turncoat who, by denying the beauty of youth*s ideal and cosseting the.party in power, sought to make himself a place in society. He appeared, like Southey and Wordsworth, |to have repudiated all the heartfelt wishes for a society ; ! !of equal opportunity for all and to mitigate his honest i ! ! jcriticism of the corrupt state and the inept church. J. S. Mill was aware of the justification for Coleridge's stand against the bill, but his was a singular appreciation. He wrote in Dissertations and Discussions: He saw in it (as we may surmise) the dangers of a change amounting almost to a revolution, without any real tend ency to remove those defects in the machine, which alone j could justify a change so extensive. And that this is j nearly a true view of the matter, all parties seem to be now agreed.2* 2^Re-printed as Mill on Bentham and Coleridge with an Introduction by F. R. Leavis (London, 1950), p. 152. 125 Coleridge was so easily misconstrued in politics, by both, liberals and conservatives, because he expressed all ideas and principles in ideal terms. When the Establishment, I which was supposed to maintain the ideal relationship of citizen to ruler and to God, fell far below this, Coleridge felt bound to criticize. He did criticize, despite his af- i finity for the conservative wing. Mill was also aware of the conflict between this ideal of Coleridge and the fact of the weary conservatism of the Establishment. By setting in a clear light what a national church estab lishment ought to be, and what, by the very fact of its existence, it must be held to pretend to be, he has pronounced the severest satire upon what in fact it is. (p. 147) The time was suitable for satire of this sort. If the church of Hooker’s age was unduly predisposed to worldly politics, the church of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen turies was riven by a complex of foibles. S. C. Carpenter wrote in Church and People. "Place-hunting, nepotism, and non-residence were crying evils, and a decent, kind-hearted worldliness were the prevailing tone” (p. 21). The church bore no relationship to the people who were, in the main, to support it. F* J. Shirley wrote: "It may not be out of place to point out that the Church of England has had a definite 'upper middle-class1 character since the reforma tion” (p. 153). It was this that removed the interests of the authorities from those of the masses who were to be guided by authority. It was this that made it so easy for 126 the appeal of evangelism to strike at once a response in the English people* The founders of Methodism, according to Basil Williams: Appealed to the vast mass of their countrymen who had, most of them, either never been inside a church in their lives, or, if they had, were untouched by the formal ser vices they found there— the poor, the degraded, no less than the honest working folk, repelled by the cold, life less, and perfunctory ministrations of the beneficed clergy. The clergy, from Elizabeth’s time on, seemed at least in part in the employ of the landed or the aristocratic inter ests. For a time Walpole subsidized the more avaricious prelates. A bit of contemporary doggerel ran: ’ ’His crea tures they’re ’tis plain to s e e ,”31 and, as late as 1775, the influence of the Walpole system was still effective. "No man can now be made a bishop for his learning and * piety,” said Doctor Johnson, ”his only chance for promotion is his being connected with somebody who has parliamentary interest.During the late eighteenth century the abuse of plural holdings grew so that it rivaled the habit of Elizabethan divines to fill out their incomes with as many perquisites as they could conveniently manage. This was an i 3QThe Whig Supremacy 1714-1760 (Oxford, 1939), pp. ! 96-97. ! ^1 Quoted in Norman Sykes, Church and State in England in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1934), p. 51. 32James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson. II (London, 1791), 261. 127 ugly heritage from medieval practices, and its "frequent recurrence in the Elizabethan Church was a disturbing fact, because it opened the way to Puritan attacks on the person nel of the Settlement."53 in the same way and to the same degree, plural holdings that brought in enormous sums of money were constantly attacked by the radicals. Wade's Black Book delightedly chronicled the proficient misdeeds ot the Sparke family which, under the benign protection of Bishop Sparke of Ely, derived an annual income of 40,0001. per annum. Besides the abuse of plural holdings there was the evil of non-residence. At the time that Coleridge first considered turning to the defense of the conservative way, twenty-four per cent of the benefices in England and Wales were exempt from the obligation of residence, and eighty- two per cent of the clergy that held these claimed the ex emption.^ Halevy places the rate somewhat higher, stating that out of eleven thousand livings in the church, six thousand were held by non-resident incumbents.55 clerics 53nbert N. S. Thompson, "Richard Hooker Among the Con troversialists," in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hardin Craig, ed. Baldwin Maxwell, W. D. Briggs, Francis R. John- son, Elbert N. S. Thompson (Palo Alto, 1941)> p. 40. 54q, k . Francis Brown, A History of the English Clergy 1800-1900 (London, 1953), P* 1'5* " ' ' 35a History of the English People, trans. E. I. Walker (New York, 1921), p. 349* Carpenter, p. 27, says "of the country clergy large numbers were non-resident— in 1812 nearly three-fifths of their total number." 128 who held several livings and never visited any of them wer responsible for the drift of the people from Anglicanism t dissent* They were never in their churches to administer the sacraments, to meet the parishioners, to prevent the dissolution of one more bond between the lower classes and the Establishment. "In most parts of the country I believe a sacrament is never heard of between Easter and Christ mas, " wrote Spencer Fercival in the British Review in 1811.^^ In place of parish duties, the pastors spent their time with the lesser aristocracy, the land-holding gentle- ■zn men. "fhe average clergyman was a squire in holy orders."' there were, of course, many exceptions, but the fact re mained that non-residence, pluralism, and secularism weak ened! the spiritual fibre of the Anglican clergy. For was there any profound influence of theology on many of the clergy. "England was probably the sole country in Christen dom, " wrote Halevy, "where no proof of theological knowl edge was exacted from candidates for ordination" (p. 342). fhe only real proof demanded for admission to the clergy was a proof of the rightness of one*s intentions. Theology stultified most clergymen, and spiritually embar rassed them, fhe church was defended against the radicals ^In a review of "The State of the Established Church, 2:100, September 1811. ^Herbert L. Stewart, "The Place of Coleridge in Eng lish Theology," Harvard Theological Review. 11:10, January 1918. t i ias the state was: it was an existing authority and thus had I I jto be obeyed. Coleridge dissented from this method of se- | I icuring the continuance of authority; from the beginning to I Jthe end of his career he opposed arbitrary enforcement of ! i loyalty as patently unreasonable. Through his career he treated authority with unchanging regard if it was self- justifying authority., He was always something of an author itarian, tending always toward the regular, the substan tial, the conservative. And it is a mistake to regard him as a defender of Church and State who was suddenly privi leged to see the errors of his radical youth with the be- I ginning of 1798 and who then spent the rest of his life J combating his earlier sympathies. As Lawrence Hanson has warned: "It is necessary when considering the life of Cole ridge constantly to be on the alert against the dominance of outward incident” (p. 63)• Beneath his protests against Hair Powder Taxes and the expulsion of a William Frend i j {there ran an expressed need for a principle, a stable point,, that never altered from youth to old age. The putative break with radical sympathies, with dissent, with Franco phile sentiment that was published in April 16, 1798, in "France: An Ode" was but another occurrence in the progress :toward the final enunciation of his mature political philo- ! Isophy. Even when he flushed with the news of liberty and t {fraternity on the continent, he was building toward the fina1_break_ witha11 that the momentous developments in___ prance signalled for English radicals. Coleridge was an idealistic conservative who stood alone until he discovered i jin Richard Hooker a kindred spirit, a mind at once spiri tually stable and politically adept. Before he responded to ! Hooker’s ecclesiastical polity, he marked out a course which, due to its erratic unconcern with programs and par ties, brought him into opposition against all groups. Once he modified his approach in response to the organization of principles that he found in Hooker, he moved readily toward the production of his own polity. However, he had never been far from ethical considerations, never far from the imponderables of obligation and insecurity which colored his life from youth and helped to pattern his thinking in maturity. And when we reconsider the early years of his life, it appears that the stability he was to find in the fixed authority of an ideal church and state (motivated al- i | Iways by a conservative genius) contrasted intentionally I | with the tumult and the shifting allegiances of personal i life. Coleridge was continually responding with a mixture of sensitivity and theatrics to the travails of his youth, and jmuch of the evidence we have covering this period is in the form of documents most apt to be colored by this response. The early life of the author is chronicled in personal let- i jters and in statements made in later life; yet no one has I claimed for the youth of Coleridge a stable condition o f__ r ' " ~ ” ■ ■ ” ' 131 i i jnormal incident and patterned response. He was a favorite iof his mother, but f f | j | his mother’s spoiling excited the jealousy of his immedi- ! ate senior, Frank, and his nurse, who lavished affection j on her favorite, reserved for him all the sweetest tid- ! bits while Sam received scoldings and slappings. . . .He I was habitually bullied and, when momentarily in favor, laughed at with contemptuous condescension.38 He reacted to this by running away from home and spending the night on the banks of the river Otter. The result of ;this was a chill that precipitated a physical malaise that i ! jwas to plague him the remainder of his life. ’ ’The effects i I of that night were never completely to leave him,” writes j iHanson (p. 15)* The impermanence of extreme youth seemingly made way for the fickleness of pre-adolescence, and he was ill-pre pared to objectify his experience. He had never from childhood seen objectively, with a , clear, hard sense of outline. Always to his tender ab- | stracted gaze the world was fluctuant, always the object ! ! expressed more than itself. The consequence was a naturalj preference for the fantastic, in adolescence, a hunger for the ideal.39 At nine he was sent off to school, but before entering jHereford in 1782 he had a chance to hope for something of imore permanence among his relatives. An uncle, John Bowden, 1 i i !treated him to a few weeks of uninhibited pleasure of i i I I j 38&[alcolm Elwin, The First Romantics (New York, 194. 8), Ip. 57. j 39nugh L’Anson Fausset, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Lon don, 1926), p. 30 Jtavern-visiting. He became tiie darling of groups of his eld- I !ers who admired him for his amazing proficiency as a talker; ! I ' ! jbut he was finally dropped from such a favored and singular-* > i ly gratifying situation to the level of discipline and re- | jection in Christ’s Hospital. As Crabb Robinson reported the events: Buller £Sir Francis (1746-1800) educated at Ottery and lived there with the Coleridge family] placed him in the Blue-Coat school* The family, being proud, thought them selves disgraced by this. His brothers would not let him visit in the school dress and he would not go in any other. The judge (Bir Francis Buller] . . .invited him to his house to dine every Sunday. One day, however, there was company, and the blue-coat boy was sent to a second table. He was then only nine years old, but he would nev er go to the house again. Thus he lost his only friend in London; and having no one to care for him or show him kindness, he passed away his childhood wretchedly. But he says he was thus led to become a good scholar, for, that he might forget his misery, he had his book always in his hand. (I, 205) At this formative time he seized upon two permanencies that were to be ultimately shaped into his final political system. The first came from the awareness of his intellec tual superiority; bookish hours of seclusion, a delight with the arcane, had urged his mind on beyond the minds of his game-playing contemporaries. ! Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee— the dark pillar not yet turned— Samuel Taylor Cole-! ridge— Logician, Metaphysician, Bard. How have I seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, en tranced with admiration. . .while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity boy.^Q i ^°Charles Lamb, "Christ’s Hospital Five-and-Thirty LYear.s_Ago ._"__Complete_Works_and__Lettsrs_J Modera__Library ),___ 133 Lamb preserved this observation of the remarksbly-talented youth, but he was not alone in marking Coleridge*s unique- jness; a stranger gave him access to a Cheapside circulating i jlibrary; Thomas Middleton marveled at his potential when he j jwas discovered reading Virgil for pleasure; Boyer the head master, who is remembered most for his bullying, was also quick to note his distinction. Coleridge did not remain un aware of his own power: in talent there was an undeniable aid to permanence, a help to stability and a potential for action. He characterized the self-awareness of an unusually talented individual: As individual to individual, from my childhood, I do not remember feeling myself either superior or inferior to any human being; except by an act of my own will in cases of real or imagined moral or intellectual superiority. (Allsop, p. 170) Such superiority was the first permanent ground he attain ed. | The second was externalized by contrast with the j 1 first. He wrote Allsop: In regard to worldly rank, from eight years old to nine teen, I was habituated, nay, naturalized, to look up to men circumstanced as you are, as my superiors— a large number of our governors, and almost all of those whom we | regarded as greater men still, and whom we saw most of, viz. our committee governors, were such. (p. 170) ;Though he had no wealth, wealth by association offered I i jsomething of quality, and quality always serves as a stable mark: ! I distinctly remember that I felt a little flush of pride i and consequence— just like what we used to feel at school j when the boys came running to us— 'Coleridge here's your j friends want you— they are quite grand,' or 'It is quite | a lady'— when I first heard who you were, and laughed at J myself for it with that pleasurable sensation that, spite ! of my sufferings at that school, still accompany any i sudden re-awakening of our school-boy feelings and i notions, (p. 170) s The generalization that wealth brings quality and substance, each fortified with stability, was modified and sophisti cated and made part of his final thought. Both of these permanent bases were fitted into his polity, and both offer striking proof of the force of his early predispositions. i 'One might say that the polity of his maturity was the re sult of a steady accretion of consistent prejudices. The permanence of the Church and State was but an elaboration of the permanence that he began to establish in his own life when he favored the superiority of intellect and wealth; it was merely more absolute and more gracious. Lewis Patton marked the unswerving development of Cole- ! i ridge's conservative strain when he wrote, "there was no sudden Pauline conversion. . .the conquering forces were i cumulative."^1 The high regard for intellect and for wealth| was constant in him and formed a rigid line to maintain his! ideas in their propinquity to the right. The objective mer it of his repudiation in the Biographia of the furor of his early days may be gauged by comparing some of his early ^"Coleridge and Revolutionary Prance," South Atlantic quarterly. 31:330. July 1932._______________________________ 134 words with his later valuations of them. He wrote of the Goneionea in 1817? In the rifacciamenta of THE PRIEHD, I have inserted ex tracts from the Goneiones ad Fopulum, printed, though scarcely published, in the year 1785, in the very heat and height of my antiministerial enthusiasms these in “ ■ * ■ ’ t my principles of politics have sustained no And turning to his early work, we do indeed find a consis tent appeal to the very truths and axioms that were so popular with him in his post-1800 productions. The Coneionea was marked by Coleridge*s discrimina tion against mere unlettered multitudes; he was this soon selecting his audience, and it did not include the segment commonly addressed by Paine and similar authors. In the disclosure of opinion, it is our duty to consider the character of those, to whom we address ourselves, their situations, and probable degree of knowledge. We should be bold in the avowal of political truth among those only whose minds are susceptible of learning? and never to the multitude, who Ignorant and needy must nec essarily act from the impulse of inflamed passions. The message that he preferred the lower classes was also critically different from the one found in the Rights of Man, Coleridge did not offer unlimited rights to all men even this early in his political life. He offered, in stead, duties, and this was precisely his line twenty years later. He wrote in the Conoiones? £2 II, 180. Perhaps the term "repudiation** suggests more of a turn to conservatism in his later thought than was true. Since the conservative bias was always his, we might better understand "re-evaluation1 ' as applying to his activities in the Biographia.________________________ (pp, 26-27) 135 He would appear to me to have adapted the best as well as the most benevolent mode of diffusing truth, who uniting the zeal of the methodist with the views of the philoso pher, should be personally among the poor, and teach them their duties in order that he may render them susceptible of their rights. (p* 26) The means that he chose to inculcate such a lesson was the one he was to apply repeatedly; it was religion. By what means can the lower classes be made to learn their duties, and urged to practice them?. . .In that barbarous tumult of inimical interests, which the present state of society exhibits, religion appears to offer the only means universally efficient, {p. 26) Some may find it startling to discover Coleridge this early repudiating the whole French movement for human equality. In the Conoiones Coleridge was quick to point out that the French had caused the war, and though the English had contributed to the evil effect, the French bore the onus for "their massacres and blasphemies, all their crimes • , ." (p. 63)* Unlike the youthful Mackintosh, he feared the possibilities of revolution. The prime value of "dough- baked Patriots." he claimed, was that by vacillating in their attacks upon the administration they "retard the day of Revolution" (p. 15). And in this work he-marked himself already as one in opposition to the democrats, to any who proposed a massive social readjustment. The oppositionists to fthings as they are,* are divided into many and different classes. To delineate them with an unflattering accuracy may be a delicate, but it is a necessary task, in order that we may enlighten, or at least beware of the misguided men who have enlisted under the banners of liberty, from no principles or with bad ones. . . .The majority of democrats appear to me to have attained that portion of knowledge in politics, which in- I fidels possess in religion, (pp. 13-14) I 'Three months earlier he had written his brother George pro testing his innocence of all democratic sympathies; the I j conoiones would appear to lend authority to his protest I 'since he published his convictions. ( Solemnly, my BrotherI I tell you--I am not a Democrat. I see evidently, that the present is not the highest state of Society, of which we are capable. . . .But how to lead Mankind from one point to the other is a process of such infinite Complexity, that in deep-felt humility I resign it to that Being--*Who shaketh the Earth out of her place I and the pillars thereof trample!. . .Who hath said— that | Violence shall no more be heard of.*. . .(Col. Letters. I, 126) More than reform and more than human equality, Cole ridge desired stability. This was deducible only from a fixed body of principles. Thus we find him calling in the Conciones for an ideal procedure, a perfect method of ac tion against the atomism of contentious political parties. If we hope to instruct others, we should familiarize our own minds to some fixed and determinate principles of ac-l tion. The World is a vast labyrinth, in which almost ev- j ery one is running a different way, and almost every one i manifesting hatred to those who do not run the same way. (pp. 28-29) !This expressed hope for principle appears throughout all i his writings, and with it there is considerable evidence of Coleridge*s tendency to discover the principle in religion, even when he most directly questioned the efficacy of the I ] 'national church. In March of 1794 he wrote George that he I | jhad been forced by his feeling of humanity and the charm of i ( truth * ’to admire the beauty of Holiness in the Gospel** and 137 to love the example of the life of Jesus (Col. Letters, I, 78). Early in 1795 he was lecturing on thetnexus between ethics as developed by Christianity and politics. The title of one of the theological lectures that he gave was, "The grand political Views of Christianity— far beyond other Re ligions, and even sects of Philosophy. The Friend of Civil Freedom. The probable state of Society and Governements, if all men were Christians.By November of the next year he had slipped away from a concern with lay politics and was now busying himself with politics as they were shaped by, or as they shaped religion. He wrote Benjamin Flower, the publisher of his early Fall of Robespierre, that the second edition of his Poems on Various Subjects (which was issued under the title of Poems in 1797) would "leave out with some other things all the political allusions except those which occur in the Religious Musings. . ." (Col. Letters. I, 247). The same month he wrote Thelwall: "I am daily more and more a religionist. * ." (Col. Letters. I, 253). Another later letter to Thelwall is interesting for the evidence it gives of his positive yearning for some uni versal principle by which he could govern his thought and his life. In 1797 he wrote: I can at times feel strongly the beauties, you describe, k^See Joseph Cottle, Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey (London. 184^)» P . 19. r --------------- 138 I i j ! j in themselves, & for themselves— but more frequently all ! things appear little— all the knowledge, that can be ac- | quired, child's play— the universe itself— what but an ; immense heap of little things?— I can contemplate nothing | but parts, & parts are all little— i— My mind feels as if j it ached to hold & know something great— something one & s indivisible* . . .(Col. Letters. I, 349) •Moreover, he was sensitive to the truth that his age was !singularly unaffected by principles; it was moved more to t the statement of rights or, by contrast, of hereditary privileges. Neither was sufficient to bring stability in a |tumultuous time. ! ! The purifying alchemy of education may transmute the fierceness of an ignorant man into virtuous energy— but what remedy shall we apply to him, whom plenty has not softened, whom knowledge has not taught benevolence? This is one among the many fatal effects which result from the; want of fixed principles.44 Religion was based upon such principles, but religion as it was represented by the Establishment hardly emphasized these principles. It appeared to favor the worldly corrup tions of pluralism, political enterprise, and acquisitive ness. Theology and ethics were more artifacts of medieval- j ism than applied sciences. The apologetics of the age dis covered no latent principles in Christianity which might bear on contemporary problems. They were instead construct ed with a view to propping the state religion in exactly the position that it had maintained during recent decades. j This put a rather thick skin over the sensibilities of all ^ Essays on His Own Times Forming a Second Series of The Friend, ed. by his daughter fsaral (London, 1^50), I, 1.14—i 5» :_____________________________ ___________.____________________ the clergymen who might have been tempted on their own to !make some contact with the masses of people who supported ! the church. The church stood as it had always stood, and j the people were to obey as they had always obeyed. This I [species of authoritarianism read into economic distress a [positive evil propensity. Church people who prospered were t I examples of the rewards of virtue. Church people who failed or suffered through the dim years of the war and the post- j •war recession were made to illustrate the homily on reaping| and sowing. John Hay’s Thoughts on the Peculiarities of the Present War (1800) was direct enough with the poor: ’ ’Whilst we pray for their happiness, and unite in their relief, let us endeavour to convince them that it is their sins that withhold good things from them.”45 Christianity, according to William Wilberforce, instructs the poor: In their turn to be diligent, humble, patient; reminding them that their more lowly path has been allotted to them by the hand of God. . . .Also, that in this view the poor have the advantage, and that if their superiors enjoy more abundant comforts, they are likewise exposed to many temptations from whioh the inferior classes are happily ' exempted. . . .4o j l Hannah More's Village Politics was another example of the j age’s efforts to defend Church and State, meanwhile pulling both down to the level of the meanest self-interest and I ^Printed in Bristol, p. 31. Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed 'Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes Contrasted with Real Christianity (New York, n. d.). p. 310.___ _____________________ ___ . ________________________ fear for self-preservation. TMs particular tract, part of the extensive Cheap Repository tracts, defined philosophy for the common people as the belief that "there’s neither God, nor devil, nor heaven, nor hell."47 Authority was best ! served, warned the authoress, when subjects "study to be quiet, work with their own hands, and mind their own business" (p. 24) Such teachings hardly enriched the conservative arcana or satisfied Coleridge’s expressed desire to see religion and politics based upon principle. For twenty years people had been waiting, waiting for the end of war, for good har vests, for a re-alignment of power. And there had been a stagnation in the Anglican Church. J. S. Mill’s two basic questions in his essay on the utility of religion pointed up just how far the church had plunged toward bankruptcy: "What does religion do for society, and what for the indi vidual?" and "What amount of benefit to social interests, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, arises from religious belief?"^® The fact that the church or that religion was expected to answer these was proof of the moribundity of the religious structure in England. The authority of the church was accepted by the men ^ Village Politics Addressed to All the Mechanics. Journeymen, and Day Labourers In Great Britain. By Will Chip, A Country Carpenter (London, 1792), p. 20. 48Three Essays on Religion (London, 1874)* p. 48. 141 and the women who wrote in defense of the church as one accepts any bequest: with relief, unquestioning faith in the value of the thing received, and with gratification. The theologians who came between Hooker and Coleridge were not, as Vernon Starr pointed out, men built on the lines of the first Anglicans. They were not theologians on a large scale, constructing systems which have an abiding place in the history of Christian doctrine. That was not their object. They had inherited a well-tried creed which satisfied them, and they were thus to defend it from attack.49 The church may have been corrupt, but it was real; it had existence and a tradition that was palpable and could never be urged or argued away. Never mind the weakness, wrote Mrs. Barbauld: If the established religion, in any country, is absurd and superstitious in the eyes of thinking men, so long as it is the religion of the generality, it ought to pre vail. and the minority should not even wish to supplant it.50 When he pondered the tone and aptitude of such apologetics, Coleridge was moved to write in a Letter to Tom Poole: "There is a dearth of Wisdom still heavier than that of Corn. . ." (Col. Letters. I, 719). And in his Lay Sermons • in 1816 he again noted, "neither philosophy or theology in 49Th.e Development of English Theology in the Nine teenth Century 18OQ-I86Q (London. 1913). P« 5Qsins of Government. Sins of the Nation. A Discourse for the Past;. Appointed on April 19. 1793. 4th ed. (London, 1793), P. 14. the strictest sense of the words, can be said to have even |a public existence among u s . "51 The defense of Anglicanism that he proposed was worlds apart from this usual patchwork affair of cajolery and ha bitual admonishment. It was a defense which extended the full democratic implications of Christianity to all believ ers rather than underscoring the hieratical character of jtraditional Anglicanism. He wrote Thelwall in 1796, after he had repudiated whatever had been his early r a d i c a l i s m ,52 that Christianity "is a religion for Democrats. It certain ly teaches in the most explicit terms the rights of Man, his right to Wisdom, his right to an equal share in all the |blessings of nature. . ." (Col. Letters. I, 282). This was not a levelling Christianity, it was a Christianity which was fully responsive to the individual differences in men. Men may be equal, not in terms of physical holdings, but in terms of intellectual endowment. This is the right granted by religion, the right to talent which social place can not wear down or preempt. This was one of the leading motives of Pantisocracy: the group would be led by the men best qualified to lead; the qualification was internal, not ex ternal. In other words, intellectual superiority was to be 5^Lay Sermons, ed. Derwent Coleridge, 3rd ed. (London, 1832), p. 192. 52See the letters to Tom Poole (December 12, 1796), | Benjamin Flower (December 11, 1796), and Charles Lloyd, LSenior (October 15, 1796). _________ the way in which, men could stabilize their place among otherj men; this was the way that Coleridge had found stability. | i i Joseph Cottle reported: He said that, naturally, he was very arrogant; that it was his easily besetting sin; a state of mind which he said, he ascribed to the severe subjection to which he had been exposed, till he was fourteen years of age, and from which, his own consciousness of superiority made him revolt, (p. 76) jHis defense of Anglicanism was, as one might expect, an ex tension of principles, rather than a day by day affair of appeal for obedience. It rejected partisan politics, cleav ing to a strict conservative line only when conservatism jitself rose above mere particulars of power strife and ap- 1 |proached what we might call the sphere of ideal politics, I * politics for the sake of the country and the people, not for the sake of the control of the country. He wrote his brother George in March of 1798: I wish to be a good man and a Christian— but I am no Whig, no Reformist, no Republican— and because of the multitude of these fiery & undisciplined spirits that lie in wait against the public Quiet under these titles, be cause of them I chiefly accuse the present ministers— to whose folly I attribute, in great measure, the in creased & increasing numbers. (Col. Letters. I, 397) And, in line with this, he never made his peace with Pitt, who in Coleridge’s youth symbolized corruption and dark machination. He derived much from Kant in his philosophy, but he was able to go beyond Kant in effecting a worthwhile and reasonable reconciliation of his philosophy with religion. 144 This was attributable to his native Anglican tradition with its stress on vitality rather than on gelid idea, the lat ter being a significant feature of the German tradition of the eighteenth century. As D. G. James noted: In the philosophy of Coleridge the autonomy of the ethi cal occurs through the action of the Divine Reason on the creaturely and animal. Coleridge attempts no uneasy com promise between the ethical and the religious as did Kant. With him it is the energies and initiative of God which are primary, not, as with Kant, an autonomous moral consciousness. And at this point Coleridge linked his thought to Christian theology, seeing in the reason, in the conscience of mankind, the activity of the eternal logos, (p. 188) His defense of Anglicanism was, then, ethical rather than opportunistic: the church was necessary not because it withheld the barbarians who would foment rebellion but be cause it was a necessary eternalization of common human ex perience. It was idealistic rather than expedient. And it was anti-materialistic, for the materialistic philosophy to which Coleridge briefly subscribed did not offer support to such an entity as the conscience of man. When we look past these earlier years of Coleridge to the first years of the nineteenth century we can trace out his unyielding rejec tion of all materialists and of the materialistic psycholo gy of association. In 1801 he wrote Southey: I mean to set the poor old German on his feet again; and in order to wake him out of his present lethargy, I am burning Locke, Hume and Hobbes under his nose. They stink worse than feathers or assafoetida. (Letters. I, 358) 145 Thirteen years later he asserted, ’ ’ association in philoso phy is like the term stimulus in medicine; explaining everything, it explains nothing; and above all, leaves it self u n e x p l a i n e d .”53 His criticism of materialism was classically British; he repeated Bishop Berkeley’s abjura tion of the substratum as blind, "an inert, senseless sub stance. ”54 When such a substance was made the basis of all reality, it rendered that reality senseless; man, placed in the materialist’s world, became powerless, a prey to blind chance. Life as Hobbes had envisioned it was a progression of predetermined and otiose incidents. Nature, the art whereby God hath made and governs the world is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the be ginning whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say, that all automata (engines that move them selves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings, and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the artificer?” Hobbesian man repelled the idealist, but he admirably suited the needs of the psychology of association. Hobbes had exalted the machinery of perception; he had placed the 53Miscellanies. Aesthetic and Literary, collected and arranged by T. Ashe (London, 1911), p. 54prinoipies of Human Knowledge in Scribner’s Selec tions. ed. Mary Whiton Calkins (NewYork, 1929), p. 129* 55isngiiah Works, ed. Sir William Molesworth (London, 1839), HI, i'x. knowledge of God beyond the reach of human reason, and he had undermined the human will. Hartley, when he accepted i the mechanical theory of perception, accepted all of mate- J rialism. Therefore, when Coleridge attacked materialism, he j was forced to attack Hartley. Coleridge was a fervent advo-j i cate of the freedom, of the will; Hartleyan psychology pa tently denied any freedom in the will. Coleridge character ized the Hartleyan point of view in the Biographia some years after his break with associationismi Conceive, for instance, a broad stream, winding through a mountainous country with an indefinite number of cur rents, varying and running into each other according as j the gusts chance to blow from the opening of the moun- j tains. The temporary union of several currents in one, , so as to form the main current of the moment would pre- ! sent an accurate image of Hartley*s theory of the will. Had this been really the case the consequence would have been, that our whole life would be divided between the despotism of outward impressions, and that of senseless and passive memory. (I, 76) There would be nothing in such an epistemological frame work on which to base an ethic, and we must remember that 9 j with Coleridge ethical considerations supersede all others. The morality or immorality of a machine was hardly a valid philosophical consideration. It is interesting that the radicals in both the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries in sisted on treating it as though it were. The Calvinists es tablished man in a deterministic world; he was a flawed mechanism functioning by a set plan. The naturalism of God win, the epicureanism of Bentham restricted the orbit of free choice in the individual as severely. These were J47 followed by the host of early nineteenth-century radicals who called for reform to modify man's character. If an ex tension of the franchise made better men, then it could be argued that an increase or a decrease of morality was an effect of political liberty and, ultimately, of how a man voted and whether his chosen candidates were successful in their parliamentary c a r e e r s .56 This would have the effect of rendering absolute moral standards useless; absolute ethics would become split from the details and the prac tices of everyday life. This was what Charles Trinkhaus termed the "cultural problem” of the sixteenth century, and as we can see, it reoccurred in the nineteenth century. Stated in its broadest terms, the cultural problem of the Renaissance and Reformation, with which the question of free will was directly concerned, was the fact and the consequences of a divorce between ethics and economics, between the moral and the expedient, between the spirit ual and the material.57 The romantic movement might be viewed as basically a con scious rejection of such a worried split; most certainly it was such a rejection that inaugurated Coleridge's con servative system. In 1794 in the "Religious Musings" he had 56The Political Justice (IV, 8) held: "First then it appears, that, in the emphatical and refined sense in which the word has sometimes been used, there is no such thing as action. Man is in no case, strictly speaking, the beginner of any event or series of events that takes place in the universe, but only the vehicle through which certain ante cedents operate. . . . ” 57»»The Problem of Free Will in the Renaissance and the Reformation,” Journal of the History of Ideas. 10:51> January 1949* 148'" called: Return pure Faithl return meek Pietyl The kingdoms of the world are your’s. . . . (Poems, I, 121) In his Notes on the English Divines he said, I am persuaded that to the full triumph of science, it will be necessary that nature should be commanded more spiritually than hitherto, that is, more directly in the power of the will* (pp. 121-22) The rationalistic philosophy of the eighteenth century did not develop such a spirituality; after scepticism had splintered reality into as many bits as there were perceiv ing minds, spirituality was no more than an admission of a fondness for fantasy. Christianity with its primal support by faith seemed nothing more than a fanciful method for bringing order back into the universe. Shaftesbury's The Moralists. A Philosophical Rhapsody (1709) was typical in its deprecation of the Christian mystical revealed aura. How wonderful a thing is the Love of wondering, and of raising wonderI 'Tis the delight Of Children to hear tales they Shiver at, and the Vice of Old Age to abound in strange Stories of Times p a s t .58 Faith alone could not philosophically prove its own exist ence, and Coleridge, attempting to prove the efficacy of faith, did not simply postulate an undeniable faith and then build a theology upon it to prove its ability to bear weight. He constructed a metaphysics that carried with it a justification for faith; he made no radical departure 58(London), p. 139* 149 from the traditional way; he recalled tradition as it; oper ated on spiritual life and thus was, as Mill put it* a "great awakener." Mill wrotet "He has "been the great awak- ener in this country of the spirit of philosophy, within the hounds of traditional opinions" (p. 99)* The most sig nificant opinion that he rekindled for his age was that of Hichard Hooker. The polity of the church of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was directed, with all It© bal last of eommon sense, to convince the convinced or t© frighten the recalcitrant. It was absolutely impotent to work any effect on the pious yet critical people, and this troubled the perceptive men of the age. In the August 1799 number of the Gent1eman *s Magazine there was a specific turn from the Idea-bare aspect of contemporary theology to a proposal that the works of Hooker he re-edited as a sanative for the age, as something to restore the health and spirituality of the Church of England; through the lof ty religiosity of Hooker’s ideas (p. 683). Coleridge was not singular in his advocacy of Hooker’s work, for Hooker came to enjoy the status of a symbol of pure Anglicanism. When Sir William Scott began defense of his bill to curb clerical non-residence by pointing out that parsons should remain in their rural parishes, and that they would not be debased by the rural occupations, he noted that they could rest content, in their duties for they would be following "the example of the illustrious Hooker tending his sheep on Barnham Downs" (Hansard, XXXVI, 477)* When a quarrel arose over the final degree of Baptis mal Regeneration, the mediator was suggested by the ques- i tion in the Gentleman's Magazine for August of 1816: "What does Hooker, the best interpreter of the Church of Eng land's meanings say on this subject?" (p. 128). And the January 1818 number of the Gentleman's Magazine reviewed j Richard Watson's Life and summed up the tone of the life by| remarking, "the Bishop continually puts forth his services to the Church and the causes of Religion. . . .But the im mortal Hooker, with whom the Bishop, in moments of the most i elevated vanity could scarcely put himself in competition, i died a Country Re ctdr— humble, peaceful, and contented" (p. 42). | ! Hooker gained in currency among thinking men who wish ed to preserve the Establishment, and who realized that preservation was possible only if the union of Church and State were defended with philosophy and not with common sense. Hooker had produced a polity of universal applica bility because he had grounded it on philosophical princi ples, and had not merely stretched out a sense of fright and reaction to attack so that he could operate and meet a single contingency. He wrote during a time of great dis tress, but his work, "the product of the crisis, since the author's mind was touched with genius, rose high_above the T51 particularities of the occasion."59 c, S. Lewis concurs in this appraisal: "The Polity marks a revolution in the art of controversy. Hitherto, in England, that art had involved only tactics; Hooker added strategy."60 More notable than strategy was his systematization of what could be called, for the first time, Anglican principles. He systematized what had been largely inconjecturable and unwieldy, and he differed from the men who stand between him and the age of Coleridge’s polity because he refused to be limited by a concern with particular criticism of the church. Arthur Jay Klein wrote: Instead of justifying the English Church upon the merely anti-papal grounds of an experimental organization, Hook er rested his case upon the dignity and worth of the An glican Ecclesiastical Establishment. He raised the Church above the attacks of gatholic and Protestant by glorify ing its polity. • . .61 In this, he differed also from the men of his own age. In a sense, Whitgift was a more typical and accurate spokesman for Anglicanism than was Hooker. . . .We may well read Hooker to appreciate the best of the Eliza bethan Age, while we read Whitgift to appreciate more accurately that which was typical of the age.®* His source of superiority, or what W. K. Jordan calls the 59philip Hughes, A History of the Church (New York, 1947), III, 217. 60EnflliBh Literature in the Sixteenth Century, exclud ing drama (Oxford. 1954). P. 459. ^Intolerance in the Reign of Elizabeth Queen of Eng land (New York, 1917), PP* 119-20. ^2W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Tolera tion in England (Cambridge, Mass.,1932), I, 138. 152 "objective gaze of the philosopher" (p. 138), made him alien to the spirit of the later Church, of England so long as the church concerned itself primarily with stopgap ar guments and wheedling recriminations against those whom it termed atheistic for purely political reasons. Coleridge alone was able to assimilate the excellence in Qf the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity since he too stood above his age in emphasizing principle and in disclaiming mere reaction. And Coleridge alone sensed that the great merit in Hooker lay in his repudiation on a philosophical level of the very force that threatened the nineteenth century. Radicals of both ages denied absolute freedom of the will to man so that they could deprecate man’s institutions. Man was per haps perfectible, but for the moment he had degenerated through sin and mischance. The Calvinistic radicals pro posed to save his soul, the political radicals of the later age to win his rights. Both emphasized the atomic disinte gration of the social bond as they competed for the support and allegiance of the individual. Both brought about, in opposition to themselves, the restatement of some of the tenets of philosophical realism, first in Hooker and then in Coleridge. The radical argument for the nullification of the corporate state came to be answered by the counter principle of the necessity of physical universals. Threat ened chaos was rebutted by enlightened authoritarianism. — ----------: ------------------------------------------- 1531 j Tiie state with its church was made to stand, at least within the realm of theory, firm and honest. Whatever trend political events took, the Establishment was marked by principle, and this was unassailable. CHAPTER IV THE PHILOSOPHICAL SUPPORT FOR CHURCH AND STATE Coleridge announced to his brother George in January of 1798 that he had undertaken for himself the project of the defense of religion in England. This had been coming from the beginning of his intellectual and emotional de velopment. The stability offered by identification with traditional religion was too great to be overlooked by the young poet and philosopher. To the cause of Religion I solemnly devote all my best faculties— and if I wish to acquire knowledge as a phi losopher and fame as a poet, I pray for grace that I may continue to feel what I now feel. . • .(Col. Letters. I, 372) What he felt was of sufficient duration to enable him to produce an extended apology for the Anglican religion which appeared over the subsequent twenty-five odd years of lit erary productivity. In 1798 he did not propose affiliation with the Anglicans. He continued as a Unitarian for some years. In order to clearly mark the break with all reli gious factions that kept him from the Church of England, we might take the period of 1809 to 1825 as that of his ear nest labor to win the English people to Anglicanism. Prior to this time, he continued adamant in his coolness toward 155 the established church. He was especially aloof when he dis cussed the clerical role in England. When he had solicited for the Watchman in 1796, he had been singularly unsuccess ful in obtaining subscriptions in Worcester. He wrote Jos- iah Wade "no chance of doing any thing in Worcester— the Aristocrats are so numerous and the influence of the Clergy so extensive. . ." (Col. Letters. I, 175)• The Watchman was to reflect some of this anti-clericalism; in fact, Coleridge confronted the ecclesiastical system with the charge of venality. Now as the Sun of the planetary, so is the Gourt, the centre of the ecclesiastical system; and its centripetal force is its power of conferring good livings and lucra tive dignities.1 Of more serious note was his denial of the authority of the state in affairs concerned primarily with the church. He wrote in the Watchman: I am not convinced that on any occasion a Christian is justified in calling for the interference of secular power. . . . (Own Times. I, 149-50} This was repeated in a letter to Josiah Wedgwood in January of 1798. The great evil of the age, he urged, was the union of "Religion with the Government" (Col. Letters. I, 365) ♦ The danger was that the church could allow its insufficien cy to be masked by the sheer physical and impelling force of the state police body. If a man could not be convinced iQwn Times. I, 128. Coleridge was always to have some difficulty in reconciling wealth as a potential stabilizing force with wealth as a corruptive one. 156 by faith that he must attend church, then he could he com pelled by threats to perform what the church urged, fhis constitutes an unchanging problem for Coleridge as defender of the Anglican church. He was never easy in the union of police action with polity. Many years after he had commit ted himself to Anglicanism, he was still strongly critical of both the church and its spokesmen. Professional divines he characterized as Mof willful faith,— where the sensation of positiveness is substituted for the sense of certainty, 2 and the stubborn clutch for quiet insight. ...” He was seemingly unconvinced of the necessity for physical state support for the church*s spiritual functioning. In the Eng lish Divines he argued; Ihe incompossibility fsic] of Christian discipline with a Church established by^Law^ and all the acts of which have the force of penal or compulsary Laws, has always appear^ ed to me the objection that bears hardest on the Church Establishment* . • .And yet *01d Churcht with all thy faults I love thee still.*— Yea, with a filial, though not with a blind adherence. (II* 20' ) Coleridge defended the church as the complement to the state; by itself, the Church of England he held unsupport- able. In this he varied markedly from the direction of Richard Hooker. For Hooker, the church was a spiritual in stitution which had no peer, and he was a fiercely devoted ■x son of that church. Coleridge, as we have seen, was 2 Rotes on English Divines, ed. Derwent Coleridge (Lond<m, 1853), I, 328. -'Shirley, p. 257r indicates that the love of the church was a primary motivation for all Hooker* s work.____ 157 devoted to the church by a kind of" necessity. It was the best church to be found at the time, Through the long crea tion of his polity this notion was unchanged. His polity did not appear in a single volume. It emerged in part in the Friend in both the 1809 and 1818 versions. It was de veloped in the Lav Sermons (1816-17), touched upon in the Biographia in 1817* and most completely expressed in the Constitution of Ohurch and State (1820). It was precisely defined in the Aids to Reflection (1825) and briefly though' subjectively touched upon in the posthumous Confessions of An Inquiring Spirit (1840). In all of these he maintained that right of criticism over what he defended, something which Hooker had never desired. But of most significance in this study, he also maintained a full contact with the basic premises of Hooker’s system of ecclesiastical polity,► . He did not attempt to cloak this, to conceal his relation ship with Hooker. The very works that contain his polity also; reflect his spoken acknowledgment of indebtedness. These outward bits of evidence of the connection between the two men will be better viewed later in the comparison of the polities. It will be of more significance to adduce Coleridge*s avowal of gratitude to Hooker's concept of* le“; us say* the will, when we are treating this concept as it appears in the two polities, side by side. For now it would be more to the point to briefly re view the system of Richard Hooker's Of the Laws Of 15£ Ecclesiastical Polity (1594). This work had a profound sig nificance for Coleridge because it called the strongest authority to bear on the problem of civil intransigence, the authority of God* Other men did much the same between the periods of Hooker and Coleridge, but none did it with such notable success in "raising the issues out of a mire of petty querulousness to a high level of reverence, toler ation, humility" (Whitgift and the English Church, p. 152). Hooker defended a de facto power, an absolutism, and yet was able to choose the better way of reason to direct his words. The opponents of the established authority called upon an energy compounded of emotionalism and fractiousness to drive through their message. Hooker referred to first principles of reason, will, and law, and built in conformi ty to established logical categories. He made religious in stitutions that were based on nothing more concrete than inner conviction seem foundationless and ridiculous. He plaoed reason anterior to all religious institutions and thus "Calvin’s divinely ordained polity. . .disappeared in a cloud of particular trivialities. . (Anti-Puritan Sat ire 1572-1642, I, 24). His referral to law, natural and positive, made the way of Puritanism stand out as sheer lawlessness. Throughout, with all his massive systemization and justification, he was thoroughly reasonable. His defi nition of the laws of ecclesiastical polity prepared the way and set the reasonable tone. Tiie matters wherein Church polity is conversant are the ! public religious duties of the Church, as the administra tion of the word and sacraments, prayers, spiritual cen- j sures, and the like. To these the Church standeth always | bound. Laws of polity, are laws which appoint in what | manner these duties shall be performed. (E. P. I, 413) jAll of the eight books of his work analyze and explicate the possible employments of this definition; thus, they serve to crystallize the meaning of the Anglican Church. Hooker, seeking the via media, sought to defend the rea sonableness of a Church, reformed in essence but governed by an unreformed polity. Therein is the key to the eight Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.^- The Ecclesiastical Polity was not produced for a class of professional theologians bent on conserving the great scholastic tradition of the fourteenth century. Such a class of men was non-existent in Elizabethan England; for one thing, the sources of patronage were too self-interest ed to support or encourage anyone who wrote for the delight |of purely objective minds. For another thing, the Anglican Church did not need metaphysical orientation: it needed wise political support. The people were the traditional ad herents of the Tudor dynasty, and it was to the people that Hooker directed his thought. As Tillyard noted, "he writes not for the technical theologian but mediates theology for I the general educated public of his day" (p. 10). The people, I English people, rather than ex-Catholic or uncertain ^Cletus F. Dirksen, A Critical Analysis of Richard Hooker’s Theory of the Relations of Church and State, dis- sertation, Department of Political Science (Notre Dame, 1947), p. 97. _______________________________________ Puritan worshippers, were potentially the strongest suppor ters for the new Anglican church. Because Hooker addressed the English, tried to win the English, the Laws of Ecclesi astical Polity crossed and recrossed religious party lines. His constant appeal to Englishmen overrides any inconsis tency that we may externally discover in his extensive work. For instance, in Book Three he rests upon the purely Protestant doctrine of the Church of the Elect, and, in Book Seven, he justifies the Anglican hierarchy on the argu ment derived from the Catholic concept of Apostolic Succes sion of bishops. But regulating the whole is his insistence that the church can be justified to every Englishman, and that every Englishman can treat his private relations with God in any manner he personally prefers. Publicly, however, Englishmen are to support their country’s church. It was a most demanding task to prove to reasoning men that the combination of public deference and private reser vation did not constitute crippling hypocrisy. As Klein has noted in his Intolerance in The Reign of Elizabeth: It is the necessity for defense of the social organi zation for religious purposes, rather than the neces sity for the defense of a particular type of strictly religious dogma, that affords the greatest occasion for a display of intelligence, (p. 109) Hooker may yet provoke both Presbyterians and Catholics to cries of ’ ’expediency,” but in the sixteenth century his kind of church was the only possible kind of church in a country where religion was forcing a division into two 'hostile groups, each nurturing plans to modify not only the church but also the state. Order and reason were seized up on as the means to negate the conflict; these were neces- J sities for Elizabeth, and these were the master themes of j Hooker's work. Order or authority and reason or reasonable-j ness were charged with activity to counterbalance the heavy threat of Calvinism. This threat, according to Shirley, im posed upon Hooker a threefold task: First, to vindicate the necessity for authority; secondly, to find some more adequate basis for it than the scrip ture; and thirdly, in examining the authority claimed by Calvin to demonstrate its faults, imperfectibilities, and j unreasonableness, (p. 60) He asserted the reasonableness of his position, an Erastian one, "by proving the identity in England of Church and State" (p. 114). i From the beginning, he moved to establish his own rea- ! jsonable outlook, and, by identifying his outlook with that of the church, to make calm reason appear a singular church jproperty. I ^ Think not that ye read the words of one who bendeth him self as an adversary against the truth which ye have al ready embraced; but the words of one who desireth even to embrace together with you the self-same truth, if it be the truth. . . .{I, 127) He repeated this in opening Book Five. This world will teach them wisdom that have capacity to apprehend it. Our wisdom in this case must be such as doth not propose to itself. . .our own particular, the ■ partial and immoderate desire whereof poisoneth whereso- i ever it taketh place; but the scope and mark which we are to aim at is. . .the public and common good of all...... (II, 8)__________________________________________________ 162 He wrote not to propose another religious quarrel, but to jseek a way out of the quarrels that already existed; these ! jail tended to distraction and chaos. ! The commonwealth is not only through unsoundness so far ! impaired as those evils chance to prevail, but further | also through opposition arising between the unsound parts and the sound, where each endeavoureth to draw evermore contrary ways, till distraction in the end bring the whole to ruin. (II, 4) Contention was always followed by a disprizement of reason, and Hooker contrasted the Puritan heat generated by friction with Rome with the Puritan loss of cool reason. They which measure religion by dislike of the church of Rome think every man so much the more sound, by how much he can make the corruptions thereof to seem more large. (I, 443) Anyone who seeks a quarrel falls from reason, and here he ! i implies a deficiency in the traditional but now secondary foe, Rome. The background of the Roman-English relation in the latter part of the century was one of charge and coun tercharge, with the Catholic Church taking the offensive a good part of the time. The excommunication of Elizabeth and of all good Englishmen who also happened to be Catholic marked, for Hooker, flagrant misuse of strength and, hence, a flight from the way of reason. The Puritans departed from reason with a vengeance; their whole program was one designed to remit to unreason the plan for ecclesiastical discipline. ’ ’The method of winning the people’s affection unto a general liking of ’the cause’ (for so ye term it) hath been this”(I, 146). -T631 Hooker here enumerates the details of program intended to usher in a new spiritual era. First, in the hearing of the multitude, the faults es pecially of higher callings are ripped up with marvellous exceeding severity and sharpness of reproof. . . .The next thing hereunto is, to impute all faults and corrup tions, wherewith the world aboundeth, unto the kind of ecclesiastical government established. . . .Having gotten thus much sway in the hearts of men, a third step is to propose their own form of church-government, as the only sovereign remedy of all evils; and to adorn it with all the glorious titles that may be. . . .The fourth degree of inducement is by fashioning the very notions and con ceits of men’s minds in such sort, that when they read the scripture, they may think that every thing soundeth towards the advancement of that discipline, and to the utter disgrace of the contrary. . . .From hence they pro ceed to an higher point, which is the persuading of men credulous and over-capable of such pleasing errors, that it is the special illumination of the Holy Ghost, whereby they discern those things in the word, which others read ing yet discern them not. . . .Then is instilled into their hearts, that the same Spirit leading men into this j opinion doth thereby seal them to be God’s children. . . * From hence, they are easily drawn on to think it exceed- j ing necessary, for fear of quenching that good Spirit, to use all means whereby the same may be both strengthened in themselves, and made manifest unto others. (I, 146- 51) This is the only complete indictment that Hooker makes of the Puritan discipline, but he had shifted the Puritans to their weakest, and yet their truly fundamental, ground. They believed that they operated by ukase of the Holy Spir it; Hooker acknowledged their belief and left them to de fend it in a reasonable manner. In his summary he was al ways levelling a comment at the smug self-righteousness of men who could bespeak their partnership, an exclusive one, with God. It is apparent in the indictment, that if we ap- ply Hooker’s interpretation of the program to the real tactics of the Puritan party, the party is vitally concern ed with the appearance of being right rather than with the justice of falsely imputing wrong to its opposition. Puri tanism won its initial justification by attacking Rome, but Hooker had seen that the continued attack of a distant church would not always satisfy the Puritans* intense drive. Even if the Anglican Church underwent the kind of reform the Puritans demanded (a reform to purge off the Roman‘ excrescences), the Puritans would prove to be impos- i sible partners; they would always operate more happily as antagonists. Jewel and Whitgift had seen this too, but they had chosen to meet the Puritan abuse with abuse of their j i own. Hooker saw the endless difficulty and the unsatisfac tory results of such a campaign, and he took the battle to the unexpected level of principle. In the First book of the Ecclesiastical Polity he \ quietly asked: Is there anything which can either be throughly ["sic] un derstood or secondly judged of, till the very first causes and principles from which originally it springeth be made manifest? (I, 277-78) He offered the Puritans his aid in discovering principles (II, 13-14), for such discovery would lead to the reality underlying all existence. Our desire is in this present controversy, as in the rest, not to be carried up and down with the waves of un certain arguments, but rather positively to lead on the minds of the simpler sort by plain and easy degrees, till the very nature of the thing itself do make manifest what is truth. (II, 84) i His need to cut through appearance and plumb the deeps was certainly not original to him. As Cassirer has noted: Plato had to reject all mere practical attempts to reform the state. His was quite a different task: he had to un- I derstand the state. What he demanded and what he was | looking for was not a mere accumulation or an experimen- j tal study of segregated and haphazard facts of man’s political and social life but an idea that could compre hend these facts and bring them to a systematic unity. (Myth of the State, p. 82) Hooker, however, found his principle of order not in Plato nism but in Thomistic realism with its core of critical Aristotelian naturalism. Philosophy rather than theology was the guide for Hooker's definition of the purposes of the state, and his discovery of how these purposes were frustrated by the Puritans. His grasp of Calvin's system as it had been adopted by the English owed its sureness to his competency with metaphysical and ontological issues, I and not to his mastery over the finer points of soteriology or eschatology. E. T. Davies wrote: ; In the last resort the difference between Anglicanism and Puritanism in the sixteenth century lay in two dif ferent conceptions of man and the universe; and it was Hooker who first realized the central issue in the con troversy. (Episcopacy and the Royal Supremacy, p. 42) His conception was equivalent to that of Aquinas' optimism; however, he was not interested in promoting the cause of philosophy as philosophy, nor was he an eclectic who fa vored a new synthesis of all idea. He was a believer in the last absolutist organization in England, the Anglican 16 6 Church with the Queen at its head. To promote the welfare of the organization he selected ideas from the medieval le galists |the notion of consent, the supremacy of law, the right of representation, the reality of a mixed constitu tion are examples), from the Church Fathers, and from Plato.^ His optimistic rationalism he came by from Aquinas; this may be due to the fact that Aquinas had himself proved the existence of what Hooker was so interested in proving, namely, a benign and universal order "from an empirical not from a transcendent principle" (Myth of the State, p. 142). Meyrich Carre treats the total Thomistic approach as one which was shaped in rebuff of "the greatest danger that ever assailed the Medieval Church."6 The danger once again proves the continuity of an historical issue; it was a va riety of Puritanism, the Albigensian heresy. The doctrines of this movement were based upon a dualism of spirit and matter, and it was believed that all forms of matter were evil. Nature, including the bodies of ani mals and men, was indiscriminatingly condemned, (p. 97) Aquinas "strove to defeat. . .the refusal to recognize the independent working of secondary causes, and the belief that Nature was evil" (p. 95). Nature was regular and man was allowed to view the regularity, not by simple divine fiat, but through the exercise of his own reason: man, 5~ e. p.. I, xvi, 8 may be compared with Laws. Book I; Republic. Book IX. ^Realists and Nominalists (Oxford, 1946), p. 97* according to Aquinas, was the active agent in the act of perceiving truth.7 Therefore, man may be taken as an inde pendent second cause when he freely uses his reason, and, at the same time, he indicates the excellence of his being, | a being composed of both body and soul. | The body, for Aquinas, was not something to be loathed] as the Puritans stressed. The body is the perfect comple ment to the soul (Summa. I, Q. xci. a 3)» &&& the seemly body proves the healthy soul. Hooker repeats Aquinas on the ! i union of the body with the soul, and re-emphasizes the or- J i ganizing function of the soul over the body. j Now even as the soul doth organize the body, and give un-j to every member thereof that substance, quantity, and ! shape, which nature seeth most expedient, so the inward grace of sacraments may teach what serveth best for their outward form. . . .(II, 259) jThe soul raises man above other sublunary life, but the end of man glorifies him as it pleases God; he fulfills his purpose in existence and he ascends. Carre* writes: If we now think of man as a whole we must look beyond him to the end which he serves. And this is the enjoyment of God. Every creature. . .in the universe exists for the performance of its function. The inferior exists for the sake of the superior, and in the end every created thing exists to serve the entire universe of nature with all j its parts tends towards God. The divine goodness is the goal of all material things, (p. 98) Man seeks happiness, and this is a perfection of his spe cies (Summa. 1,11, Q,.i. a 7.). Hooker stated this: 7summa Theologies. Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd ed. (London, 1921), Q. „xci, a_3..______: ____________________________________ ________ 168 All things in the world are said in some sort to seek the highest, and to covet more or less the participation of God himself. Yet this doth no where so much appear as it doth in man, because there are so many kinds of perfec tions which man seeketh. The first degree of goodness is that general perfection which all things do seek, in de siring the continuance of their being. (I, 215) Lastly, "man naturally desires happiness, and what is natu rally desired by man is naturally known by him" (Summa. I, q. 2. a 1.). He "derives his species from his rational soul" (Summa. 1, II, q. lxxi. a 2.), and he is known, there fore, for his reason, just as he fulfills himself by using his reason. Whatever is contrary to reason in man is con trary to man's nature and is, accordingly, a vice. To Aquinas, as to Hooker, Puritanism was vicious because it denigrated the nature of man by denying him the ability to reason about first causes. Man could never make a step nearer knowledge of God; he could only passively wait for God to reveal Himself. Man knew God by studying the concatenation of causes and effects. The Summa postulated, When an effect is better known to us than its cause, from the effect we proceed to the knowledge of the cause. And from every effect the existence of its proper cause can be demonstrated, so long as its effects are better known to us; because, since every effect depends upon its cause, if the effect exists, the cause must pre-exist. Hence the existence of God, in so far not self-evident to us, can be demonstrated from those of His effects which are known to us. (I, q. 2. a 2.) Besides through cause and effect, God was knowable by means of the reason from motion, gradation, governance of the world, and possibility and necessity. Hooker did not use 169 any specifio one of these; he merely cut through the Calvin ist! c insufficiency of the human mind and claimed, Capable we are of God both by understanding and wills by understanding, as He is that sovereign truth which com- prehendeth the rich treasures of all wisdom; by will, as He is that sea of Goodness whereof whoso tast’eth shall thirst no more* (I, 255-56) Man was thus capable, if he could come to know God, of achieving knowledge of ethical truth. ’ ’ Goodness doth not move by being, but by being apparent. . ." (I, 223). He could also come to a complete knowledge of law; the ability to know law was a vital one for the political realism of Hooker. According to D'Entr&ves, ’ ’the problem of human law was to him, as it had been to the Schoolmen, equivalent to that of political authority” (p. 121). It was law that ulti mately undercut the Puritan demands for immediate change; Hooker simply contrasted the ideal of law with the politi cally unfounded Puritan demands: No doubt if men had been willing to learn how many laws their actions in this life are subject unto, and what the true force of each law is, all these controversies might have died the very day they were first brought forth. (I, 282) F. W. Maitland, in his Collected Papers, has pointed up the instability that was present in the Puritan preemption of the law-making and law-breaking power. It must be doubtful which is the greatest error in theory, the assertion of Hobbes that positive laws are the meas ure of justice, or of the Puritan doctrine that laws which are not good are not to be obeyed, though there can be little doubt that the latter is the more dangerous. (I, 23) The Puritans could not be allowed within grasping distance of the law, for by the end of the sixteenth century the un- alterables of statecraft seemed to have been lost or alter- i ed. Only the law remained constant; only the law stood firm | i ! and traditional: j ( Through a process that is obscure in the extreme, but a process in which the decline of chivalry, the growth of the new learning, the increasing size of the known world, with the consequent shaking up of economic and social conditions, must have played a great part, there emerges finally an England where the loyalty to class has broad ened out into a feeling of nationality, and solidarity to which the usual ‘national* can properly be applied in des| cribing its common institutions and ideas. In this pro- | cess of development, the idea of the traditional law is never lost.8 When Hooker recalled the law, he made it reflect uni versal order. He had found a pattern for this law and order: in the work of Aquinas. His definition of law, says i ‘D'Entreves, "echoes almost word for word the definition of Thomas Aquinas" (p. 118). Aquinas said that in the begin- ! ning there is the Lex Aeterna: "Accordingly the eternal law! is nothing else than the type of Divine Wisdom, as direct- j ing all actions and movements" (Summa, i, II, Q,. xciii. a 1.). Hooker wrote: "This law therefore we may name eternal, being 'that order which God before all ages hath set down with himself, for himself to do all things by'" (I, 204). Posterior to eternal law is natural law; it is natural law ^Charles Howard Mcllwain, The High Court of Parliament and its Supremacy, An Historical Essay on the Boundaries Between Legislation and Adjudication in England (Hew Haven, lI9AQX,-P.-52,......... , _____________ that stands directly behind all of the tremendous and multi form workings of the world. Man may come to know this law, and then he knows something of the pattern that moulds his world. Aquinas stated the proposition of natural law in | this way. The rational creature is subject to Divine providence in the most excellent way, insofar as it partakes of a share of providence, by being provident both for itself and for others. Wherefore it has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end: and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law. (Summa, 2, I, Q,. xci. a 2.). Hooker makes the same division between the eternal and the natural law. He repeats that natural law is a part of the !eternal law, the part "of it which ordereth natural agents"! ! (I, 205). j After these in importance comes man-made or positive ■ ! j law. Positive law is relative to time and to mundane stric-l tures; however, it must conform to the structure of natural! I law. j Every human law has just so much of the nature of law, asj j it is derived from the law of nature. But if in any point; j it deflects from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a perversion of law. (Summa, i, II, Q,. xcv. a 2.) Hooker wrote, "laws human must be made according to the general laws of nature, and without contradiction unto any positive law in Scripture. Otherwise they are ill made" (I, 382). Aquinas makes this extension of positive law: "All laws, insofar as they partake of right reason, are de- Lri.v_ed_ from the eternal law." (Summa, 2, I, Q, xciii. a 3*)j and then "law is a rule and measure of acts, whereby man is induced to act or is restrained from acting" (1, II, Q,. xc. a 1.). Hooker carefully repeats this higher concept of the positive law, for here is the bedrock of the ordered com munity. Those things which the law of God leaveth arbitrary and at liberty are all subject unto positive laws of men, which laws for the common benefit abridge particular men’s liberty in such things as far as the rules of equi ty will suffer. This we must either maintain, or else overturn the world and make every man his own commander. (II, 397) i By following the dictates of natural law, Hooker was able to determine man's place in the civilized world. "All j . I men desire to lead in this world a happy life. That life is j led most happily, wherein all virtue is exercised without j i impediment or let" (I, 240). Life in the pre-civilized state does not offer such freedom from impediment. j | i Forasmuch as we are not by ourselves sufficient to fur nish ourselves with competent store of things needful for such a life as our nature doth desire, a life fit for the dignity of man; therefore to supply those defects and im perfections which are in us living single and solely by ourselves, we are naturally induced to seek communion and fellowship with others. (I, 239) Society, then, is a natural need, a need according to natu- j ral law. Aquinas had said that the end of society is the i promotion of man's happiness, and the facility of his self- ( perfection (1, II, Q. xc. a 2.). Aristotle had advanced this in his Politics. It is therefore for the sake of good actions, and not for the sake of social life, that political associations must 17-' be considered to exist.^ Man acts in accord with, his nature when he joins society; he does not simply join society to escape an unending state of war in nature. He joins so that the highest form of happi ness may be insured him, the happiness of fulfilling his own nature. His nature is, essentially, gregarious. Aris totle had said: Man is thus intended by nature to be a part of a politi cal whole, and there is therefore an immanent impulse in all men towards an association of this order. (I, 2) Aquinas followed Aristotle in the Summa: "Man is naturally a social being, and so in the state of innocence he would have led a social life" (I, Q. xcvi, a 4.). Hooker restated both in order to build his polity on the substructure of human nature and natural law. Two foundations there are which bear up public societies; the one, a natural inclination, whereby all men desire sociable life and fellowship; the other, an order ex pressly or secretly agreed upon touching the manner of their union in living together. (I, 239) Hooker, as he followed a rationalistic and withal a conservative tendency in philosophy and political theory, aligned himself with the Realistic tradition. This was the swiftest way for him to make Anglican conservatism reason able. The Realistic tradition gathers, wrote Carre in Realists and Nominalists, "numerous writers who investigate the nature of Goodness or of Beauty, who uphold the ^Translated with an Introduction, Notes and Appendices by Ernst Barker (Oxford, 1946), II, 9. _____________ corporate character of the Church. . ." {p. 124)* In com plete contradistinction, nominalism "is advocated by others in the name of individuality and democracy" (p. 124). ! ! Calvinism, from the beginning in the sixteenth century] i 1 called attention to the individual by preparing men for thej | active work of taking over the government. It justified this final work of individuals by displacing the sanction for human behavior; it made the sanction emanate from with in certain enlightened individuals instead of remaining ex ternal and bound to an unreformed society. To this degree Calvinism extolled the equal social participation of all men, but this did not completely identify Calvinism with anti-monarchical dialectic. As Crane Brinton pointed out in^ j 1 the Making of the Modern Mind, from early Protestantism | "much that helps make modern democracy was to come, but not! iintentionally" (p. 66). Save for this singular tenet, Cal- ! ! | i i jvinism held the individual worthless. The individual was valuable when he was compared with the established govern ments, but his value was clearly a relative one, due solely i to the utter depravity of unreformed governments. Here the | j radicalism of the nineteenth century paralleled Puritan radicalism. It was inclined to esteem man when he was com pared with the government to which he offered his alle giance, but when he stood alone he was found to be pro pelled by either selfishness or by refined appetite. In this. Rousseau may be used to illustrate an attitude: h e__ 175 found it much easier to glorify natural man when man was somewhere across the Atlantic, and not when he was thriving in the ruck of common life nearby. The concept of the natu ral man in England did not provoke rhapsody since it was the error and waywardness of man that cried out for immedi ate change in the status quo. The sixteenth and nineteenth- century radicals are united by their tactic of beginning the demand for change by stressing the disabilities of the individual. They both in essence stress a present weakness in order to promise a future strength, and both concretize the promise through the notion of a bargain. This was for the Calvinists the covenant, and for the dissentients of Coleridge’s age it was the Rights of Man. This bargain was the single substantive that either group allowed; they de nied all physical universals because these argued authority and centralization. And their epistemology followed their political emphasis; that is, they held the behest of the individual emotion as superior always to the claims of cold and impersonal logic. The strain of anti-universalism and emotionalism in the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries was principally derived from the most influential English Nominalist, William of Occam (ca. 1300-1347)* In all the more abstract problems of religious philosophy the English Puritans repeated the views of Bucer, Calvin and Beza, especially the Institutes of Christian Religion. The main doctrines were accepted, the doctrines of human depravity, of predestined election, of particular redemp tion, of effectual calling, of the perseverance of the Saints; and with them there was implicitly accepted the 176 i i theology upon which they were based. That theology de- I ' seended from the school of William of Ockham and was in- ' | deed the most remarkable issue of the Oekhamist [sic! 1 j outlook* (Carr®, Phases of Thought, p. 173) j That Occam once again should have been an influence in the nineteenth century argues for the similarity in intellec- ; fcual tone between the age of Hooker and the age of Cole ridge* The conditions that Carre listed as coeval with I i early nominalism are also those of the age of Coleridge. In the fourteenth century medieval philosophy began to disintegrate. The decline in thought was part of the gen eral collapse of the old order of Christendom to which many factors contributed. Among these events were the ' public scandals in the Church,, the Hundred Years War, and; the Black Death* A period of moral confusion set in, and mental activity deteriorated. Confidence in reason de creased, and an era of scepticism and theological irra tionalism ensued. One mark of the destructive forces of ; the time was the revival of nominalism. • . .(Realists* j p. 101) ' i . j The loss of faith in reason inclined thinkers to heighten the effectiveness of emotion, and as a kind of analogy with I |the split between man's mind and reality, the individual appeared distant from the authority that had been con structed in society to govern him. When Occam dismissed un iversals as "convenient mental fictions" (p. 107) he made it as difficult for men to believe in tradition, law, au thority as it was to give credence to concept, proposition, or syllogism. To be sure, Occam had begun not with politi cal theory but with philosophy. He had repudiated all be- Lief in representative knowledges we directly perceive the world, and we perceive but single things at single times* 177 As Carre' notes in Realists and Nominalists: To discuss whether a universal is related to an individ ual is like discussing whether the name or sign ’table* is part of the table. Some signs stand for one thing, others stand for many things, and these are universals; but everything which exists is a single thing. All the difficulties about universals spring from the attempt to make them both singular and plural at the same time. Species and genus do not name substances, but signs, (p. 115) It becomes useless to attempt discussion of causal connec tions and substance since neither of these can be directly experienced. And a sharp consequence for religion was the subsequent point that if direct experience must furnish in every case the proof of the existence of anything, then it would be impossible to prove the existence of God. Indeed, as Carre' proposes, ”it was in the fields of philosophy and of theology that fockham’sj views produced their most dis turbing effects” (p. 120). For the Occamist, none of the central,beliefs of Christianity can be logically demon strated; reason is for practical considerations paralyzed, and so is the will. Men could not point to evidence to sup port their belief in God, neither could they indicate any single faculty in themselves that could account for such belief. All they could do ultimately was to eschew meta physics and turn submissively to a God-sent faith. It fol lowed that man could have no active part in his own salva tion, that ignorant and lacking in will he could but wait whatever arbitrary action God proposed for him. This was close to what Luther derived from the pessimism of Occam. | --------------------- — -----------------------------T781 I It was from Ockham fsic]. • .that Luther derived one of the two main elements or his own peculiar system, the idea, namely, that the whole work of grace and of salva tion is something altogether external to man— in cause and in effect.10 God was elevated far above man’s potential range for experience. Luther repeated the Occamists, who had held to i "the transoendent necessity of the Divine free gift which makes men children of God."H And he gave fresh currency to the destructive notion of the lack of free will, of voli tion, and of reason, echoing some of the "theological pes- j simism characteristic of the last period of the Middle Ages” (Carrs', Realists. p. 122). Man was taken out of the world in his spiritual quest and put in the hands of either God or of the temporal ruler, for Luther, who "with Machia- velli boldly substitutes secular for ecclesiastical author ity,"^ could not but raise a king far above men. The vis- i jitation of Prince Frederick to the seminary in Saxony in 1527 began the state church, the state dominance over man justified now on the grounds of man’s lack of free will, and the unopposed tyranny of an interdicting God with his 10Philip Hughes, A History of the Church (New York, 1947)* III, 511. •^Henri Bremond, A Literary History of Religious Thought in France From the Wars of Religion Down to Our Times, trans. K. L. Montgomery (New York. 1928). I, 12. 12R. H. Murray,«The Political Consequences of the Re- formation Studies in Sixteenth-Century Political Thought (London, 1955')7 p ." "37:— ---------- ^inexorably unfolding plan for the world. i i This variety of cosmos was thoroughly unpalatable to ■ i ! jthe English, and the Puritan tendencies to such a cosmos | I were opposed by every line of the Ecclesiastical Polity. Free will was not relinquished by Hooker; instead!, it wa® turned as a weapon against the Continental Protestant spirit* | [Hone] need to be taught that in things which delight we | easily swerve from mediocrity, and are not easily led by ! a right direct line. On the other side the sores and dis*^ eases of mind which inordinate pleasure breedeth are by dolour and grief cured* For which cause as all offenses use to seduce by pleasing, so all punishments endeavour by vexing to reform transgressions. We are of our own ac cord apt enough to give entertainment to things delecta- i ble, but patiently to lack what flesh and blood doth de sire, and by virtue to forbear what by nature we covet, this no man attaineth unto but with labour and long prac-i tice. (II, 425) Man could by “labour and long practice" actually direct his own fortunes, despite the weakness of his lesser part* the i flesh* When Coleridge came upon this passage in its con- i *■'...>• t text, he was moved to exclaim; ! If Richard Hooker had written only these two precious J paragraphs, I should hold myself bound to thank the Fa ther of light and Giver of all good gifts for his exist ence and the preservation of his writings. (Divines, I, 26) From 1800 on, Coleridge w<as moved frequently to such praise of Hooker. We noted his esteem and his debt® to the shaping influence of Hooker*® ideas. On occasion he pointed out a connection between his thinking and Hooker*®, linking Hooker to a band of influential individuals. At other times - he singled out Hooker for particular note* In the Friend he was careful to acknowledge that the fourths essay prefatory to the section on "Principles! of Political Knowledge" opened with and was indebted to an extensive quotation from the Ecclesiastical Polity.^ Earlier in the Friend Coleridge had turned to an eternally troublesome matter, the putative obscurity of his prose* And here, too, he had relied for sole support oh Hooker, stating with some feel ing that, as Hooker had so well said* A writer whose meaning is everywhere comprehended as quickly as his sentences can be read* * .will not have added either to the stock of our knowledge, or to the vigor of our intellect* For how can we gather strength, but by exercise? (p. 108) Seven years later, in his Lay Sermons, he once more publicized the name of Hooker, and called public atten tion to his high appreciation of the man* Let us call back: principles authorised by names that must needs be so dear and venerable to a minister of the Church in England, as those of Hooker, Whitaker, Field, Donne, Selden, Stillingfleet,— masculine intellects, formed under the robust discipline of an age memorable for keenness of research, and iron industry. . . . (p. 1T5) Again in the Biographia Literaria in 1817 he made evident application of the continued theme of insufficiency, noting in Complete Works* II, 172. The passages quoted in this study which are taken from the Friend are essentially in both ma^or editions of the Friend. 1809 and 1817» the same. The material on this page taken from page 108 of the 1817 edition is not to be found in the earlier edition. Otherwise, the two versions duplicate one another insofar as they are employed here* Consequently, all references are to the later edition, edited in the Complete Works* 181 the nexus between Hooker*s age and his own time. The people, he wrote, will have to be pampered in their reading habits for they are afraid of dark themes. If this fear could be rationally entertained in the con troversial age of Hooker, under the then robust disci pline of the scholastic logic, pardonably may a writer of the present times anticipate a scanty audience for ab- strusest themes, and truths that can neither be communi cated or received without effort of thought, as well as patience of attention. (I, 105) And in the Biographia he briefly traced out the historical sanction for his use of the word "intuition.* * Hooker* s name led the names of others who had put the word to a similar use. I have followed Hooker, Sanderson, Milton, &c., in desig nating the immediateness of any act or object of knowl edge by the word intuition, used sometimes subjectively, sometimes objectively, even as we use the word, thought, now as the thought. • . .(I, 109) Hooker, who to Coleridge appeared a "theological Talus, with a club of iron against opponents with pasteboard hel mets, and armed only with crabstoeks" (Divines. I, 22), spoke for really the last time in favor of the Christian- Aristotelian synthesis of Realism. The support for physical universals, the profound verification of human institutions possible through Realism offered Hooker a line of defense for conservatism that was discoverable nowhere else. The metaphysical support given alike to the Empire and the Church by regarding them as the concrete manifesta tions of super-terrestrial entities and not mere aggre gates of individuals came from Aquinas. Reality itself was conceived in corporate terms as comprising great *universals' and not as consisting only of unrelated 182 single items* (Bainton, p. 12) Coleridge, in responding to Hooker’s line of reasoning, automatically took a position in the Realistic tradition* In fact, in Buns Scotus Coleridge could have discovered the concept of the reality and primacy of ideas that he was supposed to have learned only from the ubiquitous tra dition of German Idealism. His tendency was not at all fatal to sympathy with the scholastics who were Realists* A letter written to John Thelwall on October 26, 1803, speaks of riding from Grasmere to obtain passage to Malta; the letter points out that Coleridge, as he came under the influence of Hooker, came also to look with some favor upon the Schoolmen* Tou will laugh heartily at travelling in a gig with old Buns Scotms for your Companion— Cod bless the old School men! They have been my best comforts, & most instruc tive Companions for the last 2 years*— Could you have believed, that it could have come to this?— (Col. Letters. I, 1020) The tradition of Aristotelian-Realism made the dis tinction with which Coleridge has eome to be identified in his philosophy, the distinction between a superior hu man faculty, reason, and a lesser faculty, the understand ing. The latter was competent enough for the organization of mere phenomena, while the reason could perceive relation ships and truth. Coleridge had in a native tradition repre sented best for him by the works of Richard Hooker a 18; concise statement of tne effectiveness of a part of the hu man mind to apprehend pure truth. This contrasted with Kant’s notion of a reason that was fatal to rational ortho doxy as well as to Aristotelianism. When the Critique of Pure Reason showed that basic reli gious and metaphysical concepts like God, freedom and immortality cannot be reached by pure reason, it opened the way for a prophetic reassertion of the Lutheran un derstanding of faith. Over against the smugness and ease with which rationalistic theology had claimed to be able to examine basic religious affirmations, Kant’s Critique declared once for all, that these affirmations can be either accepted or denied on the basis of pure reason. He thus dealt a deathblow to the rationalistic speculations of seventeenth-century Orthodoxy and to its basically Aristotelian philosophical framework.14 Coleridge established reason and maintained orthodoxy by adopting an outlook that owed much to philosophical Realism* He took spirituality and rationalism as his own, never al lowing spirituality to approach anti-intellectualism, and keeping rationalism under control of faith. This was pre cisely what Hooker and the Schoolmen had done before him. Coleridge could not have been unaware of his theological forebears, for he wrote of the Schoolmen in the Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit that they were those to whom the cause of Truth and reformed Religion is under far greater obligation than the shallow and contemptuous Spirit of the Philosophy in fashion will allow itself to suspect.15 When Richard Hooker had defended the Anglican church lA-jaroslav Pelikan, From Luther to Kierkegaard A Study in the History of Theology (St. Louis. MoT, 1950). P. 9^. ^Bohn's Standard Library Edition (London, 1893), P» l389-.------------------------------------------------------- 184- with arguments derived in the main from Aquinas, he urged, in essence, the close identity of the principles of Scho lasticism with those of Protestantism. When he anchored his Anglican polity on the stable ground provided by the greatest of the Scholastics, he tried to create an example of the continuity from primitive Christian churchcraft to the Protestant organization. And this was what Coleridge alone among apologists after Hooker also attempted. It was this that motivated him to say in one of his philosophical lectures: I indeed am persuaded that to the scholastic philosophy the Reformation is attributable, far more than to the revival of classical literature. . . .(p. 316) As in proof of the Scholastic-Protestant unity, he later announced his great favor for the subtlety in Soholastic distinctions (Divines. II, 128-29)J and he chose as the best proof of Cod the Thomistic one of objectivity. In the Aids to Reflection in 1825> demonstrating the consistency of his position, he asserted that God must follow "from the necessity and necessary Objectivity of the I d e a . " 3 . 6 The original proposition in Aquinas had run: As soon as the signification of the word ’God* is under stood, it is at once seen that God exists. For by this word is signified that thing than which nothing greater can be conceived. (I, Q,. 2 a 3.) The Literary Remains contain a full statement of the Thom istic ideal of the soul-body unity, further proof of the 3-6in Complete Works. II, 121. — _ — ---------_ — ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------185 application that Coleridge made of the Scholastic world view. Man, Coleridge had noted, is not "body plus soul, i {[but] the unit, the pro thesis* 1 (p. 95)* Of greater import in maintaining the sufficiency of j existing human institutions, however, was the scholastic sanction for the efficacy of human reason. If man possessed a faculty of sufficient and divinely-instituted keenness to come to a knowledge of extra-empirical facts, it was only a matter of simple extension to prove that he must be able to discover truths in the form of government that he built for his own welfare. Traditional government must be good, for man has tolerated it for so long: if it were bad, his rea son would not allow such toleration. Thus, the argument forj the ability of man to approach divine truth was fundamental, I to the defense of the status quo. With reason man could j j deal with "a religion of ideas, spiritual truths, or truth-j i | powers. . . .’ ’ He was not restricted, as the nominalists and later the radical Protestants held, to ’ ’notions and i conceptions, the manufacture of the understanding. . .” (Divines. p. 89)* He wrote in the Aids: It is the office, and, as it were, the instinct of Rea son to bring a unity unto all our conceptions and several knowledges. On this all system depends; and without this we could reflect connectedly neither on nature nor on our own minds, (p. 109) Nominalism denied the reality of a concept like a uni versal reason; it denied all physical universals, reserving its approval solely for ethical universals. In Calvinism 186 this manifested itself in the restrictive concentration on good and evil, with the imponderables of freedom, will, reason relegated to an intellectual nether world. After 1800, the ideas of Coleridge reflected his steadily growing identification with the cause of Realism against nominalism, Anglicanism against Calvinism. In 1809 he wrote in The Friend against the nominalistic atomism that sapped the vi tality of human intellectuation. A million of men united by mutual confidence and free in tercourse of thoughts form one power, and this is as much a real thing as a steam engine; but a million of insula ted individuals is only an abstraction of the mind, and but one told so many times over without addition, as an idiot would tell the clock at noon— one, one, one. (p. 155) Seven years later in the Lay Sermons he indicted the nomi— nalistic restriction on the power of the reason. In all ages of the Christian Church. . .there have ex isted individuals (Laodiceans in spirit, minims in faith, and nominalists in philosophy) who mistake outlines for substance, and indistinct images for clear conceptions; with whom therefore not to be a thing is the same as not to be at all. . . .What. . .but apparitions can remain to a philosophy, which strikes death through all things visible and invisible; satisfies itself then only when it can explain those abstractions of the outward senses. „ . .(pp. 102-0A) And in the Notes on the English Divines he repudiated the denigration of the will which had come to early Protestant ism through its connection with Occam and n o m i n a l i s m .^7 17«r. M. Lindsay summarized this interaction of ideas in his "William of Occam and his Connexion with the Re formation," The British Quarterly Review. 56:1-40, July- Oct. 1872. 187 A creaturely will cannot be free; but the will in a ra tional creature may cease to be creaturely, and the crea ture. . .finally cease in consequence; and this neither Luther nor Calvin seem to have seen. (I, 57) In the same work he later wrote that "the error of the Cal vinists is, that they divine the regenerate will in man from the will of God, Instead of including it" (I, 341). He pursued this same error in the Aids. writing against the sheer cause and effect relationship that re-' suited from a denial of the human will. This was a relation ship that carried distressing effects in politics as well as in theology. [The blind} compulsion of the consequence drove the Fa thers of Modern (or Pseudo— ) Calvinism to the origina tion of Holiness in power, of Justice in right of Prop erty, and whatever other outrages on the common sense and moral feelings of mankind they have sought to cover, under the fair name of Sovereign Grace, (p. 105) One other outrage against mankind that was perpetrated un der the aegis of absolute power was rulership that found sole justification in its own power. This so-called effec tive power of rule was primary to Edmund Burke, and it was thoroughly incompatible with Coleridge*s concept of power. So distasteful was Burke’s thesis of power that Coleridge termed him a Manichaean (Own Times. I, 112). By this he meant that Burke would split society into two groups, one group bearing the power, and the other obeying the rule. Coleridge believed in a power diffused among all individ uals, not in one dispensed from a central agency. Power was acquired through personal merit. It was not awarded 18£ according to rank or privilege of birth. In the same way, Coleridge’s (and Hooker’s) theology stressed that grace had to be earned. This ran counter to Luther and Calvin, who emphasized the insufficiency of man to ever merit grace from God. According to the Puritans, all grace was unearned? it came without our hope for it, without our deserving it. Again, this pointed up the Puritan denigration of the will. Without a will man could never earn anything pertaining to his salvation. He was denied all power. But power for Cole ridge was ’ ’the sole object of philosophical attention in man, as in inanimate nature. . .” (Own Times. II, 319)* Coleridge began with a consideration of the manifesta tions and the directions of power and action when he turned to the systematization of his philosophy, upon which he was to build his theology. And when he gave what he considered to be a definitive statement of his total approach to phi losophy and theology in chapter thirteen of the Biographia« he brought the concepts of perception, infinity, identity to a directed order under the headship of an absolute power of willed self-awareness. This he termed the I AM. The Primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. (I, 202) This was a culmination not only for the Biographia. but for all his thinking as well. All through the Biographia he had carefully led up to this one brief sentence, and he had painstakingly stressed power. In Germany, Fichte had dis pelled what Cassirer called the eighteenth-century world tiredness by seeking in action a new and positive standard by which life might be guided. He had been exultant: ’ ’’Not for idle contemplation of thyself, not for brooding over devout sensations— no, for action art thou here'; thine ac tion, and thine action alone, determines thy worth”* (quot ed in Myth of the State, p. 264). In England, Coleridge had such an elevation of action and power in the tradition of Realism which flowed so freely through the Ecclesiastical Polity. For Aquinas and for Hooker, man became fully a man i only after his potency had been fulfilled in act, after he had proven himself one of God’s creatures by working to find and to fulfill his natural end. Hooker had given this thesis of individually developed power for Coleridge to discover. God alone excepted, who actually and everlastingly is whatsoever he may be, and which cannot hereafter be that which now he is not; all other things besides are some what in possibility, which as yet they are not in act. (I, 215) Coleridge, who ’ ’ought to have been a Schoolman,” according * to Crane Brinton (Romantics. p. 66), followed closely this principle of activism. He directed it wherever he could to the politics of his own day. In the Confessions of an In quiring Spirit he protested: One of the ominous characteristics of this reforming age, the Custom of addressing ’The Poor* as a permanent Class, 190 assumed to consist ordinarily of the same individuals* • . •Poverty, whatever can justify the designation of ♦the Poor* ought to be a transitional state— a state to which no man ought to admit, himself to belong, tho * he may find himself in it because he is passing thro1 it, in the effort to leave it. (p. 366) He had made a similar point in one of his philosophies! lectures. What makes a slave a slave? If I mistake not it is op pressions-—it is the being in a state out of which he cannot hope to rise; and he who is placed where there is no motive for aetion, but where the miserable thing he is must ever remain in the same sphere, is a slave, and a pitiable one. (p. 285) She elaboration of activism that is so significant in his thinking is best illustrated by the cluster of terms to which he constantly had recourse. Frequently associated with “power” are “activity,” “purpose,” and "dynamic." In the ninth chapter of the Biographia he went out of his way to call attention to the little-known Richard Saumarez (1764-1835), who had subverted the tyranny of the mechanistic system in phys iology; established not only the existence of final causes, but their necessity and efficiency in every sys tem that merits the name of philosophical; and, substi tuting life and progressive power for the contradictory inert force, has a right to be known and remembered a® the first instaurator of the dynamic philosophy in Eng landU (I, 105) Goleridge placed himself in the tradition of the dynamic philosophy and built his epistemology upward from power. "Truth is correlative to being. Knowledge without a corre spondent reality is no knowledge; if we know, there must be a somewhat known by us. To know is in its very essence a verb active” (I,. 180). He then put this in aphoristic form* ”In energetic minds, truth soon ehanges by domesti cation into power” (I, 62). With constant power triumphant over inert matter it was but a logical half step to infer act, and in the sin gle act: based upon power, a single act seen as a self-de termination, Coleridge demonstrated his antithesis to ma terialism. His definition of a spirit was a full expres sion of the confrontation of passivity by activity. A spirit is that, which is its own object, yet not orig inally an object, but an absolute subject for which all, itself included, may become an object. It must there fore be an ACT; for every object is, as an object, dead, fixed, incapable in itself ©f any action, and necessar ily finite. (I, 185) He stated that the only self-aware object that could real ize itself as both object and subject was Cod or man. Only beings of spiritual nature could be aware of themselves,, could have a sense of full identity. Hooker had put it thus: know things either as they are in themselves, or as they are in mutual relation one to another. The know ledge of that which man is in reference unto himself, and other things in relation unto man, I may justly term the mother of all those principles, which are as it were edicts, statutes, and decrees, in that haw of Nature, whereby human actions are framed!. (I, 230) At this point both Coleridge and Hooker proposed a facul ty in man which could enable him to come to this self- awareness; self-awareness as merely a possibility was meaningless. Only in the act of self-awareness was the po tential for self-awareness justified. Coleridge said in the "192 Priends The ground-work, therefore, of all pure speculation is the full apprehension of the difference between the con templation of reason, namely, that intuition of things which arises when we possess ourselves, as one with the whole, which is substantial knowledge, and that which presents itself when transferring reality to the nega tions of reality, to the ever-varying frame-work of the uniform life, we think of ourselves as separated beings, and place nature in antithesis to the mind, as object to subject, thing to thought, death to life. This is ab stract knowledge, or the science of the mere understand ing. (p. 469) The intuition or faculty of reason he further delineated in contrast to the lesser understanding* The seiental reason, whose objects are purely theoreti cal, remains neutral, as long as its name and semblanee are not usurped by the opponents of the doctrine. But it then becomes an effective ally by exposing the false show of demonstration, or by evincing the equal demon- strability of the contrary from premises equally logi cal. The understanding meantime suggests, the analogy of experience facilitates, the belief. (Biographia. I, 135) In the Aids he once more noted the difference between the reason and the understanding. He offered t© sketch out the subject of the legitimate exercise of the under standing and its limitation to Objects and Sense; with the errors both of unbelief and of misbelief, which re sult from its extension beyond the sphere of possible Experience, (p. 168) The test of the truth which was derived through the under standing was its conformity to the tenets of experience* Chi the other hand, Coleridge suggested earlier in the Aids that the test of truth derived from the reason was its in conceivability. He wrote of this; If this appears extravagant, it is an extravagance which no man can indeed learn from another, but which, (were this possible) I might have learnt from Plato, Kepler, and Bacon; from Lather, Hooker. . . .(pp. 154-55) For Coleridge as for Hooker the truth distilled by the rea son was not dependent for its validity on a conformity to 3 I any external standard, just as the reason itself did not j depend for its authority on some verification of principle. As Hooker stated: The main principles of Reason are in themselves apparent. For to make nothing evident of itself unto man’s under standing were to take away all possibility of knowing any thing. And herein that of Theophrastus is true, ’They that seek a reason of all things do utterly overthrow Reason.’ (I, 228) He had also made the distinction between the almost super nal reason and the mundane understanding. "Goodness is seen with the eye of the understanding. And the light of that eye, is reason” (I, 220). The two manners of coming to knowledge he again covered in the second book of the Eccle siastical Polity. I The truth is, that the mind of man desireth evermore to know the truth according to the most infallible certain ty which the nature of things can yield. The greatest as surance generally with all men is that which we have by plain aspect and intuitive beholding. (I, 322) And, finally, he had made the contrast striking between the two, ’ ’ Where understanding therefore needeth, in those things Reason is the director of man’s Will by discovering in action what is good. For the Laws of well-doing are the dictates of right Reason” (I, 222). Here we should note the emphasis upon activity in discerning the function of the reason; it is the same emphasis that Coleridge was to make. Coleridge did not conceal his debt to Hooker, for he noted in his Divines that, with Bacon, Hooker was the only iman to note the distinction between the reason and the un- t derstanding between the reigns of Edward VI and James II I (I, 11). And his definition of the reason that he made in | j the Aids may be seen to owe its substance as well as the ! ' L,“ i flavor of phraseology to the Ecclesiastical Polity. Reason is the power of universal and necessary convic tions, the source and substance of truths above sense, 'and having their evidence in themselves. Its presence is always marked by the necessity of the position affirmed: this necessity being conditional, when a truth of reason is applied to facts of experience, or to the rules and maxims of the understanding; but absolute, when the sub ject matter is itself the growth or offspring of reason, (p. 241) ! j "By reason,” Hooker had said, ”man attaineth unto knowledge of things that are and are not sensible” (I, 219). Both Hooker and Coleridge made use of a superior abil ity in man to work out the outlines not only of epistemolo- gy but also of religion. This ability was necessary to plant man on the path that led ultimately to truth; Cole ridge said, in the Biographia. I began. . .to ask myself, what proof I had of the out ward existence of anything. . . .1 saw, that in the na ture of things such proof is impossible; and that of all modes of being, that are not objects of the senses, the existence is assumed by a logical necessity arising from the constitution of the mind itself, by the absence of all motive to doubt it, not from any absolute contradic tion in the supposition of the contrary. (I, 133) He actually utilized a different kind of experience in this, ! an experience that was not possibly derivable from Germany. 195] Vernon Storr noted on tiiis point, Coleridge, unhampered by Kant's technical difficulties or his peculiar philosophical inheritance from the past, boldly took his stand upon spiritual experience, claimed it as real and trustworthy, and sought to interpret it in its concrete bearing upon life. (p. 325) i Coleridge himself gave this a moral or an ethical reading. Where the evidence of the senses fails us, and beyond the precincts of sensible experience, there is no reality at tributable to any notion, but what is given to it by Revelation, or the Law of Conscience, or the necessary interests of morality. (Aids, 109) i He wrote in the Lay Sermons, "the immediate consciousness j decides: the idea is its own evidence, and is insusceptible| i of all other. It is necessarily groundless and indemonstra-j ble; because it is itself the ground of all possible demon-j Istration" (p. 35)• Hooker had written: I | i I Principles be grounds which require no proof in any kind 1 of science, because it sufficeth if either their certain- ; ty be evident in itself, or evident by the light of some ! higher knowledge. . . .Now the principles whereupon we do I j build our souls have their evidence where they had their 1 original. . . .(II, 305) When Hooker and Coleridge faced up to the proof of eternal principles it had become evident that such proof, even if it were not logically organized, would simply have !to be assumed. The assumption, to an extent, is the measure of their need to be assured. But,, so also was the system that both so whole-heartedly responded to a sign of the need to be assured. Basil Willey noted in the Seventeenth- i Century Background: Scholastic thought existed to give answers to the ques- tions that children ask, but which the adult______________j 196“? consciousness first dismisses as unanswerable and then forgets— questions taking the form of ’Why?’ * Whence?' •What is it made of?’ and 'Who made it, or put it there?' Questions so searching, it has been said, are not really questions at all, but requests for assurance, (p. 12) Scholasticism had produced an intimately detailed pattern of universal order; God's hand, it was assumed, had shaped i the pattern. Worldly order had a religious significance, and this was never played in a minor key by either Hooker or Coleridge. When man was a good citizen, when he obeyed, when he lived an ordered life, he proved his conformity to God's great plan for the governance of the world. And when order prevailed, authority appeared justified. That was, after all, the best that conservative spokesmen could imag ine. It was, needless to say, the end toward which Hooker j and Coleridge unswervingly worked. i CHAPTER V THE PROTESTANTISM OF HOOKER AND COLERIDGE Richard Hooker, in the phrase of V, J. K. Brook, "stood out as one who was not just trying to make debating points but was passionately and majestically seeking truth" (p. 150). Xet he had been pressed into outlining the Angli can system and raising the Anglican spirit so that the rad ical religious segment might be held from pressing for an actual revolutionary denouement. The Puritans were met by the impassable barrier of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, and in addition the Catholic opponents of the English Church were similarly discouraged in their hopes for a restitution of Papal hegemony. There was for a time a dangerous playing of both ends against the middle. Catholics were forced out of their old sphere of influence at the same time that Catholic principles were retained by the English to be used against the doctrines of Geneva. The early Anglicans put together a polity which used Protestant arguments against Rome and Catholic arguments against Continental Protestant ism. This polity and the church which resulted serve, in the words of Crane Brinton, "as a classic example of the English ability to compromise— , or, if you prefer, to 198] pretend that certain difficulties do not exist" (Modern Mind, p. 69)* The Via Media to which the Anglican Church had been ! moved to subscribe forced an eclecticism upon Anglican phi- ! losophers. They moved among inconsistency; they used the Catholic principle of universality to reject the Lutheran- Puritan nominalism while they relied upon Lutheran-Puritan scripturalism to refute Papal theocracy; they stressed the role of good works, the Catholic path to grace, but denied grace through good works; they retained the belief in the supernal powers of the high clergy but denied the powers j to the lesser clergy; they believed in some sacraments but j denied the sacramental system. Such a philosophical and theological groundwork advanced a church that took a pro tean shape and that offered a number of ways to salvation. I Brinton writes: Even in the first two centuries after Luther. . .the Church of England is no simple thing, but a sort of mi crocosm of the Protestant world. Basically a conservative Protestant Church, respectful of civil authority if not slavishly Erastian, theologically and liturgically close to the Roman CatholiG Church, lacking the Protestant zeal to clean up this world, the Church of England neverthe less kept under its elastic control--the metaphor here is fairly exact, for the Anglican mind can stretch— a whole host of potential rebels who might go over to Rome, or to Geneva, or direct to heaven itself, (p. 69) For Henry ideal subjects were Catholic in their respect for central authority and Protestant in their ability to iden tify that authority with the national leader. The proof that such ideal citizens gave of their good intentions jlater came to be termed nationalistic fervor; the good Eng-j 1 3 I jlishman accepted the English Church whatever its infirmi- j I jties because it was to the best interests of the country \ I |that he do so. The soul would find a way through it all. jWhen violence loomed from abroad, nationalism was sanity jand it dictated that established institutions were to be ? | ialways preserved. Though we think of the real Catholic t ! I i threat to the English throne as passing by the end of the | sixteenth century, Coleridge could still support the Estab-J E lishment in 1825 as Hooker had done in 1593* I i My fixed principle is: that a Christianity without a | Church exercising spiritual authority is vanity and delu-j sion. And my belief is, that when Popery is rushing in on' us like an inundation, the nation will find it to be so. ! (Aids, p. 295) I i i The onrush was particularly threatening to Coleridge be cause he realized that conventional defensive tactics had I jfailed to impress. The church’s enormous financial upkeep, j i I i jits brave anti-intellectualism, its benignly invested cor- I |ruption were grown insupportable. Even the promise of ever-j | lasting bliss that it held for the faithful seemed to have j lost cogency and savor. J. S. Mill wrote in his essay on the utility of religion: It seems to me not only possible but probable, that in a higher, and above all, a happier condition of human life, not annihilation but immortality may be the burdensome idea. . . .The mere assertion of existence is no evil to any one: the idea is only formidable through the illusion of imagination which makes one conceive oneself as if one were alive and feeling oneself dead. (pp. 120-22) 2001 Despite such enlightened criticism the church had to be sustained, for through the centuries it had stood between sane English belief and the evil and mysterious distentions of the religious spirit that flourished elsewhere about thei i world under the nurturing of papal care. To be an Anglican in the nineteenth century meant, for Coleridge as well as for most thinking Englishmen, to oppose the claim of Roman universality with its corollary indictment of an historic English heresy. The need, it seemed, was constant: true faith had to be restricted to the one church. Coleridge, for example, said of the dissenters who joined the Irish i confederacy, "I do not intend the remotest reference to their religion as a mode of faith." And such bias was prob ably necessary, as it still may be, for Protestants from the sixteenth century on have been forced at the start to reject the Roman charge that the appearance of their church! ! and their belief could be positively dated. Hooker wrote, "they ask us where our Church did lurk, in what cave of the earth it slept for so many hundreds of years together be fore the birth of Martin Luther?" (I, 346). He followed with a statement of an essential Protestant thesis: As if we were of opinion that Luther did erect a Hew Church of Christ. No, the Church of Christ which was from the beginning is and continueth unto the end: of which Church all parts have not been always equally sincere and sound. . . .We hope therefore that to reform ourselves, if at any time we have done amiss, is not to sever our selves from the Church we were of before. In the Church we were, and we are so still. Other difference between our estate before and now we know none but only such as 201 we see in Juda; which having sometime been idolatrous be came afterwards more soundly religious by renouncing idolatry and superstition. (I, 346-47) The English Church was the universal one, Coleridge said, for it maintained the doctrines of the primitive church as ! it developed purely and directly from Christ's institution "for the first three hundred years" (Table Talk, p. 29). Hooker developed the argument for the Anglican tradi tion by denigrating that of Rome which lacking Cod-given sanction was substanceless; derived erroneously, as it was, from the assumptions of twelve hundred years of popes who supposed themselves irrefutable. An example of the obfusca- I tion of Cod's behest that the Roman church had prolonged was the interpretation of the need for clerical celibacy. Well we might gather out of this place, that men having children or wives are not fit to be ministers, (which ! also hath been collected, and that by sundry of the an- j j cient), and that it is requisite the clergy be utterly | forbidden marriage: for as the burden of civil regiment j ; doth make them who bear it the less able to attend their j ecclesiastical charge; even so St. Paul doth say, that ! the married are careful for the world, the unmarried j freer to give themselves wholly to the service of God. ! (Ill, 247-48) I Then Hooker concluded: Howbeit, both experience hath found it safer, that the clergy should bear the cares of honest marriage, than be subject to the inconveniences which single life imposed upon them would draw after it: and as many as are of sound judgment know it to be far better for this present age, that the detriment be borne which haply may grow through the lessening of some few men's spiritual labours* than that the clergy and commonwealth should lack the benefit which both the one and the other may reap through their dealing in x civil affairs. (Ill, 248) p 202 | Such a Roman error was the result of a traditional I [misinterpretation of scripture; the remedy for such misin- | Iterpretation was a return to scripture itself, and thus j | I [Protestantism may always be contrasted with Catholicism on j | i [this single basis of scripturalism. Hooker therefore advo- J cated a kind of scripturalism so that the Anglican Church could justify the break from the continuous Roman tradition,, The singular benefit that hath grown unto the world, by receiving the laws of God even by his own appointment committed unto writing, we are not able to esteem as the value thereof deserveth. When the question therefore is, whether we be now to seek for any revealed law of God otherwhere than only in the sacred Scripture; whether we | do now stand bound in the sight of God to yield to tra- | ditions urged by the Church of Rome the same obedience ! I and reverence we do to his written law, honoring equally ! j and adoring both as divine: our answer is, No. (I, 265) j jse could not let it stand, however, at this anti-author itarian point. If the Bible by itself is sufficient to direct men to their salvation, if every man can work his ! own way out of the morass of sin without the guidance of an established religious authority, the argument for the ma chinery and the endowment of such an authority loses its significance. Therefore, two paragraphs after he had made the claim for the sufficiency of scripture, Hooker brought in the qualification that preserved the authoritarian bal ance of the Anglican Church. Oftentimes it hath been in very solemn manner disputed, whether all things necessary unto salvation be necessari ly set down in the Holy Scripture or no. If we define that necessary unto salvation, whereby the way to salva tion is in any sort made more plain, apparent, and easy to be known; then is there no part of true philosophy, no art of account, no kind of science rightly so called, but the Scripture must contain it. If only those things be necessary, as surely none else are, without the knowl edge and practice whereof it is not the will and pleasure of God to make any ordinary grant of salvation; it may be j notwithstanding and oftentimes hath been demanded, how I the books of Holy Scripture contain in them all necessary i things, when of things necessary the very chiefest is to J know what books we are bound to esteem holy; which point is confessed impossible for the Scripture itself to teachi (I, 267) It was on this level that the church could tutor the be liever in the ways of real faith; however, the Protestant emphasis on the force of scripture alone as a guide for the spiritual life was not obviated by Hooker’s making room for the Anglican authority. He was anxious to stress common sense and the availability of God’s word against the im- I puted sanctimonious thaumaturgy that Roman Catholicism had ! engendered under protective titles like "Apostolic Succes sion" and "Consecration." The Catholic adherence to Latin in the Mass and the preservation of the Bible in that j I tongue was sure indication of the degree to which the church iwould go to preserve the arcane and keep out the light; this all Protestants could agree upon. In the Aids Cole ridge noted, "religion becomes a Science of Shadows under the name of Theology. . .inaccessible and unintelligible to the majority of Christians" (p. 126). The Protestant direc tion was made freer and more understandable by dint of the closeness between the church and the worshipper; the com munication between the two was supposedly facilitated now where before it had been intentionally hampered. The Protestant attitude was amplified by Brinton: | The Roman Catholic Church had perverted Cod's word, but j fortunately that word was available, ready for transla tion into the living languages of Europe. With the Bible available in the vernacular, the priest no longer had the j monopoly he had enjoyed when only a Latin version exist ed. The great reformers, Wycliffe, Hus, Luther, Calvin, all made possible the wide circulation of the Bible in their native tongues. The printing press by the sixteenth century had begun to make something like mass production of Bibles possible. Any reader could now lay his hands on a Bible, (p. 63) The miraculous element of religion seemed diminished as a j I consequence, and a new reliance was placed on the fiat of j i common sense. Coleridge wrote Allsop that miracles could j ! retain their validity in the light of common sense, but that their validity depended for support upon a credible reli- ] gion. Miracles without such support tended to lapse into . witchcraft (I, 26). Hooker had said "all points of Chris- tian doctrine are either demonstrable conclusions or demon strative principles" (II, 304), and by this he meant to af firm the suppleness of new-found religious common sense. I One point of Christian doctrine that could never be demonstrated was that of transubstantiation, and every Pro testant from Luther on turned at least for a moment to de clare the impossibility of the doctrine's appeal for the sober Christian; the transubstantiation had been but anoth er means of mystifying the faithful. Coleridge was peremp tory when he dismissed the mystery with "eat a body by faith!" (English Divines. I, 297)• The Anglican spirit was equally incompatible with the mysteries of the sacramental 2oi system; the eueharist was held to be a sacrament, but as such it symbolized rather than conferred grace. It made the Presence rather elusive. Hooker attempted to concretize when he said simply that "the real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not therefore to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament" (II, 352). His difficulty, one shared by the early Protestants, was heightened by the fact that Luther anism had a somewhat different explanation. Luther had to repudiate transubstantiation principally because, as Brin- ton said, "it was so central a Catholic belief." He produced his own doctrine of oonsubstantiation. and de fended it with what we shall have to call late scholastic argumentation. Luther’s doctrine Uses the Latin con, "to gether with," instead of trans, "across, through." His thinking is hard to follow: The untrained layman has to understand that the elements are bread and wine together with the body and blood of Christ, are both natural and miraculous, really both, not just appearance. It is in some ways a typical compromiser’s doctrine, a rather emp ty effort to have a cake and eat it. (p. 71) Coleridge noted of the effort, that Luther "had to seek a murky hiding-hole in the figment of Oonsubstantiation" (English Divines. I, 80). Hooker appeared to put a distance between himself and the conflict between the con and the trans. referring to the conflict rather gelidly as "State of the Saoramentarian Controversy." The question is yet driven to a narrower issue, nor doth any thing rest doubtful but this, whether when the sacra ment is administered Christ be whole within man only, or else his body and blood be also externally seated in the very consecrated elements themselves; which opinion they 206] that defend are driven either to oonsubstantiate and in corporate Christ with elements sacramental, or to tran substantiate and change their substance into his; and so the one to hold him really but invisibly moulded up with the substance of those elements, the other to hide him under the only visible show of bread and wine, the sub stance whereof as they imagine is abolished and is suc ceeded in the same room. (II, 349-50) His conclusion was typical in spirit of the sound Anglican. All things considered and compared with that success which truth hath hitherto had by so bitter conflicts with errors in this point, shall I wish that men would more give themselves to meditate with silence what we have by the sacrament, and less to dispute of the manner how? (II, 350) As he drew back from the oonsubstantiation, Hooker yet spoke as a man of the Reformation. He stressed simplicity in all things, and this, according to J. H. Randall, was the real distinction between the Catholic and the Protes tant of that epoch. Religiously, the Reformation represented. . .first, a simplification of the body of Christian belief and an j emphasis upon the doctrine of salvation and its means as | the essentials, (p. 144) |Salvation emphasized the personal relationship between men and God; Luther had earnestly tried to bring the two closer together. He had moved to intensify the feeling of personal salvation, of personal responsibility, and of personal I guilt. In the beginning all Protestantism accepted his lead. The major Protestant faiths accepted the old Christian dogma of original sin. Calvin, we know, intensified the gloomier side of the Catholic view of animal man. Ex treme Calvinism is most pessimistic about man’s ability to lead the good life in this world. Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith was by no means an affirmation ; that men are born good, that they can by following their I natural desires find the best guide to life. Even at his i most anarchical moments, early in his struggle with Rome, Luther held to the doctrine of man's natural weakness. (Randall, p. 64) This doctrine of the tendency to evil made such a marvel ofj i i i the phenomenon of salvation chiefly because it was unde- j served. God would forget the utter loathsomeness of man and would yet save him. Man in return could do nothing to please or even to thank God; the whole miracle of salvation went on beyond man, and with this fact in mind Luther hoped to reveal all Catholic authoritarianism as an enormous cor ruption of pride. There was no legitimate cause for reli gious inequality; all men were equally sinful, and no man I could raise himself above others in order to give leader- j i ship or even to offer counsel. Men lived in sin and hoped for deliverance; thus the spirit of early Protestantism, Protestantism as it was later shaped by Calvin, was "at one with the medieval Church and absolutely opposed to the hu manistic spirit of the Renaissance, whose cardinal doctrine . . .was the dignity and worth of the natural man” (Ran dall, p. 145). Luther's restricted man desperately needed a rapport with the divine source of goodness since on his own he was incapable of generating anything but sin. The Catholic Church had denied the possibility of a direct rapport and had inserted between the individual and his God a whole priest class. At first Luther "appealed ,to free men________ because tie believed free men were all Luthers— quieter lit tle Luthers, not indeed so gifted, but still Luthers” (Brinton, Modern Mind, p. 63), but he soon learned that all men were not apt to assume the proper devotional attitude. He began to discover that free men wanted very different things, wanted social and economic equality, wanted hea ven on earth as soon as possible, wanted something more done about the problems of sex than just letting the j priests marry, wanted a lot he did not want them to want,! then Luther willingly supplied some intermediary between ! God and these benighted men. (p. 63) He supplied a host of externals and he demanded a conformi ty to them to guarantee salvation. The Protestant spirit was not one, then, which supplied from the first an invio late and purely spiritual affiliation between believer and deity. It quickly plugged gaps left by the withdrawing Ro man authority with an authority of its own devising. The !believer now had to prove that he wanted to conform, to be saved, by acknowledging a new intermediary, the Protestant church. In England this was to be what Bainton termed the "clue to doctrine.” The clue to doctrine is found in public worship. This is of itself indicative of the spirit of English comprehen sion which was not so much concerned to have everyone think alike as to act alike. Eternal salvation through correct belief was left to God and the individual, where as the public aspects of religion were regulated by the state, (p. 201) The Anglican Church focused on the external behavior and not on the inner spirituality of its adherents. The community of citizens obeying the law was of greater impor- tance than the activities of the community of saints and__ souls. For tJiis reason, common and public prayer always held an important place in the faith; it was a definite proof of the willingness of the people to follow the direc- ! tions of their spiritual leaders. "That which inwardly each man should be, the Church outwardly ought to testify," Hooker said (II, 29)* He was firm on the point: whereas the greatness and dignity of all manner actions is measured by the worthiness of the subject from which they proceed, and of the object where-about they are con versant, we must of necessity in both respects acknowl edge, that this present world affordeth not any thing j comparable unto the public duties of religion. (II, 29) Of public prayer he said: i When we publicly make our prayers, it cannot be but that ! we do it with much more comfort than in private, for that the things we ask publicly are approved as needful and good in the judgment of all, we hear them sought for and desired with common consent. (II, 117) Coleridge wrote in the English Divines: i | This is an especial trait of wisdom in the compiler of | our Liturgy: it was to be common prayer. Now, the spirit j i prayeth to the Spirit ineffably: but outward evils, takeni as God's trials or chastisements, are to all men intelli gible, and the combining them with devotional faith and feelings of the best practical influence. (II, 28) The ceremonies of the church also furthered the sta bility of the realm; they were not symbolic of any grace or magic or mystery. Ceremonies simply unified outward actions; As early as 1796 Coleridge wrote Thelwall, "you do not sup pose, I attribute any magic to ceremonies— or think the Priest married me— Great indeed are the moral uses of mar riage" (Col. Letters. I, 213). The ceremony inspired moral ity by creating an external standard that all would be [forced to meet. Though a man may not be married by the j ♦ i Priest, he would prove to his neighbors that he had been jmarried if he went through a ceremony that indicated a mar- Iriage had at some time taken place. Ceremonies, as Cole- Jridge stated in the English Divines, are best for the "con servation of order and civility, or to prevent confusion and unseemliness. . ." (I, 92). This Protestant attitude was designed to lift the ceremony from the context of Ro man supernaturalism but, at the same time, to retain for the church procedures a weight of authority. The Ecclesias- ’ tical Polity stated: j I Ceremonies have more in weight than in sight, they work I by commonness of use much, although in the several acts I of their usage we scarcely discern any good they do. And because the use which they have for the most part is not perfectly understood, superstition is apt to impute unto them greater virtue than indeed they have. Eor prevention whereof when we use this ceremony we always plainly ex- j press the end whereunto it serveth, namely, for a sign ' of remembrance to put us in mind of our duty. (II, 319) The same Protestantization of a Roman feature is evident in 1 i the treatment of the ordination of new priests; neither j Hooker nor Coleridge could assume the sacramental authority ( for the Anglican clergy without consequently identifying the clergy as heretical to the Roman faith. The claim of the Anglican Church had been that no man could assume di vine powers; thus the whole Catholic clergy had been raised upon fearfully exalted grounds. This was part of the justi fication for the split from Rome; still, some power had to remain in the English clergy, for the English Church was [ -21 + i basically hierarchical, and the clergy had to remain a step above the commonalty. So it is that we find Hooker saying, A thing much stumbled at in the manner of giving orders is our using those memorable words of our Lord and Sav iour Christ, ’Receive the Holy Ghost.’ The Holy Ghost : they say we cannot give, and therefore we ’foolishly' bid ! men receive it. . . .The 'Holy Ghost' may be used to sig nify not the Person alone but the gifts of the Holy Ghost i . • .and therefore he which giveth this power may say j without absurdity or folly 'Receive the Holy Ghost,' such: power as the Spirit of Christ hath endued his Church withal, such power as neither prince nor potentate, king nor Caesar on earth can give. (II, 460) Coleridge reasserted in the English Divines that the words i "Receive the Holy Ghost" constitute a "mere delegation of office, a mere legitimating acceptance and acknowledgment . . ." (I, 176). He finished, "the miraculous nature of the 1 giving does not depend on the particular kind or quality of* the gift received, much less demand that it should be con fined to the power of working miracles." It was the display of uniform intention and the control of a central authority! i that mattered in the ordination. Such display and control j was eternally pleasing to God; whether it was a procession, a group in common prayer, or the ceremonies attending the j investment of a church, the pomp of affluence was hearten ing to both the Creator and the creatures. "God doth not refuse to be honoured at all where there lacketh wealth; but where abundance and store is, he there requireth the flower therof, being bestowed on him, to be employed even unto the ornament of his service" (III, 291)* The adorned ; 1 temple is "the first permanent donation of honour" ! 212 (II, 485)* And Coleridge stressed the point for his time when he carefully drew attention to "the manifold desira bleness of parish Churches, with the material dignity that in a right state of Christian order would attach to them, as compared with meeting-houses, chapels, and the like • • •" (Divines. II, 108). The external act of submission to a simplified sacra mental procedure was another feature of empirical Anglican ism. After the inner conviction of justification by faith, the next critical step was a vivification through baptism. Baptism had probably its most effective use in serving to prove membership in the religious organization. Coleridge wrote in the Aids that the great value of baptism was in marking the believers as different from others in the world (p. 249). Baptism was a sacrament, Hooker had noted, and as such it offered a mark of distinction "to separate God’s own from strangers" (II, 256). It served to identify those to whom "God doth impart the vital or saving grace of Christ." This was the limit of the acceptability of the sacra ments: they were an aid, but they were not essential to salvation. Baptism set the believers apart, but it did not exist as a necessary instrument for the salvation of the soul. In Catholic theology, unbaptized infants that die are committed to Purgatory, a realm neither hell nor heaven but one of intermediary punishment. Hooker, with all 213 Protestants, refused to submit to the view that baptism alone is a saving sacrament; he did not accept the idea that God would hold an innocent child guilty of a sin it I i could neither understand nor commit by an act of the will. Here he disallowed both the Catholic sacramental system ! i ; and its extension to the ceremony of baptism. { Seeing grace is not absolutely tied unto sacraments, and j besides such is the lenity of God that unto things alto- j gether impossible he bindeth no man, but where we cannot I do what is enjoined us accepteth. . .a presumed desire that the sacrament of baptism might be given. . . .And of the will of God to impart his grace unto infants without baptism, in that case the very circumstance of their nat ural birth may serve as a just argument, whereupon it is not to be misliked that men in charitable presumption do j gather a great likelihood of their salvation, to whom the! benefit of Christian parentage being given. . .for we are; plainly taught of God, that the seed of faithful parent- j age is holy from the very birth. (II, 271-72) j Even when the parents were not of the faithful, baptism andj salvation were yet the due of the child. A wrong conceit, that none may receive the sacrament of baptism but they whose parents, at the least the one of them, are by the soundness of their religion and by their virtuous demeanour known to be men of God. . . .They should consider that God hath ordained baptism in favor of mankind. To restrain favors is an odious thing, to en large them acceptable both to God and man. (II, 313-14) Coleridge followed with: If baptism be a good, the denial of it is a misfortune: and is it Christian charity to add misfortune to misfor tune, and that to poor worse than orphan children? (English Divines. II, 34) Salvation, to Luther (and this still echoes in Angli can theology), was not a matter of one’s own devising: God saved man— man could only sense sin. The unborn infant could not be damned because it was absolutely powerless to will an evil act; when the infant grew in understanding, however, the Protestant leniency dissolved since the first actions that the child would freely perform would be evil ones. Before there could be salvation there had to be sin, and Luther knew that every man began in sin. Por Luther, the first step in the direction of salvation was the agony of insight into the desperateness of the human condition. j Depraved and fallen, the sin of Adam pressing him further j into the mire, man is miraculously retrieved through the compassion of a merciful creator. The creator and his di vinity give one perimeter to human life; the other perim eter is supplied by the devil. Man would seem to exist in a state of balance between absolute grace and utter horror. ! His life is shaped to these two great events, these two stirring moments. In the Aids. Coleridge wrote ’ ’the two ( great moments of the Christian Religion are, Original Sin and Redemption; that the Ground, this the Superstructure of our faith" (p. 206). He emphasized the part of Original Sin in Christian theology, a part which heightened the drama of the salvation. "Without just and distinct views respecting the Article of Original Sin, it is impossible to understand aright any one of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity" (Aids, p. 179). The definition that he gave to Original Sin in a let ter to his brother George in 1798 identified him at this 215 time more as an extremist than as the liberal theologian he was to become. He proposed with what might be called a sa vor of Augustinian predestination the low condition of man. Of GUILT I say nothing; but I believe most stedfastly [sic] in original Sin: that from our mother’s wombs our understandings are darkened; and even where our under standings are in the Light, that our organization is de praved, & our volitions imperfect; and we sometimes see the good without wishing to obtain it; . . .(Col, Let ters. I, 396) This constituted the real ’ ’inherent depravity.” These statements cast light upon the early tendency in Coleridge to share the Lutheran pessimistic view of man’s expectations for an earned salvation. But he could never have aligned this view with his more mature estimation of the ability of the human will, the strength of the human spirit. The Laws of the Ecclesiastical Polity was premised jon the strength of reason-guided man to determine truth and ja pattern that would lead him to salvation. Hooker, as we jhave seen, claimed an efficacy for second causes; man was not to be sacrificed to the arbitrary creator of a Calvin- istic predestinarian cosmos, nor was he to be saved by the good chance of an Election. There are that elevate too much the ordinary and immedi ate means of life, relying wholly upon the bare conceit of that eternal election, which notwithstanding includeth a subordination of means without which we are not actu ally brought to enjoy what God secretly did intend; and therefore to build upon God's election if we keep not ourselves to the ways which he hath appointed for men to walk in, is but a self-deceiving vanity. (II, 266) Man prospered as he exerted his free will for good or for jevil; he was not determined by either God or society in hisj- * i i actions. Aquinas had written in the Summa: Man is not ordained to the body politic, according to all that he is and has; and so it does not follow that every j action of his requires merit or demerit in relation to I the body politic. But all that man is, and can, and has, j must be referred to God: and therefore every action of i man, whether good or bad, acquires merit or demerit in the sight of God, as far as the action itself is con cerned. (1, II, q. a21 a. 4) The Lutheran and Galvinistic determinism stripped man of all his dignity, ran counter to the spirit of the sixteenth century humanists as well as to the spirit of the total Renaissance. Hooker chose to follow Aquinas and thus he seemed more a spokesman for Renaissance ideality than for ^ Reformation demonology. i It being therefore the will of God to make reasonable creatures the liveliest representations of his own per fection and glory; he assigned unto angels and men a state of the greatest happiness to be acquired by actions of most dignity. . . .(II, 566) If man chose actions that tended to misery rather than hap piness, he was the author of the misery for he was the pro ducer of the actions; he sinned by an act of his free will. Out of the liberty wherewith God by creation endued rea sonable creatures, angels and men, there ensued sin through their own voluntary choice of evil, neither by the appointment of God, nor yet without his permission* Rot by appointment, for it abhorreth from the nature of j God, to be outwardly a sharp and severe prohibitor, and I underhand an author of sin. (II, 567) - j Regardless of the voluntary nature of sin, Hooker could merely follow the rigid Protestant line in explaining the cause of Original Sin: Man may be free to choose and to 21 j act, yet man is not as free as Adam had been prior to tJie fall because the weaker strain of Adam is reposed in man from his birth. Adam is in us as an original cause of our nature, and of that corruption of nature which causeth death, Christ as the cause original of restoration to life; the person of Adam is not in us, but his nature, and the corruption of his nature derived unto all men by propagation. • • . (II* 250) Man chooses to sin, to follow the error of an Original Sin, yet he cannot choose anything else for his nature is, in regard to this one sin, corrupted. The Protestant tradition of the sixteenth century was in no way discomfited by such an admission as the innate depravity of man, since man was held to be conceived in wrong and error, and his every ac tion verified his fallen nature. Original Sin was treated as an historic fact; as such there was no way for Hooker, who certainly deviated from the strict construction of Luther on man’s depravity to avoid the paradox of a free and yet bound will. Coleridge went beyond the Laws of Eccle siastical Polity on this matter of the Original Sin; in this he was indebted to his German background, for he began not with Adam's transgression but, rather, with act. By be ginning with act Coleridge was able to shift justifiably the onus of Original Sin to man. The human will, rather than the human character as historically developed from Adam, recreated Original Sin in every man; the will and not human depravity was the common ground of the sin of Adam. r 218 Coleridge did not choose to relate how the human will was connected with the will of Adam; he preferred to leave Original Sin as a wilful act common to all men and to refer to its relationship with the first sinner as a mystery. This may not have been wholly reliable theology, but it did i destroy any deterministic traces in the Christian dogma of Original Sin. He wrote in the Aids: A moral evil is an evil that has its origin in a Will. An, evil common to all must have a common ground to all. But the actual existence of moral evil we are bound in con- ! science 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 Di- j vine Will: it must therefore be referred to the Will of j man. And this evil ground we call Original Sin. It is a I mystery, that is, a fact, which we see, but cannot ex plain; and the doctrine a truth which we apprehend, but j can neither comprehend nor communicate, {p. 192) i The doctrine of Original Sin Coleridge held to be necessary for any ethics: "The doctrine. . .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 recognized" (Aids, p. 193)• This dogma is preserved in the most en lightened societies; the nature of moral evil and of good is realized only by the chosen groups. Wherever there exists a permanent learned class, having authority and possessing the respect and confidence of the country; and wherever the science of Ethics is ac knowledged , and taught. . .there the Article of Original Sin will be an AXIOM of Faith in all classes. (Aids, p. 198) He hardly need have pointed out that in England this | learned and permanent class was the Anglican ministry: theological facility was but another justification for the continued existence of the established clergy. A man without a will ceases to be a man; this is the instrument that God has placed within him to fulfill him- j s i self as a man. The fulfillment comes with free choice; even; when man chooses evil he does not become less a man. He may be evil, but he is still human. However, should man benefit from everlasting good or suffer from unending evil as a re sult of an act of someone else’s will (God's, for instance) he would lose his humanity. Good or evil in the world must be the result of the working of God's second causes, the | ! wills of men. Hegel expressed* this as a discontent with the notion of an unwilled paradise. Knowledge, as the disannulling of the unity of mere na ture, is the Kail, which is no causal conception, but thej eternal history of spirit. For the state of innocence, ! the paradisaical condition, is that of the brute. Para- i dise is a park, where only brutes, not men, can remain. (Quoted in Myth of the State, p. 320) Paradise must be striven for but never attained; in the same vein, Original Sin must really be viewed as an objec tive. It cannot be inherited. The concept of an historical ly transmitted sin is shattered by the focus on act, just as a historically continued paradise is. Coleridge affirmed in his English Divines: "What Adam did, I doubt not, we all do. Time is not with things of spirit" (I, 261). An aware ness of the propensity to violate the divine dictates 220: gives the individual the keenest tool for relating the past with the present, for making human action intelligible. i ! A Fall of some sort or other— the creation, as it were, j of the non-absolute— is the fundamental postulate of the i moral history of Man. Without this hypothesis, Man is un- ! intelligible; with it every phenomenon is explicable. (Table Talk, p. 65) In the Aids he had earlier fashioned the historical sense out of the sense of sin: ” Original Sin is the first— I had almost said, spontaneous— Product of the application of I moral science to history, of which it is the interpreter” j i (p. 198). From its inception the Protestant tradition evolved a dialectic which placed the burden for the world’s ills on man, and the praise for life’s glories on God. Politically, this had the alarming effect of promoting a rebellion against instituted authority if the authority seemed to lead men deeper into sin. Men needed all the spiritual aid that they could get, and so Calvin proposed a state in Ge neva which could guarantee this spiritual aid; it was a state that could serve as a model for other states through out the world. States that used religion merely to gain a unanimity of national action were abhorrent to the Calvin ists, and when they indicated that elements of simple re ligious expediency were become apparent they meant that soon it would be time to effect a replacement. For the ex treme Protestants of reforming propensities the sense of sin was a most important sense; some of it is yet to be____ . . 221 found in the polities of Hooker and Coleridge and they were certainly not reformers. But the force of the Protestant immediacy of sin came into the theology of the Anglican Church during the sixteenth century, and it was never to be| ; gainsaid. Coleridge, writing in the Anima Poetae. confessedj j that he made his break with the Unitarians on the basis of j i their inadequate sense of sin (p. 259)• The belief in the freedom of the will was enervated if there was no sense of sin for a will in an all-good universe simply had the pal lid choice between good and better. The free will defined the human element in man and it also served to explain the need for a central authority in political and religious life. The Fall created a need for a code of conduct and for} i an agency to complement and to modify the code. The Fall of man concretized the need for the governance of man. Some branches of the early Protestant movement lay the greatest emphasis on the depravity of the human being, while Angli canism simply noted the depravity, saw in it a justifica tion for a steadily maintained code to rule over natural evil propensities, and moved on to explore the effective- * ness of human reason and the merits of human institutions. If man unaided could tend toward either the good or the bad with equal celerity, then organization would' bring him nearer the good: it was organization that the Anglican Church got from the Roman Catholic Church; it was organiza- tion in philosophy that the Anglican apologists adopted____ 2221 from the Scholastics. Both of these were basically hostile to the Protestant scheme as Martin Luther had envisioned it, who had begun with a drive against organizations and, according to some, against coherent ideas organized and ex pressed systematically. Crane Brinton writes: No Protestant of the early years could wholly disavow the fact of his own rebellion, a rebellion each individual had to decide to make. Luther, who had the man of ac tion's indifference toward philosophical consistency, an indifference that seems to the logical person almost a kind of stupidity, frankly put the case for revolt in its most risky terms. (Modern Mind, p. 62) Puritanism carried on the rebellion after it had been muf fled by the reconciliation in Saxony between Lutheran Church and State. Though Calvin had more respect for logic,j V and perhaps more patience with philosophy (though this may j ! certainly be disputed), he denuded the human mind and made Puritanism a living threat in England, not by demanding ' i j jpolitical revolution, but by sanctioning counter-government 1 j action for moral purposes on the basis of emotional rather { than logical certainty. The Puritans never relinquished the ground of private as opposed to public reason, and for them the private reason seems never to have been differentiated from private enthusiasm. Puritanism never deviated from its } appeal to the hidden life that lay beyond the regimented reason. It made men want things; it made men want to feel t the need to be saved; it made men feel the possibility of a covenant; it made men feel the horror of the corruption and the living death of the established ecclesiastical and lay jauthorities when those authorities seemed to withstand the divine command to further the fortunes of the Discipline. "By following the law of private reason," Hooker pressed, "where the law of public should take place, they breed dis turbance" (I, 282). The growing force was directed at es tablishing a tyranny; Hooker defined tyranny as "power vio lently exercisedcagainst order, against law. . ." (Ill, 235). All anti-institutional Christianity developed a power built upon emotional appeal, built upon the disordered mem bers of society who wished some sort of change. There was nothing theoretical in the aims of the extremists; "when was power possessed and not exercised?" asked Coleridge (Own Times, I, 140), From the moment a movement spoke to the faith rather than the reason in man, Coleridge main tained, the movement was ambitious of the .absolute control of the state. There is little doubt that Puritanism did jaddress the human faith and did strive rather to bring man closer to feeling his spiritual needs than to advance a logical system to prove his needs. The Puritan movement, in its various phases, has evinced itself to be a movement towards immediacy in relation to God, The same fact appears in the contemporary discussion concerning what was called a merely historical, as op posed to a justifying, faith. Men felt keenly that it was insufficient to believe in the gospel simply as a true story of what happened once long ago. If the gospel were to be powerful and saving, it must be realized as 224- affecting the believer now and particularly. . . .1 The distrust that an appeal to faith over reason inspired was constant among men who supported the Establishment whether for primarily secular or religious motives. Hobbes in the Leviathan instructed his age that the commonwealth was positively weakened by the encouragement of faith and the neglect of study.2 Faith weakened the corporate well being by elevating the individual ego above the group au thority, and by ascribing to the personality powers of in sight and comprehension that were denied the recognized authorities. If an individual has faith, and this is ac cented in the Puritan system, his operations are determined essentially by feeling. As we may see by the hundreds of j diaries kept by the English Puritan families, feeling was stimulated by the Puritans; feeling was overwhelming to them; feeling was sifted and diagnosed, and granted noetic urgency. The validity of the feeling did not, of course, j find a more moderate appraisal in the nineteenth century. Here the cult of personality built upon the early high es timation of feeling, the response of the ego, the anguish of subjective experience, and drew away from all central control just as the Puritans had done centuries earlier. I ^•Geoffrey F. Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith t and Experience (Oxford, 1946'), pp. 134-35• ^In English Works, ed. Sir William Molesworth (London, 1839), III, 311.__________________________ _____________ . 225 Coleridge called his age "emphatically the age of personal ity" (Friend, p. 328), which meant that reason was suffer ing another depredation. The ego was swelling, and the country was beginning to pursue the irrational course sug gested by so much undue sensibility, Alas! how many are there in this over-stimulated age, in which the occurrence of excessive and unhealthy sensi tiveness is so frequent, as even to have reversed the current meaning of the word, nervous. . , .Sensibility is not necessarily Benevolence. Nay, by rendering us trem blingly alive to trifling misfortunes, it frequently pre vents it, and induces an effeminate Selfishness instead. . . .(Aids. p. 23) He took what must be called a most un-romantic view of the import of Lawrence Sterne's work. All the evil achieved by Hobbes, and the whole School of Materialists will appear inconsiderable, if it be com pared with the mischief effected and occasioned by the sentimental Philosophy of STERNE, and his numerous imita tors. (Aids, p. 24) Although he was capable of producing a Remorse on demand he was opposed in his earliest years to the obtuse sensitivity that found expression in "undisciplined benevolence." In an essay printed in 1795 he wrote: Enthusiasm, even in the gentlest temper, will frequently generate sensations of an unkindly order. • • .The ardour of undisciplined benevolence seduces us into malignity: and whenever our hearts are warm, and our objects great and excellent, intolerance is the sin that does most easily beset us. (Own Times, I, 9-10) The emotional involvements of the radical religious sects of his time were as divisive as Puritanism had been in Hooker's age. There was a continuity in the "vague emo tionalism of the evangelist, with its distrust of ------- , ---------- : 226 I philosophy and art" (Biographia. I, Ixxxvii) from the six teenth century to the nineteenth. Politically or religious ly, as Brooks Adams noted, the Puritans were bold in their passion and unabashed in their illogies The political radicalism of the period derived its strength, in so far as it found significant literary ex pression, from a passion for liberty and not the success with which it forged its logical system* (p. 4) These radicals did not miss logic, for they had early supplanted it by a vision. Ho matter that what they worked for and promised was impossible of achievement; the vision never lost its currency. "If men did repent as they ought, they must endeavour to purge the earth of all manner of ev il, to the end there might follow a new world afterward* wherein righteousness only should dwell" (E. P.. I, 183). Three centuries later visionaries still skirted logical grounds and captured the imagination, the emotional propen-r sities of men. In Saint Paul and Protestantism Matthew Ar nold complaineds "What in St. Paul is figure and belongs to the sphere of feeling, Puritanism has transported into the sphere of intellect and made formula" (p. 6). The Puritans, he argued, have always been incapable of sensing the theo logical souree for Protestantism, St. Paul. They have made a considerable portion of Protestantism irrational and il liberal: Puritanism, "with its three notable tenets of pre destination, original sin, and justification. . .has been pounding away for three centuries at St. Paul's wrong jwords, and missing M s essential doctrine” (p. 101). f The enormity of these Puritan misconceptions was em phasized by Coleridge when he wrote of the doctrine of the I Elect: how could the Puritans "yet not run mad at the hor rid thought of an innumerable multitude of imperishable self-conscious spirits everlastingly excluded from God .... (English Divines. II, 52). It was not rational that any group could forget the lesson it was attempting to make universal; it was not rational even to attempt to make such lessons universal. But reason notwithstanding, Calvin raised faith to the level of logic by making the testimo nium Spiritus Sancti the essential, the irreplaceable guide i where previously reason alone had operated. In conformity to the Occamist and the Lutheran hypothesis of the insuf- I ficiency of universal reason, Calvin delimited truth so that it took the small shape of an individual response. Men lived individually, atomically, moment to moment, cre ating short-lived and subjective truths. They did not share in a group intellect, nor did they mutually construct a i * group experience. Coleridge, as something of an advocate ofj the Realism which had contradicted nominalism, wholeheart edly disapproved of Calvinism. Calvinists were unable to state a satisfactory theory of Original Sin; such a state ment, for Coleridge, was absolutely necessary for an under- i standing of Christianity itself. "Where Private Interprets-| i tion is everything and the Church nothing— there the j 226 mystery of Original Sin will be either rejected, or evaded or perverted* • . ” (Aids, pp. 100-101). He wrote Allsop: "Original Sin is best^explained by deprivation of the will. Calvinism, or the belief in election, is not simply blas phemy, but superfstation of blasphemy” (Col. Letters. I, 100-01). Galvin appeared to function as a symbol of an ago- driven subjectivism. A Marat is every man who on the ground of speculative convictions dares authorize the punishment and subversion of all who hold and act on opposite convictions. This Calvin did— justifying himself by the example of whom?— of God: presumptuously forgetting that he, Calvin, was not God. (Inquiring Spirit, p. 130) Coleridge rejected Calvin because of his isolative subjectivism, his egomania that had led him, as it led oth er fanatics, to attempt to legislate for all men as though they were but images of himself. For somewhat similar rea sons, Coleridge rejected the romantic theory of frenzied genius germane to all great artistic productions. He wrote in the English Divines, a work dedicated for the most part to churchcraft and theology, ”no two qualities are more contrary than genius and fanaticism” (I, 337). He was not at the moment thinking only about the church; he did not believe in the necessary separation of aesthetics and re ligion. In the Aida, a work directed along religious lines, he confided: "Were it my task to form the mind of a young man of talent” it would be my duty to bring together ”all the passages scattered throughout the 229 writings of Swift and Butler, that bear on Enthusiasm, Spiritual Operations, and pretences to the Gifts of the Spirit, with the whole train of Hew Lights, Raptures, Ex periences, and the like" (p. 46). An underlying frenzy was common to both the artistic and the religious enthusiast. In fact, they shared more than mere frenzy, the one providing the way for the other. According to Irving Babbitt, "the view of genius as merely a temperamental overflow is as a matter of fact only a caricature of the doctrine of grace,"3 Grace was uninhibit ed, uncontrolled by human effort; it tinged with divinity human insight, and it came only after a manifestation of human faith. From the justification by faith alone the se quence is direct through the elevation of personal feeling and the minimization of formal reasoning, to the artistic demand for freedom and the political cry for individual action. Within the political context, the subjective force must ultimately come to a point of variance with the cen tral authority of the Church and State, for authority is prime in its frustration of the single ego. Rufus Matthew Jones noted; The same principle which disturbs the order of civil gov ernment breaks the peace of the Church. When it operates against the state, it is called the power of the people; but in religion it is called private judgement fsiol, and sometimes conscience; but it always acts against the 3Rousseau and Romanticism (New York, 1919)» P« 64. 2301 judgement of authority.^ This added to the timbre of radical dissent in the nine teenth century as it had in the sixteenth, and, consequent ly, it provided a direct link between both ages by pro- j ducing ,a universal type. Coleridge was not concerned with j i an undeviating terminology, for he felt that he discerned the ubiquitous rebel in the Calvinist and in what he liked to call the "Jacobin.” Enlist the interests of stern morality and religious en thusiasm in the cause of political liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible; but the Jacobins played the whole game of religion, and morals, and domestic happiness into the hands of the aristocrats. Thank God that they did so. England was saved from civil war by their enormous, their providen tial, blundering. (Table Talk, pp. 71-72) Again he looked back to the first decades of the nineteenth century with a sense of dangers surmounted. It was God’s mercy to our age that our Jacobins were in fidels and a scandal to all sober Christians. Had they been like the old Puritans, they would have trodden church and king to the dust— at least for a time. (Table Talk, p. 170) The Calvinists had been able to count on an enormous popular mandate and to derive most of their power from it because they had gone to the individual rather than to the group and had appeared to make as the categorical impera tive the idea that one individual had equal weight with the I whole community. One man’s honest feelings were held to be ^Mysticism and Democracy in The English Commonwealth (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), p. 11. 1 231 of more authority in, at first spiritual, and later politi cal affairs than the carefully culled tradition of accepted practices* Cardinal Newman wrote: The possession of power naturally tends to the dissolu tion of all confidence; how much more so then in the case of a party, which is not only open to the wilfullness and rivalries of our frail nature, but which actually sancti fies them by propounding as a first principle that in spirituals no man is really above another, but that each individual, from high to low, is both privileged and bound to make out his religious views for himself? (p. 418) This levelling and this repudiation of any intellectual au thority were characteristic of the opponents who faced first Hooker and then Coleridge. The Friend was direct in indicting the subjectivism that impelled a man to raise his personal reactions above the established tenets. In both religion and politics the results would always be the same: heedless individualism would find itself opposing the uni versal order. All the positive institutions and regulations, which the prudence of our ancestors had provided, are declared to be erroneous or interested perversions of the natural re lations of man; and the whole is delivered over to the faculty which all men possess, namely, the common sense or universal reason. The science of politics, it is said, is but the application of the common sense, which every man possesses, to a subject in which every man is con cerned. . . .The commonest human intellect, therefore, suffices for a perfect insight into the whole science of civil polity, and qualifies the possessor to sit in judgment on the constitution and administration of his own country, and of all other nations, (p. 194) The Puritans assured the community that they could best di rect the affairs of Church and State, for they not only had the common sense necessary but special enlightenment as well. This special grant of illumination was what Coleridge termed "New Lights, Raptures, Experiences, and the like." If the Church, wrote Hooker, Did give every man license to follow what himself imagin- eth that 'God’s Spirit doth reveal’ unto him, or what he supposeth that God is likely to have revealed to some special person whose virtues deserve to be highly esteem- ed: what other effect could hereupon ensue, but the utter confusion of his Church under pretence of being taught, led, and guided by his Spirit? (II, 41) ! This inner justification by emotion was strong enough to inspire men in any false cause and toward any dangerous ac tion. My purpose herein is to show that when the minds of men are erroneously persuaded that it is the will of God to have those things done which they fancy, their opinions are as thorns in their sides, never suffering them to take rest till they have brought their speculations into practice. (I, 189-90) j Hooker was aware of the hold that Calvinism could exert on the popular mind, and he knew how such a hold could be made i I into a threat to the general peace. Shirley wrote, "Hooker could not allow the people any control, other than in their representative assemblies; the sixteenth century could not afford it, and in England times were too dangerous" (p. 101). For these reasons the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity opened with: He that goeth about to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers. . . .That which wanteth in the weight of their speech, is supplied by the: aptness of men’s minds to accept and believe it. (I, 198) I Coleridge was equally uncertain of the discriminatory power '2531 * t of the multitude in his Lay Sermons. Mobs have no memories. They are in nearly the same state as that of an individual when he makes (what is termed) a bull. The passions, like a fused metal, fill up the wide interstices of thought, and supply the defective links. • • .(p. 163) Men who were led by the force of emotions rather than guided by the line of reason could never brook delay, the "slow and tedious help of proceeding by public authority." Instead, they were inflamed gladly with "the people’s more quick endeavour for alteration. . ." (E. P.. I, 171). Emotion led men into a rigid sectarianism, an advocacy of any measure that furthered the party, and it finally led back to the worship of the single ego. Coleridge emphasized i this idea in the Aids: | He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all. (p. 66) The sectarian mode of emotion was not confined to religion;! i "the error of all sects, whether in religion or in philoso phy, is commonly to be found. . .not in’the positions, but in the impositions" (Inquiring Spirit, p. 412). Such was the danger of the age of Hooker as Coleridge viewed it. » "The Reformation in the sixteenth century narrowed Reform. As soon as men began to call themselves names, all hope of further amendment was lost" (Table Talk, p. 55). The radical political and religious forces had foster ed the people’s unreasoned emotional reactions. There was t ja direct danger to the state in this. People made the mis- Jtake of judging the worth of everything in terms of the i present or the momentary needs that were satisfied. Every custom, every social organization, every organized author ity had to make explicit its utility for the moment. The Lutheran attitude had enormously increased the sense of the present at the moment that it had alienated the historic sense. This followed the passionate belief that the begin ning of salvation came upon man in the first moment of his !acute awareness of the crisis of the now. i ! j In this opening awareness, all the span of history could be obliterated and the Christian totality of sin and atonement would sweep over the ready soul in one bursting instant. The present destroyed the past, and in the politi cal area this had the effect of removing the need to pre- t serve traditions, to hearken to the lessons of history, and; ! even to obey the laws if their only merit lay in their an- | i tiquity. One other tenet of Protestantism could possibly have destroyed these needs. Men, if they submitted to a worthy self-abasement, could aspire to a more or less in timate relationship with God. This was much more than his toric precedent seemed to offer; Luther and Calvin said ; that it was possible now, or in the future. Therefore, why struggle to reach an understanding of the past concepts of God, the distant God of the Roman tradition? As a result of the proposed intimacy between sinner and creator, there _ _ _ _____ 255 developed "an emphasis on the spiritual enjoyment of God to the neglect of the claims of law and history.” It became the task of first Hooker and then Coleridge to drive for a recognition of these very claims. And it is their preoccupation with law, history, and custom that di- j rects their Protestant belief so distinctly away from the acute and atomic individualism of a Luther. Their Protes tantism protests the loss of nationality to a central re ligious organization located outside England, but this is all. Could Elizabeth have been Pope, Hooker would have taken all seven sacraments as well as vows of celibacy. He had gone so far in Catholic theory,'that a step or two in the practice of the faith would hardly have been noticed. For Coleridge, a Catholic England would probably have made ivery little difference since he had already followed Hook- ! Jer in theory. As to the practices of the religion, he like ly would have behaved as independently as he did as an An glican: he desired the stability of the organization, but not the routine of the worship. It was the organization that drew the two men together in emphasis at the same time that it drew them apart from the conventional Protestant dialectic. This will be quite clear in the next chapter, one which details the authority of law, privilege, and his tory as they fit into the ecclesiastical polities. CHAPTER VI AUTHORITARIANISM IN HOOKER AND COLERIDGE Early in the first book of the Ecclesiastical Polity Richard Hooker affirmed what for his system was a critical necessity, the eternal and immutable order of the universe. We see the whole world and each part thereof so compacted, that as long as each thing performeth only that work which is natural unto it, it thereby preserveth both oth er things and also itself. Contrariwise, let any princi pal thing, as the sun, the moon, any one of the heavens or elements, but once cease or fall, or swerve, and who doth not easily conceive that the sequel thereof would be ruin both to itself and whatsoever dependeth on it? (I, 237) The strict placement of planets and sun in orbit and their continuance was taken as direct proof of the planned order for human political existence. The moon circled the earth and did not swerve and, therefore, was fulfilling itself by functioning according to God's plan. A man submitted to his appointed superiors and he too discovered fulfillment in obedience. He learned happiness as he fitted himself into his place in a divinely structured society. This, according to Hooker, established regulation as the accompanying mode for human bliss, or as Shirley noted: Hooker was eminently an authoritarian; his philosophic position demanded above all things a submission to the higher powers, just because he regarded order as *a gradual disposition,' and the whole creation as 237 hierarchical in form. (pp. 130-31) The hierarchy of sun, stars, kings, and men, a com pletely medieval concept, was restated by Coleridge, who un hesitatingly repeated the theme of one order expanding throughout the universe, linking celestial and terrene ex istence. The Aids held: It is a poor, base thing for a man to seek himself; far below that royal dignity that is here put upon Christians, and that priesthood joined with it. . . .The several creatures bear their part in this; the sun says somewhat, and moon and stars, yea, the lowest have some share in it, (p. 175) For both Hooker and Coleridge the highest aristocratic lev el on earth was the ecclesiastical one. The king, as head of the Church with the State, was principal in the land, and he was followed closely by the ranking prelates. Hooker wrote: Now forasmuch as according to the ancient orders and cus toms of this land, as of the kingdom of Israel, and of all Christian kingdoms through the world, the next in de gree of honour unto the chief sovereign are the chief prelates of God's Church. . . .(Ill, 264) In this there was ample justification for all high offices that the prelates could hold, secular as well as ecclesi astical. The dual office-holding of religious functionaries had been vehemently rebuked by the sixteenth (and later the nineteenth-century) radicals. For the Puritans the most un equivocal and damning charge to be applied to worldly cler ics who accepted temporal offices and emoluments was pride. The nineteenth-century dissentients charged luxury-seeking and corruption to the same offense. Had the prelates ac cepted the offices as churchmen then the charges would have perhaps come near substantiation; as it was, the double na ture of the Establishment permitted them to function as i I civil dignitaries as well as clerics. And when Coleridge ! defended the civil holdings of the prelates he made full use of the joint appointments, just as defenders of Eliza beths church had done. j 0, that our clergy did but know and see that their titles and glebes belong to them as officers and functionaries of the nationality,— as clerks, and not exclusively as theologians, and not at all as ministers of the Gospel;— but that they are likewise ministers of the Church of Christ, and that their claims and the powers of that Church are no more alienated or affected by their being at the same time the established clergy, than they are by the common coincidence of being justices of the peace, or heirs to an estate, or stock-holdersl (English Di vines. I, 88) Whitgift had earlier answered Cartwright: I have before declared that such civil offices as be now committed to bishops and other of the clergy be necessary helps to their other callings, and most profitable for the good and quiet government of the church. . . .(Ill, 421) Beyond just affirming the need for bishops to hold es tates and civil offices, Hooker and Coleridge after him more fully justified the dual operations of the ranking prelacy than anyone else had done. They first, and with i least complications, urged the proof from historical pre- j cedent of the seemliness of office-holding bishops. "In the; prime of the world,” Hooker intoned, "kings and civil rul ers were priests for the most part" (III, 250). It was 239 suitable that the civil and ecclesiastical powers should co exist ideally in one functionary. Hooker wrote, ; if judgment of secular affairs should be committed unto wise men, unto men of chiefest credit and account amongst i | them, when the pastors of their souls are such, who more j J fit to be also their judges for the ending of strifes? j 1 The wisest in things divine may be also in things human | the most skilful. (Ill, 237-38) j jcoleridge, in the Constitution of the Church and State, ac-| !cording to the idea of each, followed this reasoning: "Two ! I distinct functions do not necessarily imply or require two ' i different functionaries: nay, the perfection of each may require the union of both in the same person." The last ar- I gument was the de facto argument: "Conjunction of power j ecclesiastical and civil, what law is there which hath not J at some time or other allowed as a thing convenient and meet?" (II, 250). And in Coleridge's flat justification, we i find, "they are spiritual pastors, by power of the spirits 1 ruling the flocks committed to their charge; but they are j temporal Peers and Prelates" (Church and State, p. 104). This privileged order of men, the ranking prelates, was able to command authority in both the ecclesiastical and secular realms because it brought up the level of soci- j ety more than any other group; it humanized society, and, in a sense, it justified the social organization by giving it a richness that solitary life lacked. Hooker said: Of every politic society that being true which Aristotle ^•In Complete Works, VI, 61. 240 hath, namely 'that the scope thereof is not simply to live, nor the duty so much to provide for life, as for means of living well.' (Ill, 332) The clergy provided the better life by sustaining the soul, but also by catering to the reason through a program of learning. The clergy, when composed of the learned, ele vated the society in which it was operant because learning guided all men and provided a link with the past glory of the nation. "What shall become of that commonwealth or church in the end, which hath not the eye of learning to beautify, guide and direct it?" Hooker asked of the Puritan partisans who threatened all learning (III, 317)• It is not "altogether without cause that so many do fear the over throw of all learning as a threatened sequel of this your intended discipline," he asserted (I, 178). Without learn ing there was scant humanity: For whatsoever we may imagine in our private closets or talk for communication's sake at our boards, yea or write in our books through a notional conceit of things needful for performance of each man's duty, if once we come from the theory of learning to take out so many learned men, let them be diligently viewed out of whom the choice shall be made, and thereby an estimate made what degree of skill we must either admit or else leave numbers utterly destitute of guides, and I doubt not but that men endued with sense of common equity will soon discern that besides eminent and competent knowledge we are to descend to a lower step, receiving knowledge in that degree which is but tolerable. (II, 516) It was not learning merely as a guide that would be lacking, but learning as a cultural force. The most interesting part of Hooker's claim here is that the clergy preserves learn ing; it is the repository for the national culture. F 24T i I jColeridge renewed this claim. He followed Hooker rather com pletely, and he was not, as Kathleen Coburn asserted, the first to offer the idea "of the Church as the mother of philosophy and arts and learning, as well as the nurse of faith and piety. . ." (p. 57) • The clergy*s duty, Coleridge I had written in his Church and State, was "especially to diffuse through the whole community and to every nature en titled to its laws and rights that quantity and quality of knowledge which was indispensable both for the understand- | I ing of those rights, and for the performance of the duties j correspondent. . (p. 52). In the Lay Sermons he termed the clergy "the conservators of the national faith, and the accredited representatives of learning in general amongst us. • ." (p. 116). He noted the tradition for such valuable work. In the middle ages the church had been the force that protected culture from "the barbarism and ignorance of the times" (Table Talk, p. 102). The clergy viewed in this light did not fit into the policeman theory of religion so popular with arch-conser vatives of the tendencies of Hobbes, Bishop Watson, and Burke. As L. S. Thornton stated, i Modern Erastians who regard the English clergy as offi- j cials appointed by the State to maintain a national es- J tablishment have no right to elaim Hooker as their spiri tual father.2 I 2Richard Hooker. A Study of His Theology (London, 1924) 91. i The clergy as envisioned by Hooker, and similarly viewed by Coleridge, did not have to enforce obedience; men were rea sonable and they could direct their own relationships with the state. The clergy was free, therefore, to bring spirit uality and humanity to the faithful; it did not deal in fear or in discipline. It served also as an ornament to the state; this again was singular to Hooker and Coleridge. Hooker advanced his ideal clergy, and concluded: Wherefore if the clergy CbeJ a beautifying unto the body of this commonweal in the eyes of foreign beholders, and if in the clergy the prelacy be most exposed unto the world*s eye, what public benefit doth grow from that or der, in regard of reputation thereby gotten to the land from abroad, we may soon conjecture. (Ill, 269) Coleridge repeated this with perhaps more emphasis on stri dent nationalism. The clergy must secure, he wrote in the Church and State. for the nation, if not a superiority over the neighboring states, yet an equality at least, in that character of general civilization, which equally with, or rather more than, fleets, armies, and revenue, forms the ground of its defensive and offensive power, (p. 52) In this single work, The Constitution of Church and State (1824), Coleridge appeared to divide the spiritual from the cultural or humanizing activities of the clergy and to elevate the one at the expense of the other. This division paralleled one made in the same work of the "Na tional" Church and the "Christian" Church. Willey remarked of the division in his Nineteenth Century Background: Coleridge's 'National Church,* then, is a comprehensive (and perhaps rather ill-chosen) term covering all those ! educational and cultural influences for tide maintenance j of which the State must set aside adequate funds, (p. 46) I Earlier, in the notes on the divines, Coleridge seemed to waver from Hooker*s definition; he had pondered, **is a na- j tional Church, established by law, compatible with Christi- ! ;anity?** (II, 99)* The national Church was the visible i { church, the hierarchical and, it would appear, the totally j mundane church. By direct contrast, the Christian Church was beyond the mundane sphere, and seemed **a blessed acci- j i dent.” It was, as well, j 1 a providential boon, a grace of God, a mighty and faith- i ful friend, the envoy indeed, and liege subject of an- ! other State, but which can neither administer the laws | nor promote the ends of this other State which is not of | the world. . . .It is the appointed opposite to the I world — the sustaining, correcting, befriending oppo- j site. . . .(Church and State, p. 60} i Had he always emphasized the invisible over the visible church he would never have been able to codify an ecclesi- ! astical polity. An emphasis on the invisible Christian Church within the context of a state-supported Church leads to an untenable ground and to a one-sidedness that is pro ductive of superstition. If the mystical aspect of Chris tianity is the sole aspect associated with an established church then the members of that church are more partners in a mystical brotherhood than believers in a demonstrably effective religious organization. Coleridge*s "Christian** Church, an idealization that he indulged momentarily, would; have led incontrovertibly to the religious relationship 244 that joins men not in union with one another for the pro fession of faith, but rather in the scintillant relation ship with God or one of his angels that is the spoken ob jective of every mystic. He admitted in the Anima Poetae that under the conditions of this relationship ”we detach ourselves spiritually not merely from our rank, but even from our body, and from the whole world of sense!” (p. 195)« This was not a practical objective for the believers in the state church in the nineteenth century, and Coleridge had admitted in a letter to Josiah Wedgwood in 1799 that, the consequences of Christianity or a World-Religion as opposed to a National Religion appear to me universally this— Personal and domestic Duties are far better attend ed to, but Patriotism & all Enthusiasm for the aggrand isement of a country as a country, are weakened or extin guished. . . .In Christian Countries an excellent Private Character totally devoid of all public Spirit is the most common of characters. (Col. Letters. I, 465) In May of 1834, less than two months before his death, he asserted the mutual dependence between the two species of church that he had for a time discerned and elaborated. The National Church requires, and is required by, the Christian Church for the perfection of each. For if there were no national Church, the mere spiritual Church would either become, like the Papacy, a dreadful tyranny over mind and body;— or else would fall abroad into a multi tude of enthusiastic sects, as in England in the seven teenth century. (Table Talk, p. 286) The Christian Church was an expression of an ideal; it did not have to prove itself an effective force for pro moting social order, and so it did not function as a varie ty of central authority though this it certainly was. The Christian Church as envisioned by Coleridge in the Church and State enjoyed all of the conveniences of an authoritar- jian body without providing itself with them: it bound men I I without seeming to coerce them. Hooker took time to note i this ideal portion of the church as he contrasted the church with the state, and as he did so he introduced a distinction in terms that was to provide for the limited but continued existence of the ideal Christian Church with in the context of the Establishment. When Hooker distinguished between the Church and Statei he employed the opposed terms "supernatural" and "natural" society. The Church being a supernatural society doth differ from natural societies in this, that the persons unto whom we associate ourselves, in the one are men simply considered as men, but they to whom we be joined in the other, are Cod, Angels, and holy men. (I, 273) Within the supernatural society there were two churches, as< Coleridge had later theorized; "that Church of Christ, which we properly term his body mystical, can be but one. . ♦" (I* 338). The other he outlined in this manner; And as those everlasting promises of love, mercy, and blessedness belong to the mystical Church; even so on the other side when we read of any duty which the Church of God is bound unto, the Church whom this doth concern is a sensibly known company. And this visible Church in like sort is but one. . • .(I, 339) The invisible or the Christian Church, "the compensating counterforce to the inherent and inevitable evils and de fects of the State, as a State" as Coleridge worded it (Church and State, p. 139), if it was included under the or der of Church and State would have been a localization of the Universal Church of Christ; thus it would no longer i have been universal. In order to avoid such a tautology, ] i Hooker evolved what was really a third corporate body, a j i body superior to either the Church or the State because it j was an idealized form of each. This was the ’ ’ Christian so ciety,” and it was what Coleridge came later to borrow and to rename the ’ ’State in its largest sense” (Church and State, pp. 95 ff.}. j | When we oppose the Church. . .and the commonwealth in a | j Christian society, we mean by the commonwealth that so- 1 ciety with relation unto all the public affairs thereof, ' only the matter of true religion excepted; by the Church, the same society with only reference unto the matter of j true religion, without any other affairs besides: when ! that society which is both a church and a commonwealth [ doth flourish in those things which belong unto it as a commonwealth, we then say, ’the commonwealth doth flour- j ish;’ when in those things which concern it as a church, j ’the Church doth flourish;’ when in both, then ’the j Church and commonwealth flourish together.’ (Ill, 337) j And both together are included under the ”Christian socie ty.” This third term preserved the universality of the An glican Church despite the territorial restrictions, and de- I spite the Erastian statecraft which made it necessary to mutually define the faithful and the English. In 1811, thirteen years before the Church and State. Coleridge had ' not yet come upon this third term, or it would be more ac curate to say that he had not yet seen the applicability of it since he was close to the Ecclesiastical Polity for .247 some years. Church and State— civil and religious rights— to hold these essential powers of civilized society in due rela tion to each other, so as to prevent them from becoming its burthens instead of its supports; this is perhaps the most difficult problem in the whole science of politics, which the efforts of centuries have not yet succeeded in solving theoretically, though in one or two centuries the differences may have been happily compromised in practice. . . .But the circle of each, and the boundaries, have never been accurately defined. (Own Times. Ill, 925) Before he came to such a definition he was willing to as sume the rightness of the central authority of the Church joined with the State. He was certain that the Erastian theorem held good for the nineteenth century as it had for the sixteenth. It had been all important for the Elizabe thans to link patriotism and church preference. As Thornton noted: if Hooker’s theory of Church and State was to prove sound it could only be on two suppositions— (a) the legitimacy of National Churches, and (b) the practical identity of the Church of England with the English people, (p. 94) Coleridge worked to justify the same suppositions, for as he noted of his age: If there be indeed such a thing as an axiom in politics, a truth involved in the very definition and idea of a state, it is this, that no government can consistently tolerate any organized powers not subordinated to itself, yet locally within its jurisdiction. (Own Times. Ill, 684) The identity of a foreign church with the people of England could never be tolerated, and thus Coleridge held Church membership to be ’ ’among the highest privileges as a Chris tian and an Englishman” (Divines. II, 117-18). This idea 248 of the Church and State unity, a unity that provided the strongest possible central authority to withstand the i |threatened divisions of the nineteenth century, was, accord- i ing to Hearnshaw, Coleridge’s "notable contribution to con servative thought in the early nineteenth century’ * (p. 28). Furthermore, the unity appeared to Hearnshaw an unqualified heritage from the middle ages. And indeed it was, just as Coleridge’s notions of law and history were medieval, hav ing been derived from the work of Richard Hooker. Cole ridge’s direct application of Hooker is particularly well- evidenced in the area of law, and his statement of the the ory of history as process contradicts the history preferred by the nineteenth century, finding affinity rather in the j germinal Ecclesiastical Polity. J Hooker had stated that law originated in the order j i | |that God instituted throughout his created universe. This | i jwas the natural law, and human nature, as a part of the |universe, had insight into the law. Almighty God hath graciously endued our nature, and thereby enabled the same to find out both those laws which all men generally are for ever bound to observe, and also such as are most fit for their behoof, who lead their lives in any ordered state of government. (I, 249- 50) Aquinas had noted that "a law is nothing else but a dictate of practical reason emanating from the ruler who governs a perfect community" (2, I, a. 91, a. 1). He had posited the eternal natural law which regulated the animate and ------ —---- ; _____ -____ i inanimate subjects of the universe. Below this he granted a place to human, man-made, law. This law, he wrote, "is both something ordained to an end, and is a rule or measure ruled or measured by a higher measure" (1, II, q. 95* a* 3). !The higher measure, the divine law, controlled human law, and ennobled it by conforming it to God’s own rule of the universe. From this it followed that every human law had in it some glint of eternal law. As man seeks his greatest de velopment, he works according to his nature and he works in the direction of law. Hooker, who picked this up directly from Aquinas, wrote that "those things are termed most properly natural agents, whieh keep the law of their kind unwittingly" (I, 206). Law, then, is a great part of man’s i divine inheritance and to deny the law is to deny what God ' i has given him. Nothing was more likely to destroy the Puri-j tan reliance on inner conviction than a system of law which| forced the self or the ego out into an area where it came j under the control of divinely-instituted stricture. So com pletely did the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity rout the Pu ritans on this quarter that, as V. J. K. Brook says, "no serious attempt was made to answer it" (p. 149)* A brief five paragraphs after the beginning of his work, Hooker made what may have been the last resounding claim for optimism in the Renaissance world. He asserted the complete and undeviating causal relationship that gov erned all phenomena, behind which, giving it validity and 250 continuity, there stood divine sanction. All things that are, have some operation not violent or causal. Neither doth any thing ever begin to exercise the same, without some fore-conceived end for which it work- eth. And the end which it worketh for is not obtained, unless the work be also fit to obtain it by. That which doth assign unto each thing the kind, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure, of working, the same we term a Law. So that no certain end could ever be attained, unless the actions whereby it is attained were regular; that is to say, made suitable, fit and correspondent unto their end, by some canon, rule or law. Which thing doth first take place in the works even of God himself. (I, 200) This was choice ground for the placement of human authority, and Hooker took it without debating the sanction or the right for pre-emption. He was pledged to argue stability, and debating tactics held little merit for his directness, j ! !He confessed that any emotional appeal for the maintenance j of law, of stability in the commonwealth, could have no place in a work of such architecture as his. | It might peradventure have been more popular and more I plausible to vulgar ears, if this first discourse had 1 | been spent in extolling the force of laws, in shewing the| great necessity of them when they are good, and in ag gravating their offense by whom public laws are injuri ously traduced. But forasmuch as with such kind of matter the passions of men are rather stirred one way or other, than their knowledge any way set forward unto the trial of that whereof there is doubt made; I have therefore turned aside from that beaten path, and chosen though a less easy yet a more profitable way in regard of the end we propose. (I, 277) Following Aquinas, he had apodictically stated that the law was of several divisions, each of them traceable to the di vine wish for universal order. Now that law which, as it is laid up in the bosom of God, they call Eternal, receiveth according unto the different 25 V kinds of tilings which are subject unto it different and sundry kinds of names. That part of it which ordereth natural agents we call usually Nature*s law; that which Angels do clearly behold and without any swerving observe is a law Celestial and heavenly; the law of Reason, that which bindeth creatures reasonable in this world, and witii which by reason they may most plainly perceive themselves j bound; that which bindeth them, and is not known but by i special revelation from God, Divine law; Human law, that j which out of the law either ot reason or of God men prob ably gathering to be expedient, they make it a law, . . • What good or evil is there under the sun, what action correspondent or repugnant unto the law which God hath imposed upon his creatures, but in or upon it God doth work according to the law which himself hath eternally purposed to keep. . . .(I, 205) i * t Man as a political being was primarily concerned with positive law, though behind positive law ideally stood the natural law. Natural law was unlegislated and deducible by f human reason though it was nowhere written. Positive law i was legislated law: "A Law is the deed of the whole body politic, whereof if ye judge yourselves to be any part, then is the law even your deed also” (I, 164)* Positive law yielded to time; it was relative, while natural law was im-j mutable, "Laws natural do always bind; laws positive not j 1 so, but only after they have been expressly and wittingly imposed” (I, 272-73)* Despite the superiority of the nat ural law, it was insufficient for the governance of man. Let us place man in some public society with others, whether civil or spiritual; and in this case there is no remedy but we must add yet a further law. For although even here likewise the laws of nature and reason be of necessary use, yet somewhat over and besides them is nec essary, namely human and positive law. . . • (I, 281) Hooker was careful to stress the need for positive law; this was codified law and could be brought to bear jagainst specific illegal acts, The codification of ^positive Jlaw he reserved to the highest authority in the state, for law making was the highest function of a state, "Equals cannot impose laws and statutes upon their equals" (III, 396)* "In devising and discussing of laws, wisdom is spe- j cially required: but that which establisheth and maketh them is power, even power of dominion; the chiefty whereof, amongst us, resteth in the person of the king" (III, 413)• Law that was so lofty in its origin would have to be care fully studied and processed if it were to be changed. Posi tive laws were mutable, but since they were so highly is sued, they could not be altered by an inferior authority, | for instance, the will of the subjects. The Puritan decree j i that all laws pertaining to the function of the Church were j unchangeable and that laws pertaining to the operation of j the State were easily changed was turned about in the refu tation made by Hooker. He held that laws of the Church could be changed (the Anglican Church could, therefore, in clude as much of Roman ceremony as it desired), but that the laws of the State were more difficult to tamper with. "Laws touching matter of order are changeable, by the power of the Church" (II, 33)• Elsewhere he stated: When a thing doth cease to be available unto the end which gave it being, the continuance of it must then of neces sity appear superfluous. And of this we cannot be igno rant, how sometimes that hath done great good, which aft erwards, when time hath changed the ancient course of things, doth grow to be either very hurtful, or not so greatly profitable and necessary. If therefore the end _ 253 for which, a law provideth be perpetually necessary, and the way whereby it provideth perpetually also most apt, no doubt but that every such law ought for ever to remain unchangeable. (I, 3^5) Such a case of continuous applicability was rare in church ! affairs; it was more likely to occur in a secular situation: i i men would always need a ruler; they would always have to j I obey authority; they would always need the social group. Hooker did not foresee the kind of change in the secular world that was already at work in the ecclesiastical one. Or perhaps since he had expanded the positive law to in clude some portion of natural law, and natural law was per manent, he did not wish to hint an impermanence in the leg islative outcomes of the age that would have universal re- j percussions. He had already, by elevating positive law, j I made civil disobedience an act against the will of God. He had brought the concept of legality into the area of the emotions, of the conscience, and this was where the Puri tans were least able to defend against it. Therefore, he was content to rest with a definition of positive law that seemed to deny the mutability of the law and to demand rea sonable obedi-ence. "No doubt if men had been willing to learn how many laws their actions in this life are subject unto, and what the true force of each law is, all these controversies might have died the very day they were first brought forth" (I, 282). Hooker then answered the Puritan claim that the 254 conscience is never legally bound by the laws of a common wealth. The conscience may well be free, but the man who lives in security and carries the conscience about with him must obey the dictates of the authority that governs the commonwealth* It is both commonly said, and truly, that the best men otherwise are not always the best in regard of society* The reason whereof is, for that the law of-men* s actions is one, if they be respected only as men; and another, when they are considered as parts of a politic body* • • •Tea, I am persuaded, that of them with whom in this cause we strive, there are whose betters amongst men would hardly be found, if they did not live amongst men, but in some wilderness by themselves. (I, 282) This was masterful, and this did not go unnoticed by the admiring Coleridge, who imitated the principle in his Hr i end. In addition, he here gave full credit to Hooker for the source of his idea* Every depository of the supreme power must presume it self rightfult and as the source of law not legally to be endangered. A form of government may indeed, in real ity, be most pernicious to the governed, and the highest moral honor may await the patriot who risks his life in order by its subversion to introduce a better and Juster constitution; but it would be absurd toe blame the law by which his life is declared forfeit. . * .As Hooker has well observed, the law of men's actions is one, if they be respected only as men; and another, when they are considered as parts of a body politic, (p. TO) Coleridge was content to pick up traces of law with out ever bothering to evolve what might be called a philo sophy of law. He had no interest in clarifying the variet ies of law, and he was able to work out a polity with the thinnest borrowings from Hooker. In agreement with Hooker* s first premise, Coleridge stated that law was within reach | 255 j o f human reason, and he noted the two kinds of law, natural i jand positive, as bearing upon society. 1 | A productive idea, manifesting itself and its reality in the product is a law; and when the product is phaenomenal, (that is, an object of the outward senses) it is a law of ' nature. (English Divines, p. 11) j . 1 i He repeated Hooker's theme of the relativity of certain laws. i Laws seldom become obsolete as long as they are both use ful and practicable; but should there be an exception in any given law, there is no other way of reviving its va lidity but by convincing the existing legislature of its undiminished practicability and expedience; which in all essential points is the same as the recommending of a new law. (Friend, p. 226) This summarizes the rather small contribution of Cole ridge in the field of legal authority. Hooker had worked j |the ground over completely, and so when Coleridge came Jto law he saw no need to exert energy on a task already completed. The major question of the citizen's legal obligation to the state had been amply dealt with, and Coleridge signified his assent with Hooker's position. But the third ground for the authority of the Establishment, ! | i the historical one, Coleridge did not pass over so rapidly. Here he moved deliberately, almost with intensity, and the reason for his assiduity may have been that he knew that his concept of history was at strict variance with the his torical sense of his age. As Ernst Cassirer wrote in the Myth of the State: "The romantics love the past for the past's sake. To them the past is not only a fact but also 256 one of the highest ideals’ * (pp. 226-27). This Goleridge de- (nied, as well as the idealization of the past made on the tacit assumption of a romantically exaggerated lapse in j I time separating the iron present from an aureate past. Of ! i : i this unique gap, R. G. Collingwood wrote: j The Romantic sympathy with the past, instanced for exam- i pie in Bishop Percy with his collection of medieval Eng- 1 lish ballad literature, did not disguise the gulf sepa- , rating it from the present but actually presupposed the i gulf, consciously insisting on the vast dissimilarity be- I tween present-day life and that of the past. (Idea of History, p. 88) . Civilizations that had been unsullied by the developments j of the present were to be admired equally; the noble and J untrammeled spirits of the Rousseauistie wildernesses were j i j jsplendid mainly because they were separate from the organ- i lized social press that imbruted the man as it moulded the jcitizen. Society had worked continuously and long to bring jsuch a change in individuals, and in reference to the his- j i Itorical reinterpretation growing by the beginning of the j nineteenth century, **the conception of human nature as ^something uniform and unchanging had to be attacked" (Idea of History, p. 86). The attack was productive of a new spe- jcies of history, one which broke with the history of the Snlightenment and the Renaissance. According to Collingwood: The scope of historical thought was vastly widened, and historians began to think of the entire history of man as a single process of development from a beginning in sav agery to an end in a perfectly rational and civilized society, (p. 88) This rational society fitted into the reformers’ plans for 2571 reshaping the constitution; it was to be the reward for perfectible man's perfecting himself. Coleridge rejected such a denigration of the past, and he denied the idealization of long-forgotten epochs as wellv He sought a middle position, a balance between extremes. That information which is suitable to and which conforms with all its facts, which in the present is wedding the past to some future, that is mighty. All the rest may sometimes distinguish individuals, but it is, as it were, nothing, in the ocean of human concerns. But assuredly the way to improve the present is not to despise the past; it is a great error to idolize it, bht a still greater to hold it in contempt. (Lectures, p. 284) He claimed for the process of history an unchanging human I character, a link to bind all time in unending and unvary ing flow. "As human nature is the same in all ages, similar i I events will of course take place under similar circum- i stances. . ." (Own Times. II, 478). Upon such a stable hu- I iman essence he constructed a didactic interpretation of history. r If men could learn from history, what lessons it might | ! teach usS But passion and party blind our eyes, and the j I light which experience gives us is a lantern on the ! stern, which shines only on the waves behind usl (Table Talk, p. 146) In the Biographla he had written: j Armed with the two-fold knowledge of history and the hu man mind, a man will scarcely err in his judgement Psicl concerning the sum total of any future national event, If he have been able to procure the original documents of the past. . . . (I, 148} Coleridge indicated essentially that his historical ; perspective was tantamount to the Tudor one. The 258 universality of the human character from the beginning of history was an important feature of Renaissance history. If the presupposition of the immutability of the human spirit is correct, then the real substance of this spirit remains aloof from all historical events, and these do not affect its innermost being. Whoever is able to sepa rate the shell from the kernel of historical phenomena, knows that the forces which control and guide history are always and everywhere the same. This view of history. . • is typical of the Renaissance. . . .3 Collingwood puts it thus: "Human nature was conceived sub stantially as something static and permanent, an unvarying substratum underlying the course of historical changes and all human activities. History never repeated itself but hu man nature remained eternally unaltered" (p. 82). The didactic use to which Coleridge would have put history was a strong reminder of the Tudor government poli cy that filled every level of society with controlled pub lications. The Tudors were unabating indoctrinators; their rule was not as secure as they wished it and a controlled ! press was one way of consolidating. "A Tudor reader of his tory could never be sure whether he was encountering honest examples of proper conduct or examples adjusted to control his allegiance."^ The historian was supposed to actively aid the government's quest for stability; his purpose was 3Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. Fritz C. A* Koellin and James P. Pettegrove (Boston, 1951), p. 219. ^Leonard F* Dean, Tudor Theories of History Writing. Univ. of Mich. Contributions in Modern Philology, No. 1 (Ann Arbor, 1947), p. 8_________ - ______ __________ jto furnish "political and moral or religious instructions. i jThose stories should be related most fully which embody I lessons of political wisdom and virtuous living, and such lessons should be emphasized and clarified by means of ex plicit comments or judgments" (Dean, p. 3)* Quite as a mat ter of deduction "the idea of *pure* information, of * sci entific* history was foreign to Renaissance minds" (Dean, p. 6). Such devised history, however, was not unpalatable; the people found didactic history enthralling. As Dean points out: j I I Histories were avidly read during the Tudor age, and his-j torians were applauded for the civilizing effect of theirj delightful instruction. Schoolboys learned morality and j rhetoric from selected historical accounts; humanists in-i creased their knowledge of the ancient world; statesmen | and soldiers sought political and military experience. . . I the growing middle-class reading public demanded exciting instructive stories which carried the comfortable pres tige of history, (p. 1) j ;There was and always is comfort in the belief that all thatj need be done in order to give shape to the future is to de vote some attention to the past. This is a belief that, ac cording to Collingwood, was typically medieval and hence we should expect to find it occurring again in the Renaissance. The temporal process is something passive, shaped by a timeless force working upon it from without. Hence, be cause the force works in exactly the same way at all times, the knowledge of how it works is also a knowledge of how it will work in the future, and if we know how it has determined the flow of events at any one time, we thereby know how it would determine it at any other, and therefore we can foretell the future, (pp. 54-55) 260; It is a sign of Coleridge’s singular attachment to the ideas of the age of Hooker to find him reiterating such a l medieval historical point of view. He was aware that the didactic history (supported by a reliance on the permanence ' I of human nature) which he advocated was not currently popu- j lar. In his Constitution of Church and State he declared he j wanted to approach the "true historical feeling” and noted j that it was ’ ’languishing” (p. 65). j Coleridge did not accept a premise of a permanent hu- ! man nature that remained always at the lowest stage possi- ; ble; he held that there was a continuum but there was no t |progress beyond its range. Since Man had spent thousands of 1 i I 'years in organized social existence, Coleridge hoped for j something far better than the working conditions and the j wages proffered by an industrialized and heartless England. ; i However, he did not subscribe to the belief in a spiritual | i culmination for all mankind; he disputed the conclusion of | i Kant’s essay on history (Idee zu einer allgemeinen Ge- schichte in weltburgerlioher Absicht) that we are becoming more and more rational. The organic unity of the state that Hooker and Coleridge had made such a necessary part of their political thinking forbade human development to move a pace in advance of the development of society generally taken. Man could theoretically grow, but only as a social being, as one who could move upward only while all society moved upward, achieving higher planes of existence, [preserving and transmitting the tools by which he had made I betterment attainable. This growth came by what was termed j the process of history. Hooker had a "vivid sense of the j < process of history" (Shirley, p. 225). And he j Esteemed it his duty to preserve the best of one age and j pass it on to the next. . . .It was Hooker*s function to j link the political theory of an intense age with the pasti and the future, and with the eternal laws which underlay I it. (p. 225) There was possible no sudden alteration of the human condition; the eternal laws of history arranged all events with reference to a time continuum which interdicted novel ty or the unexpected. Coleridge had reference to these lawsj when he wrote in the Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit I that history J affords an antidote to the delusive influence of the Pre- I sent on the affections and judgements of men. . .by de- j monstrating as the one Central Fact. . .the dependence of | national Welfare on the fidelity, with which the state ! j has adhered to Principles against the temptations of ap- I parent expedience, (p. 329) i This concept of history as process is supposed to have; originated in Christian historiography. The impact of i Christian thought on the Greek changed the idea of history in these significant ways: First, history was now viewed as a working out of God*s rather than of man's purposes in the t world. Second, all of the externals of history (names, dates, plagues, sieges) were linked by an underlying reali ty, and this was the process of history. Third, the process was ubiquitous and equally effective for all time because : 262 human nature was always the same and would respond always in the same manner to the process* At any point this new history could have become a providentialism that would hav«s hound man within the orbit of divinely determined events* Augustine did so limit human action. In history* he wrote in the City of god* "all was brought about in such a manner, that neither did any future event escape Sod’s foreknow ledge, nor did His foreknowledge compel any one to sin C * . * Z 3 ffo one was forced to sin, but no one was really capable of free action. Aquinas, to the contrary, stressed the role of free will and softened the note of Sod’s abso lute mastery over the historical process* When process be gan to be discussed again in the nineteenth century, the hegemony of the Augustinian view was lost, but the diffi culty of assigning the principal responsibility for the di rection of history had not been surmounted. Hegel wrote as one motivated by the spirit of Augustine and fell, as Col lingwood noted, "into a view like the theological view of the Middle Ages, where the plans thai are executed in his tory are the plans of Cod and in no sense the plans of man. . (pp. 116-1?)* The contrasting view, which focused attention upon the hero in history, the hero who may have been acting to fulfill the divine behest but who nonethe less took responsibility away from God, counterbalanced the ^Trans. Gerald G. Walsh and Grace Monahan in The Fathers of the Church (Hew York, 1952), XIV, 410. 2631 determinism of Augustine, but it could not have satisfied Coleridge in the nineteenth century just as it would have been inadequate to Hooker’s purpose centuries earlier. First, if personality were given a key role, whatever its nexus with divine purpose, it would draw authority away from the state, and particularism would usurp the power of universalism, of the group force, Coleridge wrote in the Lay Sermons; It is no uncommon weakness with those who are honored with the acquaintance of the great, to attribute national events to particular persons, particular measures, to the errors of one man, to the intrigues of another, to any possible spark of a particular occasion, rather than to the true proximate cause (and which alone deserves the name of a cause), the predominant state of public opinion, (pp. 14-15) t Secondly, the apotheosis of personality as a shaping force ! i on history eventually obviates the place of God in history;j whatever the intentions of the Puritans were initially in j i striving for the establishment of the Discipline, by the end they had raised their leaders high above all men and f jhad produced for the welfare of men’s souls an aristocracy jof talent that in a practical manner took over the rule of i ithe creator. Hooker avoided both of these alternatives, the, providential and the hero-shaped history. He simply follow ed the medievalism of Thomas Aquinas, admitted the role of God in the historical process, but developed the human part so extensively that man’s reason and choice thwarted the old Augustinian determinism. It was important he follow 264 this way and give a meaning to history which was consonant with the divinity of unfettered man and which allowed room for the human character, within the established continuum, to develop alongside the human institutions. In this way he opened the vista for the history of religion. When the meaning of history came to be accurately under stood, religion was restored to its place; for religion is no readymade structure, but a growth; and it is a growth that falls within the history of humanity. Its de velopments are no mere outward semblance: they are a reality.© In their perception of this process of the Christian ful fillment, Hooker and Coleridge functioned as humanistic historians. In the following chapter the many common points of humanism to be found in the two will be documented, but here, Peter Viereckfs illustration of humanistic conserva tive history will be sufficient. According to Viereek, who points out that for the humanistic conservative, "Protes tant, Catholic, and Jew represent variations, whose dif ferences should not be minimized, £but] are yet within the same ethical and historical framework." Christianity is the needed time-capsule conserving and fusing the four ancestries of western man: the stern moral commandments and social justice of Judaism; the love for beauty and for untrammeled intellectual speculation of the free Hellenic mind; the Roman Empire’s universalism and its exaltation of law; and ^Adolf Harnack, Christianity and History, trans. Thomas Bailey Saunders (London, 1896), pp. 24-25. 265 the Aristotelianism, Thomism, and antinominalism includ ed in the Middle Agee.7 ffith this in mind, we may see that the pronouncement of Coleridge in The friend fits into a definite tradition, a tradition, however, that had lost favor in the beginning of the nineteenth century* The Hebrews may be regarded as the fixed mid point of the living line, toward which the Greeks as the ideal pole, and the Romans as the material, were ever approx imating? till the coincidence and the final synthesis took place in Christianity, of the Bible as the law* and Christendom the ohaemomenon* (p. 457) For the humanist, Christianity was the great human central experience, a primal fact, one that established for the human organism unyielding notions of continuity and tradition. Such prefigured notions were patently de nied by the deists of Coleridge*s age. Man in the past, said the deists, had not been guided by reason; he had been motivated chiefly by unreason, by passion which could hardly have aided the growth of any core of unified and stabilizing experience. While the deists awaited the new age of reason, the humanists admitted the passions as a necessary part of the total human character* As Colling wood wrote, man was not depicted any longer as he had been by ancient historians, as controlling his actions and his destiny by the work of intellect, but man as depicted by Christian thought* a creature of passion and impulse. History thus became the ^Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Revolt 1815-1949 (Hew York. 1949). P. £81* i 266 i ! history of human passions, regarded as necessary manifes- ! tations of human nature, (p. 57) I 'Christianity lifted mere phenomena like passion and state policy above the mundane level and revealed the ontological nature of true history. Nicola Berdyaev has phrased this in his The Meaning of History. The ’historical* is by its nature not phenomenal but deep ly ontological. It has its roots in some deep primal foun dation of being which it makes available for our communion and understanding. The ’historical’ is a sort of revela tion of the deepest essence of universal reality, of the destiny of the world focused in that of man. It is a rev elation of noumenal reality.® Such history, when handled solely by the authoritarian force in the community, could be put to forceful use in supporting the established order of things. As Dean noted of the sixteenth century in England, ’ ’ historical theory and composition in Tudor times were apt to reflect the desire of political and clerical officialdom to maintain the status quo; they were consequently a conservative force” (pp. 16- 17). Hooker was not above justifying established custom on the mere basis of its antiquity; this was the worst expres sion of conservative history. In things the fitness whereof is not of itself apparent, nor easy to be made sufficiently manifest unto all, yet the judgment of antiquity concurring with that which is received may induce them to think it not unfit, who are not able to allege any known weighty inconvenience which it hath, or to take any strong exception against it. (II, 33) The logical flaw in this was that even if an inconvenience 8(New York, 1936), p. 16. was noted in a custom, antiquity might still argue the con tinuance of the custom. Of greater consequence, though, was the guidance that the complete historical approach afforded. It was productive of a standard for evaluating principle and for directing fu ture action. Charles Sanders wrote in his Broad Church: In more than one sense, undoubtedly, Coleridge manifested a conservative tendency. But his thought should never be considered conservative in an exclusive sense, indicating that he reverences tradition and history to the neglect of the present and future. For he respected and studied the past only for the sake of the light which it might shed on the present and future, (p. 53) For the conservative, the past was of particular value in its bearing upon the present; it was not something to which the conservative should like to retire, though this may sometimes characterize the more resolute and less sensible members of the extreme right. Stated in the ideal, beneath human institutions there runs a line of unchanging principle. The substance (to use terms taken from the Realists) of the social and spiritual regimen is constant though the accidents may vary from cen tury to century. Hooker employed this distinction without a deviation from the Scholastics when he wrote: Suppose that herein some man purposely bending his wit against sovereignty, should think to elude the defense by proving that kings that are do differ from those that have been, and should therefore in the end conclude, that such ancient examples are no convenient proofs of that royalty which is now in use. Surely for decision of truth in this case there were no remedy, but only to show the nature of sovereignty, to sever it from accidental prop erties, make it clear that ancient and present regality 268 are one and the same in substance, how great odds soever Otherwise may seem to he between them. (Ill, 145) Coleridge stated in The Friend that "every age has, or imag ines it has its own circumstances which render past experi ence no longer applicable to the present case. • ." (p. 167) Such was contrary to the fact of the historical continuity that was unchanged by the accidents of time. "The book of nature and the book of revelation, with the whole history of man as the intermediate link, must be the integral and co herent parts of one great work" he wrote in the English Di vines (I, 129). Human nature and human actions were open to interpretation by successive generations. Hooker said: Virtue is always plain to be seen, rareness causeth it to to observed, and goodness to be honoured with admiration. . .Search the ancient records of time, look what hath happened by the space of these sixteen hundred years, see if all things to this effect be not luculent. . . .(II, 452) ' And Coleridge reiterated: We will call to mind the words of the prophet Isaiah, and say to ourselves: This is no new thing under the sunI We have heard it with our own ears, and it was declared to our fathers, and in the old time before them. . . .(Lay Sermons, pp. 163-64) The best of the old time was renewed ceaselessly by history, learning, and law. And these three were the special counters conservatives felt they played against the disinte grative tendencies latent in every age of economic and so cial expansion. Conservatives stood firm and proud for what Peter Viereck has called "priority of noneconomic motives" (p. 24). Regularity, security, enlightenment appeared in 269 conservatism for tlie mature Coleridge who saw in his own time a tragic "overbalance of the commercial spirit in consequence of the absence or weakness of the counter weights" (Lav Sermons, p. 188), This provided for the de cline of the dignity of man, which could- only be reclaimed in conservatism. As Viereek writes: The core and fire-center of conservatism, Its emotional elan, is a humanistic reverence for the dignity of the individual soul. This is incompatible with fascist or Stalinist collectivism; incompatible with a purely mech anistic view of man; incompatible with a purely economic view of history, (p. 6) In order to draw out the conclusions of the conser vatism of Coleridge and Hooker, we should turn to the great tradition of Christian Humanism of the sixteenth cen tury and determine just what applications of humanistic principles occur in the ecclesiastical polities of these two men. Both men were authoritarian, and both were out spoken in their desire to; recover universal or group rights over individual rights, and to seeure the church and state by a policy of social duties, limiting in the meantime personal liberties. The question might well arise, how could either be thought an advocate of the dignity of the individual with such predilections for the restriction of the individual? How can we align Hooker and Coleridge with the basic tenets of humanism and not strenuously mod ify the definition of humanism itself, or falsify the im port of conservative Anglican thinking? CHAPTER VII CHRISTIAN HUMANISM IN COLERIDGE AND HOOKER "It is a cliche*of English literary history that Mar lowe is the very incarnation of the pagan Renaissance," Douglas Bush wrote in The Renaissance And English Humanism. 1 He then asked: But is Marlowe’s half-boyish revolt against traditional faith and morality more, or less, typical and important than Hooker’s majestic exposition of the workings of di vine reason in divine and human law? (pp. 34-35) He need not have asked, for he had already determined that the Renaissance ought not be taken for a movement of secu lar rebellion against the ecclesiastical and secular au thority, He noted, however, that such an interpretation of the Renaissance and of humanism was a current one. If we are more accustomed to think of the Renaissance in terms of emancipation and rebellion and are more familiar with the rebels than with the conservatives, it is partly because all the world loves a rebel and partly. . .be cause the historians have stressed what appealed to them. (P. 34) An approach to understanding the Renaissance which in terprets humanism as something of a prolegomena for revolu tion was precisely what Viereck tried to confute when he asserted the partnership of an expansive conservatism with l(Toronto, 1939)» P* 34. 271“ humanism. Conservatism is a treasure house, sometimes an infuri atingly dusty one, of generations of accumulated experi ence, which any ephemeral rebellious generation has a right to disregard— at its peril. To vary the metaphor: conservatism is a social and cultural cement, holding to gether what western man has built and by that very fact providing a base for orderly change and improvement. (p. 5) Its elan, as noted above, was "a humanist reverence for the dignity of the individual soul” (p. 6). Brinton supports this view of humanism which emphasizes its basic conserva tism: the humanists quite definitely "were not libertarians and democrats in the modern sense" (Modern Mind, p. 31)• In no sense were the humanists attracted to the policies of the left; they were consistently represented by the right. Hooker was one of the best spokesmen for the right because he had clearly evaluated both the merits and the faults of the established authority and he had not become involved with the specious cause of condemning in toto the system advanced by the opponents of the authority. He frequently recalled salients of the humanistic program not to urge the decline of radicalism but to foster a balance, a reasona bleness in all men. Coleridge like Hooker found in humanism something of greater importance than a mode for a specific rebuttal of radicalism. He found individuality and orderliness raised to an eminence that discouraged all partisan politics. He found reason in domination over passion or enthusiasm, and --------------------------------------------------------------------------272 he responded to the humanistic insistence on synthesis over disintegration, on universalism over particularism. In the twentieth century, Viscount Haldane emphasized this human istic drive for synthesis in the area of human knowledge. "The doctrine that every department of knowledge belongs to a single entirety, and can be adequately interpreted only in its organic relation to the other departments, is of the very essence of Humanism.Significantly, Coleridge always hoped that he might "reduce all knowledge into harmony" (Table Talk, p. 373)• What Coleridge appreciated in human ism is to be discovered running through much philosophical and political theory. These tenets of humanism have within them a power of eternal regeneration and every age has been touched and stimulated by at least one of them. But in the polities of Hooker and Coleridge the impact of all the ten ets in confluence gives a character that had classic ex pression only in the sixteenth century in England. The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity was produced in conformity with humanism and in contrast to religious and political radi calism. Such was its influence on Coleridge*s thought that it brought Coleridge's polity within the framework of ideas distinctive of an English Renaissance theorist. In this chapter I shall describe the elements of humanism as they occur in both Hooker and Coleridge, and I shall point out 2The Philosophy of Humanism (New Haven, 1922), pp. 92- 93. -----------: --— ------ . ----------------------- : -----------273" how these give a breadth and a unity to the polities of both men. The humanism of whioh I speak is not deduoible from a Lorenzo Valla or even from a Erancesco Petrarca. In part, it developed from the reforming conservatism of a man like Erasmus. Though a Catholic, Erasmus could protest abuses of papal indulgences, and could deny the veneration of relies and the hagiolatry of the medieval church. Still he promot ed the continuance of the church and positively refused any change that did not confine itself to an orderly redefini tion of old purposes within the traditional ground. Erasmus is not the patron saint of English Humanism, but the best of Erasmus is humanistic and is germane to humanistic prin ciples as they appear in Hooker and Coleridge. Petrarch was also a humanist, but his break with Aristotelian-inspired Realism makes him insufficient for purposes of definition here.3 in addition, he was too self-conscious of his break with the harsh rigors of Augustinian metaphysics and his assertion of the nobility of the individual always came hard. Pico Della Mirandola eschewed Augustine, but he took man too high by placing him among the Seraphim and Cherubim, ^Petrarch, in "On His Own Ignorance," noted: "I cer tainly believe that Aristotle was a great man who knew much, but he was human and could well be ignorant of some things, even of a great many things." In The Renaissance Philosophy of Man. ed. and trans, Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, John Herman Randall (Chicago, 1948), p. 74* 274 and then proclaiming "if we have willed it, we shall be second to them in nothing."4 The humanism that links Hooker and Coleridge is the humanism of two early sixteenth-century Englishmen, John Colet and Thomas Linacre. Both, according to John Herman Randall, were "more interested in combining their new life with the Christian tradition" than in rejecting that tradi tion and working out a new ethic for the new humanistic life (p. 121). It is a Christian Humanism, then, that codi fied the body of ideas that is typical of the late English Renaissance and that is later to be found in Coleridge. It is earliest in Erasmus, the "humane, kindly, and timid apostle of reason," who "desired to reform the Church into a rational aid to the natural moral life that would absorb all the new learning and science into a well-rounded cul ture. . ." (Randall, Modern Mind, p. 147). The culture would be dynamic and organic; it could refer all new con cepts to a universal frame of reference, and so it main tained a full perspective and it continually strove to prove the unity of all knowledge. This unity was in itself most optimistic and had to be coordinated with an optimis tic world-view to achieve acceptance. These following prin ciples, essential to establishing the humanistic optimism, may also be taken as a definition of the humanistic program, 4"0n the Dignity of Man," in Renaissance Philosophy of Man, p. 227. 275 (The debt which these owe Realism will be obvious). Chris tian Humanism assumed, first: Man is able to shape his own actions and his own future because he has a free will and a divinely instituted reason. Second: His reason may be modi fied by education; depending upon native ability, reason draws man up to a level with the stars when it is disci plined by training. Third: Man is organically part of soci ety, and he thus functions best when he functions to fur ther the ends of society. (This society is naturally hier archical since, as indicated by point two, all men are not equal in ability). Fourth: Any hierarchy within a society does not justify itself simply by existing; it must develop its members in order to continue its claim for a privileged place. Fifth: The balance within society of all orders and powers is realized only when everyone seeks a personal bal ance of passion and reason, appetite and temperance. Sixth: The key balance that must be struck and held by man is the balance between the flesh and the spirit, between worldly aspirations and religiosity. Seventh: There is a universal order which maintains the stability of all the spheres, the earth included; man can study this order with unaided rea son because God provided reason with an unerring guide in natural law. These points were introduced by the thesis of the ac cessibility of one unifying idea that could prove the in terrelatedness of every single constituent in the universe. 276 A belief in the thesis was necessary for any optimistic thinker of the late sixteenth century, and the belief pre ceded what has been called the philosophy of organicism (Lovejoy, "The Meaning of Romanticism," pp. 272-73)* This philosophy authorized men to fit everything in the world, the good and the bad, into one total and to break complete ly with atomism. It held a constant appeal for the medieval world and it was one of the elements of medievalism that we find again and again in the Renaissance. It was from organ icism that the two poles of the micro- and the macro-cosm developed with the accompanying belief, popular particular ly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in the list of correspondences between the parts of the human body and the body politic. The influence of the correspondences is not only in Hooker but in Coleridge as well. Hooker held: As therefore man doth consist of different and distinct parts, every part endued with manifold abilities which all have their several ends and actions thereunto refer red; so there is in this great variety of duties which belong to men that dependency and order, by means where of the lower sustaining always the more excellent, and the higher perfecting the more base, they are in their times and seasons continued with most exquisite corres pondence. . • .(II* 386) Coleridge wrote in the Lay Sermons: There exists in the human being, at least in man fully developed, no mean symbol of tri-unity in reason, reli gion, and the will. For each of the three, though a dis tinct agency, implies and demands the other two, and loses its own nature at the moment that from distinction it passes into division or separation. The perfect frame of a man is the perfect frame of a state; and in the light of this idea we must read Plato's Republic* (pp. 65-66) 277 Correspondences had a vast appeal for the subtle, for they could be worked out in infinite degree; they were also a proof to the less subtle of the order of God’s created world, a proof which stood in refutation of the discrete tendencies of the final years of the glorious Renaissance and the opening years of the mechanization of the spirit. Hooker wrote: We see the whole world and each part thereof so compacted, that as long as each thing performeth only that work which is natural unto it, it thereby preserveth both oth er things and also itself. (I, 237) Coleridge held in the Lay Sermons: "It is enough if every one is wise in the working of his own craft: so best will they maintain the state of the world* 1 (pp. 6-7). In this manner metaphysics could be called to aid polity, and the motivating idea of order with man’s attempts to discover and to extol it was in English Humanism from the beginning of the sixteenth century. Thus "the appeal of the humanists was so great because they showed how the position of the aristocracy could be preserved. . , .’ ’5 Ry proving the working of God through a stratified so ciety the humanists gave a decisive negative answer to those who questioned whether the class structure might not admit some change. It was this divinely instituted status quo that had sanctioned feudalism, and the restatement of ^Fritz Caspar!, Humanism and the Social Order in Tudor England (Chicago, 1954)» P* 10. 27 8 it, whatever modifications were imposed, was still an ex tension of medieval polity. This was hardly an exception, for much of humanism bore a medieval aspect, and most of it could be used to enforce that conditioned allegiance to au thority that we today recognize as medieval. Hooker spoke as a humanist, and he demanded order. He treated order as the desired wish of all individuals, and he claimed that all individuals could understand the need for this order by the working of their reason. Coleridge was demanding the same order, and the demand was often expressed as a wish to display the organic unity of all knowledge. Keith Felling noted that Coleridge was "first and last, a religious teacher, bent upon finding an explanation which would cover the whole of things" (p. 72). The search for such an ex planation forced Coleridge to reconcile numerous diverse elements: he had to bring together in some kind of harmony German Idealism, English Empiricism and traditional Realism, and because he felt that he had chosen something from each of these he believed that he had reconciled them. His meth od and his initial desire to combine systems is redolent of the attitude of the man of the English Renaissance. Theo- i dore Spencer wrote: In the sixteenth century, the combined elements of Aris- totelianism, Platonism, Neo-Platonism, Stoicism, and Christianity were almost indistinguishably woven into a pattern which was universally agreed upon, and which, in its main outlines, was the same as that of the Middle 279 Ages•6 The unity that Hooker and Coleridge proposed rounded off all aspects of life, and was supported by life's multeity and by the prevailing Aristotelian vision which posited a com plex world of perfectly defined balances and relationships7 This denied, of course, all the nominalism of the radicals. Throughout the Renaissance, the conservatives pointed out that reality had a corporate nature, and any negation of the continuing authority of the social institutions was grievous because it would violate the nature of reality. We should expect to find Hooker accepting Aristotle's postu late of totality, but it may be surprising to find Cole ridge, who has sometimes been taken to be a semi-mystical idealist, using this same postulate. He wrote in The Friend. "I have ever deemed it a forcible illustration of the Aris totelian axiom, with respect to all just reasoning, that the whole is of necessity prior to its parts. • ." (p. 449)• Of this Willey noted: "Coleridge's central preoccupation was with the antithesis between a living whole or organism on the one hand and a mechanical juxtaposition of parts on the other" (Nineteenth Century, p. 30). He was so desirous of establishing organicism that he dipped into as many con flicting philosophies as could reasonably be included in ^Shakespeare and the Nature of Man (New York, 1942), p. 1. ?See Haldane, pp. 5 ff* . 2801 one system* The result was not aberration, but eclecticism, the same reconciling technique that Hooker had used in sup porting organicism with arguments derived from Christian and pagan sources, from such men as St. Jerome, Gelasius, Tertullian, Thomas Aquinas, Lactantius and Isidore of Se ville. But his organicism did not carry the Protestant world of the sixteenth century, and, as we know, it suf fered eclipse through the succeeding two centuries. Between the age of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity and 1800 there was no resurgence of the humanistically-con ceived order of physical and spiritual being. Stoicism pro vided means for unity of both spiritual and physical realms. "The Stoic conception of man," according to Cassirer, "be came one of the firmest bonds between ancient and medieval thought, a link that was even stronger than that of classi cal Greek philosophy" (Myth of the State, p. 128). Willey wrote in the Eighteenth-Century Background: "The Stoics. . , linked together the starry heavens and the moral law with in: the law that preserved the stars from wrong was also the rule of duty" (p. 14). However close this might have come to traditional philosophy, it was insufficient. "Stoic philosophy could not help man to solve the metaphysical riddle of the universe" (Myth of the State, p. 211). Human ism could, though. Like Stoicism, it had insisted upon the dignity of man; it had also worked out a program for the development of human dignity and it had never lost sight of 281, the fact of the Christian orientation for the human will, I an orientation that insisted upon duties as well as rights. J | i ! a. s an orientation in the sixteenth century Stoicism went no further than the dignity and the rights, and the rights be- ; I came, according to Cassirer, ’ ’one of the main springs of political action” (p. 210). In the political area man was thus thrown back upon himself; he had rights but he had no guidance and no program that would enable him to develop in conformity with other men. Such conformity, when we bear in i mind the specifically gregarious nature of man, was essen- j Jtial to human well-being. The natural law that was such a part of stoicism was not lost to humanism, and here another distinction may be apparent. For the Stoics, natural law j worked as a liberating principle; for the humanists, for i iHooker in particular, it worked as a regulating principle.8 The more controlled nature of this law in humanism did not 1 i i render it illiberal; there was simply an emphasis on guid- , i ance in humanism, a guidance that, as the eighteenth cen- j tury wore on, was more and more needed. The humanists had j never violated the spirit of natural law by making it work j i solely for the preservation of one class in society. They had extended its benefits through all society. ’ ’The fact that everyone could agree that there was an eternal law, and that Kings as well as beggars were subject to its 8see Willey, Eighteenth-Century Background, pp. 16 ff. 2g2 dictates, constitutes a political principle of no little im portance,"^ It was after the influence of the humanists had declined, and during the period of the growing force of Stoicism that natural law was twisted so to misshape it. In the hands of Hobbes, natural law was explained (through chapter fourteen of the Leviathan) as merely the law of self-preservation. Hobbes felt that he did not need a sanc tion of natural law or of religion, for that matter, for the authority of the state. The fact that the state was use ful by permitting men to live without bloodshed and without subversion of order was sufficient sanction. Hooker and Coleridge wanted order as much as Hobbes did, but they worked from the supposition of man’s goodness and gregari ousness rather than from the supposition of his basic and deadly incivility. The establishment oalled for unswerving loyalty be cause it reflected the order that God had deemed necessary for the observance of his laws, and violence against the establishment was to be interpreted as a transgression against divine behest. This would be followed by the same chaos that visited the lower spheres after the rebellion of Lucifer and the disobedient angels. Humanism of the Italian Renaissance, though it was later to prove unchristian and consequently unacceptable to ^Franklin LeVan Baumer, The Early Tudor Theory of Kingship (New Haven, 1940), p. 136. the state, at first supported earthly authority by assuming the relationship between authority and the splendors of the natural world. Francis Bacon, for example, proposed the ne cessity of obedience to human rule and to the rule of na ture. Willey points out that the "recrudescence of confi dence in Nature was immensely strengthened by the scientif ic movement of the Renaissance, which reclaimed the physi cal world from its traditional association with Satan" (Seventeenth Century, p. 35). The enthusiasm for Plato, as < for the reclaimed natural science, tended to overcome the Lutheran and Calvinistic atomism that was premised on a regnant spiritual chaos. Munz wrote: It is very likely that people turned towards Platonism in order to extricate themselves somehow from the philoso phical debacle of Nominalism, (p. 150) The totality of order was the best argument for maintaining an earthly order, and the excellence of God's workmanship in furnishing the heavens could be paralleled by man's workmanship in patterning a society, and, it might follow, that an antagonism toward society was an antagonism toward God's order. Hooker held: Let any principal thing, as the sun, the moon, any one of the heavens or elements, but once cease or fail, or swerve, and who doth not easily conceive that the sequel thereof would be ruin both to itself and whatsoever de- ‘pendeth on it? And is it possible, that Man being not only the noblest creature in the world, but even a very world in himself, his transgressing the Law of his Nature should draw no manner of harm after it? (I, 237) Obedience to the divinely-instituted order suggested a 284 personal harmony with the celestial one. The Gorglas ran: ' ‘ Virtue, whether of body or soul, of things or persons, is not obtained by accident, but is due to order and harmoni- 10 ous arrangement.” Theodore Spencer noted of the insis tence of this Platonic doctrine in the sixteenth century* Man's role is the most important in the universe. To play it properly he must know both himself and the environment apart from which he cannot properly be conceived. In oth er words. . .he must understand the universal order of which he is so essential a part, and which makes the structure of the world, of living beings, and of society a single entity created by the hands of God. (pp. 5-6) Immoderate opposition to order was a sin, reducing men to a bestial level where they were driven by a “rage of inno vation1 1 a “scorn and hatred of all ancient establishments” (Own Times. Ill, 702-03). The opposition members, wrote Hooker in recalling the lowest animal order, “cast up their poison." He continued: “Our churches, in the foam of that good spirit which directeth such fiery tongues, they term spitefully the temples of Baal, idol synagogues, abominable styes” (II, 44). Humanism bespoke balance, temperance, and identified itself with conservatism. It urged man*s nobility, so es>- sential for the conservative thesis of the continuous andl apparent nobility of man's government. It was thus polit ically coextensive with Realism and it naturally fell 1 o In The Dialogues, ed. Benjamin Jowett (Hew York, 1937), I, 504). 285 into an opposition to the nominalistic tendency of radical ism. It stressed the reason not only in opposition to pas sion, but in opposition to untutored faith as well. Man was free to develop himself or to lag intellectually and spir itually, but in either case he used his reason to determine a path for the will. Pico had overstated the merit of the reason and the will, but there was yet some of his brave glow reflected in Hooker and Coleridge. Pico wrote in the ’ ’ Dignity of Man": Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish. Thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul’s judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, which are divine, (p. 225) To man, Pico wrote, "it is granted to have whatever he chooses, to be whatever he wills" (p. 225). Hooker wrote: Man in perfection of nature being made according to the likeness of his Master resembleth him also in the manner of working: so that whatsoever we work as men, the same we do wittingly work and freely; neither are we according to the manner of natural agents any way so tied, but that it is in our power to leave the things we do undone. (I, 220) Coleridge echoes this idea in his Philosophical Lectures: There is a noble something in man that cannot be suspend ed long, that will lift up great weights, and the moment that other causes have removed them, will play forth at all the pipes, (p. 269) And in a burst of phrase that could have come out of the sixteenth century without alteration or addition, he said in the same place; At once the most complex and the most individual of crea tures, man, taken in the ideal of his humanity, has been not inaptly called the microcosm of the world in 286 compendium, as the point to which all the lines converge from the circumference of nature, (p. 312) Upon the complete and the near-perfect man was built i jthe enduring structure of the state. This followed the hu manistic line of reasoning pointed out by Cassirer in his 'Renaissance Philosophy. On the crucial moral question of the capacities and po tentialities of man, the Humanist notions of man as a microcosm and theories of ethical freedom rested on the same metaphysical foundations as the orthodox views of man’s place in the scale of being and his capacity for continuous regeneration. . . .(p. 149) looker was aware of the claim to terrene duty that could Ifollow a statement of the correspondences between the earth and the heavens, the angelic and the human natures. It being therefore the will of God to make reasonable creatures the liveliest representations of his own per fection and glory; he assigned unto angels and men a state of the greatest happiness to be acquired by actions of most dignity, proceeding from the highest degree of excellency, that any created nature was to receive from him. To angels and men there was allotted a threefold perfection, a perfection of the end whereunto they might come, eternal life; a perfection of duty, whereby they should come, whose duty was obedience; and a perfection of state or quality for performance of that duty. (II, 566-67) Man sustained his excellence by the proof that he gave ev ery day of his working toward his earthly perfection. Fi- cino had written, "the rational soul in a certain manner possesses the excellence of infinity and eternity. If this were not the case, it would never characteristically in cline toward the infinite."10 And Hooker stated, "all men 10»rive Questions Concerning the Mind," in Renaissance Philosophy of Man. p. 202. 287 desire to lead in this world a happy life. That life is led most happily, wherein all virtue is exercised without im pediment or let" (I, 240). By contrast with this emphasis of humanism we have only to turn toward the first Protes tant reformers. As Bainton noted: Bere is the point at which humanism and the Reformation diverged. The one elevated man even though he might be lost. The other exalted God even though he might appear cruel, (pp. 68-69) Galvin had written in the Institutes: We are fully conscious to ourselves how very mean and ab ject we are, being miserable sinners before God, and ac counted most despicable by men; being (if you please) the refuse of the world, deserving of the vilest appelations that can be found: so that nothing remains for us to glory in before God, but his mercy alone, by which, with out any merit of ours, we have been admitted to the hope of eternal salvation. • • .(p. 23) This was not directed at the boastful egotism that drew the learned well above the lesser humanity.Calvinism level led the good with the bad. Thomas Cartwright had written against the English Establishment, but he had significantly begun his attack against the humanistically-conceived indi vidual. We see that, when men are called to a lawful and profit able calling, and especially to a public calling, God doth pour on his gifts of that person which is so called so plentifully, that he is as it were suddenly made a new man. . . .(Whitgift Works. Ill, 187) Man's good deeds were not freely performed but were ^Caspari wrote in JEI on this point: "The learned man would appear to take a higher place in Erasmus' hier archy, and to approach God more closely, than the humble man, the poor in spirit" (p. 85). 28 8 determined. Christian Humanism preferred the paradox of directed freedom to the illogic of pure determinism; as A. S. P. Woodhouse noted, Christian liberty is at the opposite pole from license. It means freedom from slavery to self and sin, through acceptance of a higher service: in the words of the Prayer Book, God’s service is perfect freedom. This is one of the great paradoxical truths in which Christianity is so fertile. • . .^2 It was this Christian truth that was repeated by Hooker and Coleridge in support of political as well as spiritual in dividualism. On this one point both men rested their claim for the maintenance of the Church and State against the charges of the dissentient who clamored for a general re form. General reform obviated all individual differences and thus lost for man his essential Christian nature. The only reform that either Hooker or Coleridge would accept (and this is true of conservatives in general) was an indi vidual reform, a reform without sweeping generalized rights, a reform deemed necessary from within rather than enforced by emotion and partisanship from without.^3 The radicals called for a wholesale acceptance of their programs, an acceptance that could not pause for deliberation. To this, Hooker had written: How it is not required or can be exacted at our hands, 12"Milton, Puritanism, And Liberty,” University of Toronto Quarterly. 4:484, July 1935. 13see Hearnshaw, Conservatism, p. 38 on this point. 289 that we should yield unto any thing other assent, than such as doth answer the evidence which is to be had of that we assent unto. For which cause even in matters di vine, concerning some things we may lawfully doubt. . . • (I, 323) Individual merits and differences were not taken into con sideration by the radicals, Hooker and Coleridge argued. Thus no reform could satisfy everyone, no matter how sweep ing the reform could be in its consequences. Coleridge stressed the necessity of catering to the individual tal ents, for here was the reflection of the divinity and the dignity of man. He wrote in The Friend: "I owe much of what ever I at present possess, my clearest insight into the na ture of individual man. • ." (204). And as early as 1795 he was calling for a summing up of individual intellectual strength so that society could be fortified. "In the pre sent agitations of the public mind, everyone ought to con sider his intellectual faculties as in a state of immediate requisition. All may benefit society in some degree" (Own Times, I, 6). In his "Fears in Solitude" he rejected the en gulfing action of political societies as corrosive of the strength of the individual. Political societies lost foy the individual his merit by having him passively assume the in terests and desires of a dissentient group. All individual dignity and power Engulfed in Courts, Committees, Institutions, Associations and Societies, A vain, speech-mouthing, speech-reporting Guild, One Benefit-Club for mutual flattery. • . . (Poems« I* 258) It was not only in the organized and general opposition to government that the strength of the individual was liable to debilitation; a blind and communal respect for any status quo was as likely to ruin the will of the individual. Cole ridge wrote in one of the Essays on his Own Times. No opposition to a government, and a systematic opposi tion, are founded on the same principles, and produce the same effects. They are both alike justified on the pre tended necessity of sacrificing individual judgment to general harmony; they both teach mankind to consider dis cussion as implying discord. . . .(I, 242) Hooker had said precisely the same thing when he stated that unshifting conformity based on continuity of custom was brainless. Surely a strange kind of madness it is. • •[tqj teach that the greatest honour to a state is perpetuity; and grant that alterations in the service of God, for that they impair the credit of religion, are therefore peri lous in commonweals, which have no continuance longer than religion hath all reverence done unto it. (II, 23) The Calvinists, in urging such perpetuity, urged the loss ol individual initiative; they tried to coerce men to embrace the Discipline just as in the nineteenth century clubmen tried to force workers to join clubs and societies. Cole ridge wrote on this in the Biographia. It was part of my political creed, that whoever ceased to act as an individual by making himself a member of any society not sanctioned by his Government, forfeited the rights of a citizen. . . .(I, 121) In 1832 he said: "That is the most excellent state of soci ety in which the patriotism of the citizen ennobles, but does not merge, the individual energy of the man” (Table 291 Talk, p. 183) This humanistic individualism, perhaps the most impor tant single concept in all humanism, brought a tinge of rel ativism to everything that it considered. But this should not lead to the conclusion that humanism defeated its own purpose in conservatism by suggesting that established Church and State authority was relative to the needs of a particular generation or to the efficiency with which lay and ecclesiastical duties and offices were performed. The Church and the State were absolutes, placed in the chain of being by providence. So too were the human will and reason. The realistic arguments for the universality of these four were assumed without question. Outside of these, though, all else was relative. Positive law could be changed when it did not further the development of man in the state; social customs could be altered when they became obsoles cent; religious ceremonies could be adapted to new needs. The ceaseless continuity of the establishments of human reason and will, were absolute; the rest could be varied. The Calvinists upended this: ceremony and position be came the unalterables, while natural law, the Church and State, and particularly the human faculties were subject to divine and sometimes even human whim. Calvin sneered at the "blind light of nature, pretended preparations, free will and works meritorious of eternal salvation, together with all their supererogations. . ." (p. 24). John Smith, in his ; 292 "The Excellency and Nobleness of True Religion" answered for the humanists against the Calvinists. | i j Some are apt to look upon God as some Peevish and Self- i I will'd thing, because themselves are such. . .they think ' 1 that Heaven’s Monarchy is such an arbitrary thing too, as being govern'd by nothing else but an Almighty Absolute Will. . . .(Quoted in Cassirer, Platonism, p. 1^5) , i But this was hardly a deterrent to the reforming radicals j who were sped on their course by the realization of the covenant that they had concluded with God. Earlier, Luther had attempted the devastation of the ego that developed from the Renaissance world outlook; for him, the only out come of the glorification of the individual by the human ists was pride, inordinate and damning. However, as Hughes Jpointed out: ' The exaltation of self bred in his contemporaries by that , Renaissance of letters and the arts for which Luther had such bitter words, is as nothing to the exaltation of ; self bred by his own new theology. To the spirit of man j j justified by saving faith, found free as none was ever j ' free before, all external constraint or law is an unen- ' durable wrong. (Ill, 527) i i Luther's justification by faith, which was really a variety of mystical experience, prepared the way for a reverse val uation of man; it was perfectly suited to the creation of a demonology. If the deficient man that Luther supposed as the natural man was real, then there was no limit to the degree of self-abasement to which anyone could indulge himself. Men could create their own nightmares of sin and crime against God and people them with exaggerations of \ their own characters. Men could create starring roles for ] 293 themselves in the most hideous dramas imaginable; and they could with impunity suppose the most vicious and depraved crimes of their fellows. At the same time, they would pull down all learning and all pretension to intelligence. This is what we have so frequently in William Law’s system of mysticism; Law, who saw fallen nature parodied in "the glitter of genius. . .the glory of learning, and self-con ceited strength of natural reason” (Mystical Writings, pp. 220-21), was close to Luther in his delight in retelling the details of the Fall, and the pitch down "into an animal, earthly life of impure, bestial flesh and blood. . .” (p. 117). Luther and Calvin claimed that they denigrated man so that the dignity of Cod could be restored. Calvin, after Luther, foreswore philosophy in order to recall the pure and sufficient command of the first Christian philosophy embodied in scripture. But, as D’lntreves noted, The Puritan challenge to the church of England was pri marily and essentially the challenge of a narrow and in tolerant scriptural!sm to every human authority and to all historical development, (p. 104) From the attack on philosophy Calvinists moved to consider the human reason, and again they moved in antagonism to the humanistic spirit. As Douglas Bush noted: Lutheran and Calvinist dogmas were incompatible with the humanistic doctrine of the self-governing reason and dig nity of man. The evangelical conception of religious ’ex perience’ was not what Erasmus or Milton understood by imitation of Christ, (p. 83) 294 The Calvinist dogmas were obviously incompatible with Hook er’s view, a view expressed in this manner: Sith God hath deified our nature, though not by turning it into himself, yet by making it his own inseparable habitation, we cannot now conceive how God should without man either exercise divine power, or receive the glory of divine praise* For man is in both an associate of Deity. (II, 235) This advocacy of human reason was, in the opinion of C. S. Lewis, "the most permanent value of Hooker’s work" (p. 454). Of most significance in his own age was the clear line that he had drawn between the hostile restriction of man made by the Puritans and the freedom for men proposed by the Angli can Church. The Church, he had made clear, bore the respect for the will and the reason that was a facet of humanism. But the Puritans, on the other hand, treated reason "as if God had so accursed it, that it should never shine or give light in things concerning our duty any way towards him. « • • • A number there are, who think they cannot admire as they ought the power and authority of the word of God, if in things divine they should attribute any force to man’s reason. For which cause they never use reason so willing ly as to disgrace reason. (I, 365) The humanists had drawn from many sources to prove the sufficiency of the individual and, incidentally, the value of human institutions. They had, in addition, held off for a few extra years the scepticism that so readily followed the Puritan irrationality and undermined the reason even within the orbit of Eealistic philosophy. Douglas Bush 295 wrote: The two great philosophic enemies of religion and moral ity, and hence of Christian humanism, were sceptical and naturalistic doctrines* Even within the scholastio tra dition the early divorce between reason and faith opened the way for those two extreme positions of the Renais sance, Anti-Christian rationalism and anti-rational fi- deism. (pp. 85-86) We have already dealt with this in both the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries; suffice it to say that the most easi- \ ly realized outgrowth of any scepticism is a lessened faith in human institutions. If man does not have a perfect rea son with which to come to the truth, how can he possibly build a valid order which is empowered to govern, to punisha to make laws? As a part of the reaction to scepticism, the Puritans attempted to get behind human institutions, to get behind human reason and to experience or to touch the gene rative force that may account for all the phenomena with which men find themselves surrounded. As an evidence of this effort, the Puritans have left us the minute records in the form of diaries in which they recorded their brushes with eternity; and Luther has left us the inkstain on the wall where he hurled his inkpot at the devil who stood at the foot of his desk. Both Luther and the Puritans recorded that they had made a contact with the noumenal world, though the contact was not the culmination of a human ef fort; it was merely by chance. Chance, however, cannot sup port a state, and it offers very little on which to build a church. Neither the Lutherans nor the Calvinists were forced to go on alone with simple chance: Luther gave his jfollowers a despot, and Calvin issued a code of arbitrary |law. The eighteenth-century evangelists were surer of the [recurring visits from the divine, and so they neither sug gested despotism nor provided law. They merely erected a religious system of pure emotion, made it anti-intellect ual and thus, in the words of John Tulloch, "separated religion from art and philosophy, . .£and^ tended to sep arate it from morality" (p, 13)* Morality was lacking in Calvinism if by morality we mean a universal system of duty which is freely appre- jhended by the unaided reason. If morality means no more than docile, automatic obedience, then Calvinism abounds in morality, but it is fatally lacking in balance; it . offers no chance for the individual to develop that prime [humanistic virtue of moderation. The terrific struggle t between reason and passion that seems to have filled the thoughts of the renaissance men was but an ideal expres sion of the individual's crisis in searching for mode ration. "Every man is his own ruler," said Socrates in the Gorgias; "TheJ should be temperate and master of him self, and ruler of his own pleasures and passions" (p. 551). Humanists to a man assented. The search for moderation, for an ideal balance be tween reason and passion, was perfectly conformable to the 29 7 \ 'precepts of Christianity since, first, it was a patent de- ! inial of the Stoic command to obviate all the passions and, ! second, it promised a struggle for fulfillment rather than a license for placid self-contentment. Man, by realizing | (that he had to perform a set of disciplined actions in or- i der to reject the beast and nurture the divine in himself, operated in a traditional Christian direction. Saint Paul could be used to document this very struggle when he had advised against the annihilation of passion and had urged j passion’s subordination to reason (I. Corinthians 9, 27). Even Augustine could be read in the context of the human istic and Christian principle. In the City of God he had I written: ! As man has a rational soul, he subordinates all this which he has in common with the beasts to the peace of I his rational soul, that his intellect may have free play and may regulate his actions and that he may thus enjoy j j the well-ordered harmony of knowledge and action which ; constitutes, as we have said, the peace of the rational soul. (XIX, 14) I Hooker and Coleridge, when they called for men to bring j passion under control of the reason, had this Christian as j well as humanistic tradition to support them. "So conta gious is passion," Coleridge noted in the Morning Post in 1799, "so solitary a thing is reason!" (Own Times. II, 335)* Hooker had frequently referred to the upsetting force of passion, or of zeal: ’ ’zeal needeth both ways a sober guide" (II, 24). As humanism stressed the importance of individual ; 298 balance and individual rather than group activity, it auto matically bolstered the claim for an aristocracy, not one predicated on landholding but on the fitness to lead. It followed from the selectivity of the group that could ef fectively subordinate passion that not every man bore equal claim to govern. It is important that we note that neither the humanists nor Hooker and Coleridge would have excluded a man from the role of leader on any other ground than that of moral or intellectual insufficiency. Both men went be yond a facile lip service to native ability in determining the fittest ruler. Both made the humanistic Hosce Te Ipsum the primary stage of awareness for the aristocrat, and both followed with a demand for the leadership of the well- rounded man. Coleridge wrote in the Biographia: The mere man of the world, who insists that no other terms but such as occur in common conversation should be employed in a scientific disquisition, and with no great er precision, is as truly a pedant as the man of letters, who. . .converses at the wine-table with his mind fixed on his musaeum or laboratory. . . .(I, 107-Q8) The "mere” worldly man was too bound up with things to be aware of principles, and, particularly, to be aware of him self. He was often hostile to what Coleridge termed the "object and thereby the contents” of metaphysics, the hu manistic Nosce Te Ipsum. He wrote in the Biographia: Know Thyself; and so shalt thou know God, as far as is permitted to a creature, and in God all things.— Surely, there is a strange— nay, rather a too natural— aversion in many to know themselves. (II, 212) It could not be deemed unchristian to exclude such obdurate 299 souls from the possibility of attaining a perfection of the virtue of moderation, for they excluded themselves. The establishment needed the support of the well- rounded man, of the complete individual who had put himself through the assaying process necessary to bind the reason and emotions together in balanced composite. The need was for those in the sixteenth century "whom God hath endued with principal gifts to aspire unto knowledge by. . . ” (I, 322). The chureh could not afford to reduce such talents to the level of the most ordinary citizen, and, as a result, "they may love that religion the more which in no way seek- eth to make them vulgar, no way diminisheth their dignity 1 and greatness. . ." (II, 519)* Thus the reappearance of ; what Herschel Baker called Plato*s Pbermensch was marked in | Anglican polity.15 Coleridge called upon much the same type 1 t to aid the troubled England of the nineteenth century. He j wrote in the Lay Sermons: ! To find no contradiction in the union of old and new, to contemplate the Ancient of days, his words and his works, | with a feeling as fresh as if they were now first spring- , ing forth at his fiat— this characterizes the minds that ] feel the riddle of the world and may help to unravel it. This, most of all things, will raise you above the mass of mankind, and therefore will best entitle and qualify you to guide and control them. (p. 28) Like the sixteenth-century humanists, Coleridge was willing to blend the pagan with the Christian standards so that a lj>The Dignity of Man. Studies in the Persistence of An Idea (Cambridge, Mass., 1947). P« 43» 300 measure eould be obtained for the perfect leader. His broader view enabled him to view the Greek culture within the process of history and to draw from it what could be used to support Christianity. Kathleen Coburn remarked in the "Introduction" to the Philosophical Lectures: Coleridge sets himself against the anti-Hellenic view of men like Warburton, that Greek paganism was adverse to Christianity in tendency; he sees Christianity rather as the fulfilment of ancient thought, both Greek and Hebrew, (p. 43) Coleridge's synthesis of the diverse cultural and philoso phical elements was the humanistic synthesis that Douglas Bush spoke of in his English Humanism: The humanistic synthesis was an aristocratic orthodoxy like early scholasticism, but a synthesis less subtly metaphysical and theological and more humane, literary, and utilitarian, (p. 85) Humanism was particularly effective for anyone in the nine teenth century who stressed spirit over mechanics, as Cole ridge did, for it offered a complete systematization of ideas which could confute the materialism in theory that was gathering itself for a complete conquest of men's minds and interests. Humanism, unlike deism, worked with the imagination rather than with the feeling. In stressing feeling as a counterbalance to stark materialism, deism was one with the religious radicalism of the late eighteenth century which was to prove unavailing in the face of the monolith materialism. Humanism stressed imagination, which was a faculty to be associated with the reason, and to be i 301 ! [ j subject to regulation by the will. It was this imagination j jthat was in Coleridge’s literary theory, this imagination that could never be confused with a spontaneous and unregu lated emotional overflow. i Discipline, not unregulated emotion, was the watchword with humanism, and if discipline was beyond the acceptance or the reach of any group in society, then it followed that that group was disbarred from a leading role in the communi ty. The acquirement of knowledge has been traditionally l thought to be a most demanding discipline; therefore the tendency of humanism was always toward what Caspari would call "undemocratic.” He would admit, though, that there was i nothing of blind illiberality or thoughtless reaction in ! the humanistic program. He said of the humanists: i i They were not democrats, but by stressing the function of knowledge in society their theory opened the way aux tal- j ents, irrespective of whether they actually approved of | .this development or not. (Humanism, p. 15) 1 [Whether they approved or not becomes meaningless when we i realize that the only way that we can approach the human ists is by continually bearing in mind their fast principle of amelioration through knowledge. Aristotle's dictum may be undemocratic: "A man who lives the life of a mechanic or labourer cannot pursue the things which belong to excel lence" (Politics. Ill, 5), but must the author then be characterized as an unenlightened, unrelenting conserva tive? To Hooker and Coleridge a liberal and thoughtful re form _wa s^likelierJto come from an enlightened group than ; 302 from a hostile mob. As Coleridge noted in the Aids, most of the population is exposed during early childhood to some ethical tutoring at home; most hear of the "divine truths of our existence," but "at a later period, in youth or ear ly manhood, most of us, indeed, (in the higher and middle classes at least) read or hear certain PROOFS of these truths— . . (p. 157)* Some men could believe the mys teries of their faith because they could understand the proofs, the logical systematization, of that faith. Others would be shut off and would have to live on faith alone. This was, of course, precisely what the Puritans had wanted. They wanted a contrast between their kind of faith and the faith of the established Church of England, a contrast be tween the leadership of the king and the leadership of presbyters. When such a contrast was realized it seemed to support the anti-intellectualism always incipient in the Tnstitutes and evidenced among the dissenters. This did, however, have unfortunate consequences, for when the mon arch distinguished himself by his intelligence, the opposi tion to the monarch, always seeking the contrast, had to mark itself by its non-intelligence. So it is that Knappen, the foremost of interpreters of the Puritan movement, wrote in Tudor Puritanism, "the most cursory survey of Puritan literature before 1603 will indicate clearly enough the intellectual backwardness of the movement" (p. 367). 303 Hooker had realistically feared the anti-intellectual- ism of the Puritans, then. He had written in the preface to his great work: Neither is it altogether without cause that so many do fear the overthrow of all learning as a threatened sequel of this your intended discipline. . . .seeing that the greatest worldly hopes, which are proposed unto the chiefest kind of learning, ye seek utterly to extirpate as weeds. . . .(X, 178) Nothing ran more disastrously in contrast to the humanistic spirit than the backwardness of the sixteenth-century Puri tans. Matthew Arnold characterized these opponents of or der and learning in Saint Paul and Protestantism: Not a trace of delicacy of perception, or of philosophic thinking; the mere rigidness and contentiousness of the controversialist and political dissenter: a calvinism ex aggerated till it is simply repelling; and to complete the whole, a machinery of covenants, conditions, bargains, and parties-contractors, such as could have proceeded from no one but the born Anglo-Saxon man of business, British or American, (p. 14) The Puritans were individuals, individuals who bore a threat to the Church and the State and to the prime human istic virtue of moderation. They were wildly immoderate; this was one of their distinctive features, and this is no where better illustrated than in their impatience with all opposition. Walter Travers had called for sharp ”but whole some” purgation of dissenting members, as we have noted above. Cartwright proposed that the nonconformists be kill ed (Whltgift Works. I, 386), and Calvin had produced a mem orable grotesquerie by urging the death of dissenters, at the same time reminding his faithful adherents that such 304; jdeaths were out of their hands and in the .hands of God. I sincerely wish that this consideration were constantly ■ in our recollection, that nothing is done here by the i I temerity of men, but every thing by the authority of God, [ who commands it, and under whose guidance we never err | from the right way. (II, 782} I By contrast with this arrant determinism, the human ists believed that men should develop themselves, for they had full control over all their actions. Men needed train ing, not so that they might be better behaved, but so that they could intelligently rule themselves. It was this self- rule that Coleridge called for in the Aids when he declined the mute submission to the rule of the Church and State. Much of our common union of minds, I fear, proceeds from no other than. . .want of knowledge, and want of affec tion to religion. You that boast you live conformably to i the appointments of the Church, and that no one hears of your voice, we may thank the ignorance of your minds for that kind of quietness, (p. 67) i Men were not supposed to yield obedience docilely; they j were to use their reason so that they might understand the I need for order, and be able to determine what actions might i best aid that order. If they failed to do this, the human ists maintained, the fault was in their education. If they had received proper education and still they fell short of perfect behavior, then the fault was germane. Not every man could be trained. Humanism proposed that educational benefits be extended only to those who could adapt them to their innate talents and who would, in consequence of training, enrich the community. The results of the 3051 ' i t jeducation of the few would be diffused through all orders j jof the community; the few were not to involute themselves, j i j nor to justify the selfish pursuit of specialized learning ] i on the plea that they were developing themselves to an ab solute degree. Humanism fostered, ideally, the wellbeing of the masses by concentrating on the education of the few. Coleridge had, in 1795, stressed this very idea: The annals of the French revolution have recorded in let ters of blood, that the knowledge of the few cannot coun teract the ignorance of the many; that the light of phi- ' losophy, when it is confined to a small minority, points out the possessors as the victims, rather than the illu minators, of the multitude* (Own Times, I, 7—S) This was acceptable to the enlightenment, but it was re- jected by the romantic age. Collingwood wrote in his Idea j of History: Where the Enlightenment based its Utopian expectations on 1 the hope of obtaining enlightened rulers, the Romanti- ( cists based theirs on the hope of obtaining an enlight- j ened people by means of popular education, (p. 86) Through the eighteenth century, the Methodists were already ; endeavoring to bring education to the level where everyone ] I could be exposed. Hal^y wrote: 1 Popular education had already developed in England, through the efforts of the Nonconformists and especially of the Methodists. But Malthus brought a Utilitarian formula to the already existing movement. It is just, said the Protestant, that all men, since they are equal before God, should share as equally as possible in the knowledge of the sacred books, of the divine law and of the moral law. It is useful, said Malthus, that all men should know the physical laws which determine the devel opment and the increase of the species, so that they will understand how to regulate the increase of their needs in accordance with the increase in the amount of pleas ures which nature puts at their disposal. (History, 306 i j p. 242} j {Widespread popular education was, however, not a reality jthrough the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and ■the defenders of the establishment ought to have abandoned the claim that insurrection and education were parallel in growth and companioned in intention. The command to know one's place, from a Hannah More or a Bishop Watson, was es sentially a command to be still and to avoid printed matter. This, as we have seen, was not what the humanists nor what Coleridge advocated. According to Brinton's English Politi cal Thought in the Nineteenth Century. "Coleridge's posi tion is that of the Tory democrat. The few must govern, but in the interests of all. Nay, only the few know fully the interests of all. But it is essential that the few realize that their position is a fiduciary one" (p. 82). By this Jstandard, Hooker was probably also a Tory democrat. But the ! real distinction between typical Tory thought and that of Hooker and Coleridge lay in the emphasis placed upon the need for the individual to develop himself. Hooker, and Coleridge after him, supposed that all men would be inter ested in developing their reason; never did he deny them the right. He had stated the lofty and hopeful principle: "By reason man attaineth unto the knowledge of things that are and are not sensible” (I, 219), and he had excluded no man. "Tory democrat" somehow seems an inappropriate term to apply to such a man. 307 Of course, neither Hooker nor Coleridge would have been shocked by the fact that many men did not develop them selves; therefore they did not support an unrealistic ed ucational system which had as its objective equal education for everyone. Both believed in the kind of education advan ced by the spate of tracts which appeared through the six teenth century in England advising the method of education for the perfect prince. Erasmus, Sir Thomas Hoby, Richard Mulcaster, Roger Ascham, and Thomas Wilson in translating or composing manuals on education insisted on what Iso crates (436-333 B. C.) in the first work dealing with the education of a prince had held as the first principle: given suitable raw material, the educational process could be successfully managed. The gifted individual could be trained in virtue, moulded into a man of ideas, an eclectic who could bond the spirit with the flesh just as he united reason and sensibility. This was the humanistic ideal, and humanism proposed: A single standard of rationality and utility in religion and in every other human concern; and it deplores that complete segregation of the spiritual and the secular which leaves religion a prey to irrational dogma and the rest of life a prey to the secular spirit and ultimately to uncontrolled Naturalism. Finally, Humanism has its own ’aristocratic* principle: the idea of ’values,’ of stand ards, and hence of inequality, is built into the founda tion of the humanistic ideal. (Woodhouse, pp. 512-13) At its worst, this could be made to elevate what Baumer termed the ’ ’cult of authority” (p. 85) • It could also be found inspiring a scorn for what was derided as the ”mob” 306 (Bush, Humanism, p. 95)* It may have brought comfort to the upper class and its spokesmen simply by marking and limiting, men according to birth. This would rule out any question of change since, if the spirit of humanism were warped and its aristocratic assertion heightened beyond just proportion, the humanist could sensibly appear to urge conformity as a consequence of God-ordained inequality and traditional privilege. Coleridge had perhaps tired of the niceties of ideas and longed for the comfort of an injunction when he looked back to the early seventeenth century and noted: Men regarded the gradations of society as God’s ordi nances, and had the elevation of a self-approving con science in every feeling and exhibition of respect for those of ranks superior to their own. What a contrast with the present times! (English Divines. I, 104-05) This limitation of just process was the worst pos sible product of humanism, and it was always potential in the idea of a natural aristocracy. Caspari wrote, at one point, as though the potential had always been realized. During the sixteenth century, English humanists evolved a social doctrine with which they tried to defend and im prove the existing order of society. They used their knowledge of Plato and Aristotle, of Cicero and Quintil ian, to justify the aristocratic structure of English society, the hierarchy of * order and degree* in the state. (Humanism, p. 1) But this is an overstatement, and the author modified this elsewhere when he pointed out that humanism with its ’ ’em phasis on intellectual and ethical excellence is aristo cratic in the sense of quality rather than of privilege” (Erasmus, p. 102). At its best, and we have covered its 309 worst here, humanism was an attempt to prove the true ex istence of humane man, man ni eunge« ni bete. Men, taken ; [generally, tended to be venal, insular, and capable of j l creating disturbance for they were possessed of power. How- ! ever, with the guidance of custom and training, some men could discover the promise of near-divinity that lay within them, and could by constant attention to self-development, force the glimmer of a promise into the warmth of active good. Coleridge noted, realistically enough, that money and rank do more to foster the good than do rage and discontent. He did not generalize on this account, though. There were good wealthy men, and there were bad, stupid wealthy men. ! But the proportion of good to bad was more favorable than , it was in the lower classes. For this reason, Coleridge 1 i ilooked for permanence in property, and still he could be : critical of the class that possessed the property. But al- : ways he refused to generalize on the good or the bad in- fluence in any social group: he focused on the individual talent as an offsetter of all deterministic tendencies. i Generalized influences were dangerous to the theorist, for they lost all distinguishing individual merits. The politi cal groups, the corresponding societies and the clubs, were the results of the generalization that what all men needed was a vast and immediate reform. This had been the ex pressed need of the sixteenth-century radicals, and here as j 310 during Coleridge’s age, the generalization forced the good with the bad individuals into a faction* Wordsworth had made a similar generalization when he supposed that it was external nature and not the inner mer it of the individual that made one man better than another. From what we know of Coleridge’s political theory, we may see that there was more than an aesthetic consideration at work when he took Wordsworth’s theory to task in the seven teenth chapter of the Biographia. He wrote Allsop; I will not conceal from you that this inferred dependency of the human soul on accidents of birth-place and abode • . .and the accompanying nature-worship, of which the asserted dependence forms a part, is the trait in Words worth’s poetic works that I most dislike as unhealthful. (Allsop, pp. 57-58) Humanism as well as poetics, then, helped marshal Cole ridge’s politics and direct his literary criticism. The im portance of humanism in this single aspect of Coleridge’s thought might justify, by itself, the enumeration of the germane humanistic tenets. However, for the purpose of this study, it has been my intention to indicate a common ground for some of the principles of the polities of Hook er and Coleridge. CHAPTER VIII CONCLUSION "Consider the historic changes that took place in the sixteenth century," wrote Arnold Williams. In politics, feudal decentralization gave way to central ized monarchy, which, by the middle of Elizabeth*s reign, had securely established itself. In theology, Catholicism was yielding to Protestantism, and the passage was made, in England, by way of a number of transitional forms. . . .In this rapidly changing and revolutionary epoch, insecurity was the dominant feature of life.1 The changes in religion came, not over long stretches of time, but suddenly, drastically, with the accession of each English monarch. Henry Norbert Birt in The Elizabethan Re ligious Settlement focused attention on the insecurity which was an obvious result of religious instability during the age. One short generation had seen England in communion with the See of Rome as it had been for a thousand years; then schismatical and independent, both under Henry; Lutheran and heretical under Edward; once more united to Rome un der Mary, and now under Elizabeth every prospect of an other breach presented itself.2 Political, economic, and religious change encompassed so much of the known Elizabethan world, modified so much of the national outlook, that the process of change was lnA Note on Pessimism In the Renaissance,” Studies in Philology. 36:244-45, April 1939. 2{London, 1907), p. 52. 312 shortly extended to the world that was not known: instabili ty was purported to be the dominant and warping force throughout the created universe. Change and decline were imagined to prevail against the stars and planets as well as against governments, religions, and men. John Norden's Vi cissitude Rerum. An Elegiacall Poeme. of the interchangeable courses and varietie of things in this world (1600) lamented the vast denigration that had run the world down from a golden to an iron time. The Sunne and Moone eclipsed ne're so much, Comeis and strange impressions in the ayre: The tydes and swelling flouds were never such: T^e earth doth tremble. Nature doth impayre, Hid'ous monsters now possess the ohayre, Where erst dame Natures true begotten seede Sate truely graced in her proper weede. . . . Such changes never have beene seene of yore, Countries and in Kingdomes. as of late, Manners, and Lawes. and Religions lore, Never were prized at so mean a rate. • . .3 It required but a minor change of focus to move from the spectacle of celestial discord to the problem of politi cal and religious unrest, for, as Meyrick Carre' wrote: The system of beliefs was so organically composed that confusion in one section spread disruption throughout the whole. Doubts concerning the scheme of celestial spheres affected beliefs relating to the hierarchy of natural forms on the earth; cynicism concerning man's position in the cosmos corrupted the philosophy of political society. (Phases of Thought, p. 218) The Puritans were quick to apply the criterion of universal decay to the religious settlement so facilely adopted by 3shakespeare Association Facsimiles, No. 4> Introduc tion by D. C. Collins (Oxford, 1931), pp. 39-40. 313! i the Anglican prelates. They acted to prove the English church but another sign of the fall from lost perfection. | i Spenser had mourned in the prologue to the fifth book; of the i I Faerie Queene: 1 For from the golden age, that first was named, It's now at earst become a stonie one; And men themselves, the which at first were framed Of earthly mould, and form'd of flesh and bone, Are now transformed into hardest stone. . . .^ i And the Puritans read the fall from the aureate to the leaden as proof of their contention that man needed not self-seeking, but humility, and the church needed not hier- \ archy, but submissive equality before the eyes of God. Muta-j jbility, change, played "her cruel sports, to many mens de cay" (p. 660), and only the proud refused to see that this iwas the result of the sins of mankind. Edward Topsell's Times Lamentation (1599) triumphantly announced: "Time is changed, it was golden, it was good; it is wooden, it is evill,"5 Topsell's aim at polemics was clear; if the clergy i of the established church would preach more regularly, he j i i piously averred, there could be a restoration of the spiritual glow. The church knew this, yet it did not act foi the spiritual wellbeing of the people. "0 miserable times! Vrhe Complete Poetical Works, ed. R. E. Neil Dodge (Cambridge, Mass., 193&), P» 5027 ^Subtitled Or An Exposition on the Prophet Joel. In Sundry Sermons or Meditations (London. 1599). P. 62. 314 i j o miserable manners! they had rather goe with musicke to jthe gallowes, than with mourning to a sermon. « ." (p. 22). ; j We might read the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity as a [contrasting optimistic statement of faith'in the existing universe, society, and church. Hooker did not urge the defi nition of his world as the best of all worlds. In fact, he turned to the past himself to contrast his age with the golden time. "When the world most abounded with just, righteous, and perfect men, their chiefest study was the j exercise of piety, wherein for their safest direction they reverently barkened to the readings of the law of God. . (II, 524}• But the past, if it was closer to perfection, I proved not the decline of established religion: rather, it pointed up how serious was the deviation among dissenting Puritans from the acceptable role of good citizens. Where they had obeyed the law, now they abandoned it. And where ! I 1 I there had been order with stability, there was now danger. , 'This danger, the threat of chaos, yet offered men an oppor- 1 1 1 Itunity for political as well as eternal salvation. If they 1 were tempted to disobey, and if they recovered in time, they proved stronger than the temptation, and better as citizens. This was the path to Christian virtue. Seeing therefore it doth thus appear that the safety of all estates dependeth upon religion; that religion un- feignedly loved perfecteth men*s abilities unto all kinds of virtuous services in the commonwealth. . .we have rea son to think that all true virtues are to honour true re ligion as their parent, and all well-ordered commonweals to love her as their chiefest stay. (II, 18-19) 315 CJtiaos was not the predetermined condition for the sixteenth century, then. It was the logical outgrowth of the philoso phy of dissent, not the ukase of the divine creator of the universe. The church had to prove the validity of God*s or der for the world by continuing in strength, by uniting the country, by defeating its enemies. This was realistic for a defender of the church to postulate: he was given a ground to defend and he defended it. Coleridge, to the same degree, defended the claims of the church to organize religious ex pression and conformity in the nineteenth century. In his Notes on the English Divines he shrewdly summarized the op position and the church, concluding "if not what a Chris tian Church should be, yet the Church of England injures only itself" (II, 46). In the 1818 Friend he had made the same assumption that Hooker had been forced to make, namely, that the presence of organized religion is more a settling than an upsetting feature in a country. "Religion, true or false, is and ever has been the moral centre of gravity in Christendom, to which all other things must and will accom odate themselves" {p. 407)* Perfect or imperfect, the An glican Church demanded maintenance as it promoted stability. For a starting point, this was ideal for a clear-headed de fender of a state church. That it was the starting point and that it directed the complete polities of Hooker and Coleridge may not, however, be taken for granted. One may grant that, in the beginning, both men undertook the 'defense of the church as one may ethically and objectively [ jseek to defend anything? with a conviction of the need for [the churches continuance. But mere continuance was not i I • ! [enough to satisfy Hooker and Coleridge; they strove for an enunciation of a body of principles that would give an ideal definition of the concept "Church." And as a result, while I both raised conventional apologetics to a philosophical plane they had never attained before, both constructed sys tems which were superior to the assimilative abilities of their ages. The mark had been relatively near at hand; their aims had carried them well beyond. Neither the sixteenth nor the nineteenth-century struggle between the church and its opponents evolved anything approaching complete logical I justification. The discussion had swung to the listing of , | ! 'wrongs by the party lacking power, and a summarization of expected privileges by the party holding power, with neither} I side capable of finding reconciliation. As Tawney wrote of ! t this condition of stasis in Hooker’s age: If the Church of the Middle Ages was a kind of a State, the State of the Tudors had some of the characteristics of a Church; and it was precisely the impossibility, for all but a handful of sectaries, of conceiving a society which treated religion as a thing privately vital but publicly indifferent, which in England made irreconcila ble the quarrel between Puritanism and the monarchy. (Religion and Capitalism, pp. 13-14) * It had been enough for the radicals in both ages to descry existing evil and, thus, to advance the claims for change, change that would insure the future betterment of- ( 317 tlie human condition. In the same way, it had appeared suf ficient for the government that it emphasize the importance of the existing good, and that it prove the relativity of all apparent abuses of power so that the preponderance of happiness would plead for the continued tenure of the church and the state. Hooker drove past this obvious, and to be sure relativist, defense and he elaborated proof that ex ceeded the abilities of most men to understand. Few members of either the church or the state could follow the reason ing directed toward the illustration of the beauty of bal anced man functioning in the balanced community. Hooker successfully linked, said Shirley, "the political theory of an intense age with the past and the future, and with the eternal laws which underlay it” (p. 225). He developed a system, wrote Gottfried Michaelis, "on which he built his fundamental theories, which shows a complete political view of the world, and which satisfies the profoundest thinking men."6 He attempted a reconciliation of the right with the left by invoking pure reason, and by dispossessing fanciful, erring, subjective faith. Early in his work he wrote: Sundry things may be lawfully done in the Church, so as they be not done against the Scripture, although no Scrip ture do command them, but the Church only following the light of reason judge them to be in discretion meet. (I, 362) And from this moment, his attempt to reconcile opposites ^Richard Hooker Als politischer Denker (Berlin, 1933), p. 163* 3lBi : i (within the bounds of reason had the unforeseen and unhappy j result of effecting the steady decline of the church's in- jfluence.7 A church which holds reason as final arbiter, ieven a faith-directed reason such as we find in Aquinas, Hooker, and Coleridge, comes ultimately to support all its unreasonable Christian dogmatic assertions on the basis of their reasonable quality. Bainton rather overstates this, but he does express a germ of the truth. t If once the claim were made that no thing in religion can ; be accepted which is not amenable to common sense, then ■ Christianity, which has always been a laughingstock to the wise, is utterly undone, (p. 126) The Latitudinarians of the seventeenth century skirted the | i jpotentially contradictory reliance upon reason by allowing . jany combination of faith and diluted reason to find place within the Anglican orbit. The deists made such a solution 1 impossible after Latitudinarianism had sunk to its nadir. j By denying the reasonableness of Christianity's cherished j i mysteries, the deists forced the Church of England to look ifor the reasonable in articles whose efficacy could be prov-| en only on the grounds of faith. This method of attack by the deists had not abated by the nineteenth century, as The Deist in 1819 attests. Is it only among miracles, ghosts, and crucified Gods that you delight to walk? Oh! prejudiced and supersti tious man, look at the splendid beauties of Nature, look at the vast machinery of the universe, and through these 7see Henry Thomas Buckle, History of Civilization in England (New York, 1883), I, 249* ‘ 319 i I thou mayest discover the intelligent organizer of the whole, perfect in all his attributes, and worthy of ado- | ration, (p. 35) jClearly, the appeal to reason by a church that did advance miracles and the incarnation of a divinity could not have been adequately provided for in the struggle that was to come with the ultrarationalists. Hooker1s general influence was weakened since he had really displayed dogma in its least defensible side. Coleridge, on the other hand, never had much influence as a church and state theorist. Accord ing to Woodward, he had an intuition which permitted him "to see far ahead of his age" (p. 33), but as in the case of iHooker, his sight too far outdistanced the vision of his contemporaries. "For this reason,” concluded Woodward, "Coleridge had little direct and immediate influences upon English political development." That he realized this, him self, lends something of real pathos to his often unstable (life. He noted in the Aids: 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 watersI (p. 204) By the time the Church of England recognized its need for intellectual refreshment, and saw that an interfusion of the ideas that Hooker and Coleridge had proposed would refresh, Hooker appeared lost to the ages and Coleridge had been adopted by the Oxford Movement, for whom he now seemed, in retrospect, a partisan. Newman, who figured so 320 i jsignificantly in the movement, spoke (though perhaps with pore feeling than accuracy) of Coleridge as the one who had discovered the hidden first principle and had been rewarded with an enormous popularity. The general need of something deeper and more attractive than what had offered itself elsewhere, may be considered to have led to his popularity; and by means of his popu larity he re-acted on his readers, stimulating their men tal thirst, feeding their hopes, setting before them vi sions, which, when once seen, are not easily forgotten, and silently indoctrinating them with nobler ideas, which might afterwards be appealed to as first principles. ("Parties,’ * p. 399) The Oxford Movement, for one thing, "promoted a notable re vival of religious devotion; it encouraged a deep apprecia tion of ecclesiastical discipline; it reopened the riches of the ancient dogmatic theology; it produced saints” (Carre’ , Phases of Thought, p. 339) • For another, it en- |forced a respect for authority which "resembles the con servative reaction of the early nineteenth century from the intellectual emancipation of eighteenth-century radical ism. "8 Hort, Hare, and Maurice were all inspired by Cole ridge and they, in turn, inspired what has been identified as the "Broad Church." But it is in terms of the arch conservative and Anglo-Catholic Oxford and Tractarian movements that Coleridge’s polity received its most sympa thetic application. The Oxford Movement appears to have re turned to the sixteenth century, as Coleridge did, for its (New &A Literary History of England, ed. Albert C. Baugh York, 1948), p. 1296. 321, jmodel of the church and state in harmony. It designedly in tensified the need for a rigorous church order; it furthered ithe claims for ecclesiastical stratification; it whole- i I I Iheartedly supported the authority of dogmatic pronouncement. And as a result of these it seems that it could hardly have j expected to avoid the onus implied in Mill's essay on the | utility of religion. "The whole of the prevalent meta- i physics of the present century is one tissue of suborned evidence in favour of religion. . ." (p. 72). Saint-making | in the church was not enough for Mill, though it pleased 'Newman. Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, the church lost the authority even to suggest sanctity for j many of its members. Typical Anglican apologists felt that jthe church was admirably and completely defended when it was identified as the best church because it was the only j ! officially recognized church. This hardly stimulated a greatj spirituality. As Klein noted: "During Elizabeth's reign the j consciousness in the Anglican Church of its function as God's messenger of salvation never developed into any great spiritual or religious movement" CIntolerance in The Reign of Elizabeth, p. 104)* The English Reformation closed, then, on a decidedly secular note. Conyers Read said that "the zealots on both sides failed and the politicians on both sides more or less succeeded" (Social and Political Forces, p. 64)* Davies went so far as to question whether any 322 reformation had even begun in England. He wrote: "The great tragedy of the Supremacy was that it deprived the Church of England of the opportunity of reforming herself. . ." (Epis- ;copacy and The Royal Supremacy, p. 91). \ Beyond all question, whether there was a reformation or not, there was a loss of spirituality in the Anglican Church from the reign of Elizabeth down through the age of Cole-. J ridge. Accompanying this was an increase of what might be ! called class consciousness among the highly-placed Anglican* luminaries, and this was quickly disseminated through the clerical ranks. R. H. Tawney, in his Capitalism and Reli gion. said that the church ”was disposed too often to ide alize as a virtue that habit of mean subservience to wealth ! I and social position, which, after more than half a century of political democracy, is still the characteristic and j I odious vice of Englishmen” (p. 161). Were we to misread Hooker and Coleridge we might conclude that Anglican apolo- ' getics at their very best, as they are in the twin politiesj are no more than a system of exhortation to all classes to j remember their places. It is only when we go behind much of the printed word that we realize that the ordered society was the last, though the best, chance to hold the country together in the face of impending chaos, for the radical threat was interpreted by both Hooker and Coleridge to be a threat to civilization and to humanity. The Puritans admit ted that if the established form of church and state 325 government represented civilization they were in opposition to civilization* From their beginning in Calvin’s Insti tutes they had worked against the individual civilizing force of the enlightened man* As Baker pointed out in the Dignity of Mans For Galvin as for Augustine, the two basic facts of re ligion were a Cod of power and a righteous anger rather than love and bland rationality, and a man of impotence and sin rather than virtue and rational self-sufficiency, (p. 37) They were violently self-righteous in attempting to bring in the weight of the Discipline on the shoulders ©f the sinful inhabitants of England, and when they were frus trated, they were glad to turn to violence as a ready aid* Sodwim was no less glad to recognize the authority of force when the happiness of man needed imposition upon an unwilling people headed by a reactionary administration* He wrote in the Political Justice? The friend of human happiness, will endeavour to prevent violence; but it would be the mark of a weak and valitu- dinariam temper, to turn our eyes from human affairs in disgust, and refuse to contribute our labours and atten tion to the general weal, because perhaps, at last, vio lence may forcibly intrude itself* (I, 298) Partisanship always tended to restrict Godwin as it did Paine, and Hone and the rest of the radical writers of the nineteenth century. True to the nomimalistie orientation, the nineteenth-century dissentients went little beyond the programs of their own parties to determine just what would be best for the country that they were trying to reshape* They lost sight of principles; because they were so often_ ^pressed to find success, any success, in organizing opposi tion to the frequently blind conservative party. A perfect \ ! i example of this is the modus operandi of the radical press up through the passage of the reform bill in 1832. Alexander! I Bethune (1804-1843), poet and editor, as well as organizer, explained in his memoirs just what was requisite for a suc cessful publishing career during the period of great unrest in the twenties and thirties. In these days, if a man would make his way to fame, he should, in the first place, persuade people that they are not all to blame for their own poverty and misfortunes— these having been wholly brought on them by others; and, in the second place, he should arraign the government as the prime mover and the great first cause of all the mis ery in the country. Or he should bespatter either the Tories or the Radicals with all his might; it matters little which, provided he do it consistently, because in any way he identifies himself with a party, and is thus almost certain of success. (Quoted in MacCoby, p. 92) jNaturally, the allegiance to party could be shifted when conditions demanded it. Coleridge frequently commented on I Ithe press tactics, and out of context his comments appear i singularly unenlightened. "The strongest, indeed, the only plausible arguments against the education of the lower classes are derived from the writings of these incendiaries . . ." (Lay Sermons, p. 165). But the examples of radicals, in press activities and out^ who approached public opinion as a prospector approaches a rich claim, gave him real ma terial for a just ire. There was the example of prospector William Cobbett and his production of a history of the ref ormation, written from a Catholic bias in the hope, it was generally accepted, that he would share in the subscription j l being raised for the Irish patriots of the rebellion. When ! Jcobbett returned to England from America in 1819 he had in- i volved himself with another possibly rewarding undertaking. He brought back to England the bones of the near-divine Tom Paine. This was to be his carte blanche: he was bringing Tom home, and it was only reasonable that he should sell locks of what were purported to be the skeleton's hair to j ! finance his expedition and to defray the expense of building1 a shrine in Paine's honor.9 other examples of like business and political activities were offered by Francis Place (1771-1854), organizer, unionist, good friend of William J Godwin who, possibly moved by the implications of the Mai- i thusian law, originated the handbill distribution of birth , I ' I control information in 1823. His work was supplemented by l j {Richard Garlile's Everywoman's Book (1826) and by Thomas j inodgskin’s Popular Political Economy (1827); both were iden-: [ tified as radicals, and these books, far from being politi cal in design, were of such a scabrous character as to practically justify any restriction on a free press. In ad dition, by way of example, there was John Wade's Women, i ^Here the radical Black Dwarf of Wooler made a turn to rake Godwin with his relics. A bit of doggerel ran: Now this is the head of that rascal in grain, Who plumes himself much on the bones of T-P-, Who dup'd his adherents to welcome him back From the land where he gather'd poor Tom.in a Sack. . . . (II, 7) [ Past and Present, exhibiting their Social Vicissitudes, Sin- ! gle and Matrimonial Relations, Rights. Privileges, and t j Wrongs (1859) which came just ten years after his work Un- j ^ reformed Abuses in Church and State* His erudition in the i i 1 later book was evidenced by the treatment of such topics: "Amusements of Antiquity,” "Equality in Nature's Pleasures,” I "Celibacy Tends to Degeneracy," "The Eastern Women of Lord Byron,” and, perhaps to supply a nexus with his political activities and interests, "Dissoluteness of the Clergy," | Some years later, when he was nearing eighty, he added a i supplement on the history of prostitution. These men espoused principles which are termed liberal, but Coleridge’s opposition to them could certainly be justi- jfied on grounds other than political ones, and his opposi tion to the political principles could stem from his survey lof the characters of the men who were avowed "liberals." To 1 i 1 i (Coleridge, they seemed more interested in making their way ! i ( in the world than in really re-making the world for a fu- j ture happier people. The people had been dispossessed by a nascent industrialism and by a free-trade policy, and they were in honest need of some new promise to replace the old certainties. They were immediately promised a general re form by the left. The right, represented here by Coleridge, countered with the kind of offer that had been extended by Richard Hooker, one which could not be fulfilled because the agency for guaranteeing it was losing its vitality. The ! 327; I !unfulfilled promise of the right was not the same, however, i 'as the unwarranted promise made by the left. The one was is-' sued by the misinformed, the other by the misleading. Hooker did not suppose that the Church’s spiritual author ity was derived from the State or that the Church was sim-j ply a Government department dealing with religion. But hisj eyes were blinded by the traditional thought and customs of centuries. He could not conceive of a day when Church and State should no longer be coextensive. Moreover, in Elizabeth’s day it was easy to confuse the desire for na tional unity against external foes with the desire for the religious unity of the English nation. But even while j Hooker wrote, his theory was breaking down. (Bickell, p. i 425) : Hooker guaranteed men that if they used their reason they , would find earthly and eternal happiness; the church would i {see to it, and it would lead the way to spirituality. When 1 ' 1 'the church led the way no further than to simple conformity ■ to the wishes of the secular authority, the whole guarantee j i ' was rendered invalid. Reason seemed a sham, just as spirit uality was, in many cases, a facade. Hooker had been misled;1 be saw the pattern of church and state in partnership en- ! during forever. This was because he had been oriented to thej I history of the Catholic Church, a church which did maintain i much of its spirituality despite secular ties. Hooker, and j Coleridge after him, in calling for a central authority in church and state, in denying the priesthood of all believ ers, and in striking out the sufficiency of faith by itself, strode away from Protestantism and in the direction of Rome. Perhaps, as Theodore Spencer suggested, no religion could afford to so soon abolish the intermediaries that had been , 328 jtradition to the Catholic faith and still have men strong ienough to continue in religious faith. Perhaps Protestant ism, in abolishing the Catholic intermediaries in its first ! unrestrained moments of reformation, placed too much on the f individual, too much responsibility and hope. Spencer wrote:; As we look back on the period we are tempted to ask wheth er Protestantism, like the earlier Platonic glorification of man's capacity to raise himself to an angelic level, did not put more responsibility on human nature than it j could stand, so that, for the time being, a reaction was i bound to set in. (p. 46) j The return to absolute authority made by Hooker and Cole ridge was one sign of the reaction. Though the individual might be gifted with reason and will, might exert enormous i force for the production of positive good, yet his freedom • < from all restraint could prove more a burden than he was able to bear. Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" had neatly cate- jgorized the malaise that followed complete license: j i Me this unchartered freedom tires; [ I feel the weight of chance-desires.10 , I ! Coleridge shed the burden and, at the same time, skirted the arrant pessimism so possible for one who had seen youthful hopes for the amelioration of the race destroyed by the po litical machinations of the ministry at home and the power plays of the French on the continent. He had never believed in the perfectibility of man; he had stopped considerably short of this, but with so many of his contemporaries he had lOpoetical Works. ed. Ernst De Selincourt and Helen Darbishire, IV (London, 1947), 85. 329 anticipated a new set of principles to govern political al liances coming out of the French upset. He had anticipated because he had believed that only principle could stabilize kingdoms. Indeed, principle alone could give coherence and longevity to metaphysics, politics, and aesthetics. "Every principle contains in itself the germs of a prophecy. . ." he wrote in the Biographia (I, 125)* Here he had particular reference to the realm of aesthetics, but this same concept applied equally to his metaphysics. When he spoke of the one, he did not forget the other, and so we might point out here that even for the specialized student of Coleridge’s criticism, the structure of his ecclesiastical polity has more than superficial interest. As Meyer Abrams urged: His metaphysical premises, far from being alien to his critical practice, reappear as the chief critical princi ples which make possible his characteristic insights into the constitution and qualities of specific poems.H As I have indicated, his theology and, hence, his polity developed directly from his metaphysics. As Wellek noted in his History of Modern Criticism 1750-1950, all of Cole ridge’s thought is governed, first, by his insistent devo tion to method; method is his ’ ’constant watchword,” his or ganizing discipline that channels literary, metaphysical, political, and theological speculation.^ A second ^ The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York, 1953)* P« 115. 12(Hew Haven, 1955), II, 158. 330 I |omnipresent concept in Coleridge's system is, according to ! ! Wellek, the concept of organicism. A play of Shakespeare he ! held superior to any other productions of the English stage ■because here the total work was unified and beautifully i . molded by the perfect union of all the parts. An ideal church-state relationship was signaled by the indivisible partnership of all the separate elements. The play and the society were complete, for they were organically fused. A last tenet that is found everywhere in Coleridge's ' thinking is that of the originating energy of the creative mind. Coleridge wrote in the Biographia that if he were granted this one energy which "tends to expand infinitely" t with its opposite which "strives to apprehend or find itself r in this infinity" he would "cause the world of intelligences, ^with the whole system of their representations to rise up . Ibefore you" (I, 196). In aesthetics this accounted for the j creation of the work of art, the perfect poem. The self ; that activated the artistic process was the subject; the j | ! jsubstance to be shaped into the single imaginative produc tion was translated into the object. These two "which pre suppose each other, and can exist only as antitheses" join ed the infinite with the finite, the artist with his work, the universe with the single active imagination (I, 185). So complete was the synthesis that "of all we see, hear, feel and touch the substance is and must be in ourselves . . ." (II, 259). 331 This balance of subject and object was primary in his religion, as would appear from this absolute postulate taken from his Confessions: I comprise and conclude the sum of my conviction in this one sentence. Revealed Religion (and I know of no religion not revealed) is in its highest contemplation the unity, that is, the identity or co-inherence, of Subjective and Objective. It is in itself, and irrelatively, at once in ward Life and Truth, and outward Fact and Luminary. But as all Power manifests itself in the harmony of correspondent Opposites, each supposing and supporting the other,— so has religion its objective, or historic and ecclesiastical pole, and its subjective, or spiritual and individual pole. (p. 335) Typically, he moved from the idealized notion of Revealed Religion to the practical and existent Church of England. The individual, believer though he may have been* was not singly capable of achieving salvation: he needed his anti thesis, or, in other terms, the subject demanded its coun tering object. The Christian needed an organized church in order to enable him to fulfill his spiritual potential. This was precisely the enforced relationship that drew together the imagination and the raw material of poetry. The creative self, in attaining any act of creation, had to come into a balance with external, regulating forces. It was, in es sence, an act of obedience that brought the subject in bal ance with the antithetical strength of nature, or the church, or the state. For all creative acts, freedom alone was insufficient. There must always be an authority to which we align our private impulses so that we may attain happiness. One I expression of this authority in both Hooker and Coleridge was principle* This demand for principle directs Gole- , ridge's attitude in all things. Principle is germinal for i his aesthetics: "To admire on principle, is the only way I j to imitate without loss of originality" (Biographla. I* , | 62). For his polity, as it did for Hooker's, it assured a I stable society. This kind of society was, ultimately, the best justification for the existence and the power of the Church of England. It was, unfortunately, more conceptual i t ; than real, and so we have in the polities of Hooker and Coleridge the cogent systematization of principles on which a society that no man had ever seen and one that only a few could envision might be based. But if both Hooker and Coleridge overestimated the means of the j church to raise itself above contentiousness and defensive measures, they still gave it a standard for any future im- provements; they gave it a whole intellectual and spirit- J ual tradition. Such an achievement does not dim, however j idealistic its terms may be. I I I 1 i i 1' I BIi I O & R A P M Y BIBLIOGRAPHY Abrams, Meyer H. The Mirror and the Lamps Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. Hew York, 1953* Adams, Brooks* The Law of Civilization and Decay* Hew York, 1896. Adams, If* Ray* Studies in the Literary Backgrounds crf English^Radicalismwith Special Reference io the French Revolution* Lancaster. Penn*, 1947* (Prank- lin and Marshall College Studies, Ho. 5.) 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