Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit | Page 5

a time
with a Mr. Morgan at Calne. Finally he placed himself, in April,
1816--the year of the publication of "Christabel"- -with a surgeon at
Highgate, Mr. Gillman, under whose friendly care he was restored to
himself, and in whose house he died on the 25th of July, 1834. It was

during this calm autumn of his life that Coleridge, turning wholly to the
higher speculations on philosophy and religion upon which his mind
was chiefly fixed, a revert to the Church, and often actively antagonist
to the opinions he had held for a few years, wrote, his "Lay Sermons,"
and his "Biographia Literaria," and arranged also a volume of Essays
of the Friend. He lectured on Shakespeare, wrote "Aids to Reflection,"
and showed how his doubts were set at rest in these "Confessions of an
Inquiring Spirit," which were first published in 1840, after their
writer's death.
H. M.

CONFESSIONS OF AN INQUIRING SPIRIT.

LETTERS ON THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.

LETTER I.

My dear friend,
I employed the compelled and most unwelcome leisure of severe
indisposition in reading The Confessions of a Fair Saint in Mr.
Carlyle's recent translation of the Wilhelm Meister, which might, I
think, have been better rendered literally The Confessions of a
Beautiful Soul. This, acting in conjunction with the concluding
sentences of your letter, threw my thoughts inward on my own religious
experience, and gave immediate occasion to the following Confessions
of one who is neither fair nor saintly, but who, groaning under a deep
sense of infirmity and manifold imperfection, feels the want, the
necessity, of religious support; who cannot afford to lose any the
smallest buttress, but who not only loves Truth even for itself, and when
it reveals itself aloof from all interest, but who loves it with an

indescribable awe, which too often withdraws the genial sap of his
activity from the columnar trunk, the sheltering leaves, the bright and
fragrant flower, and the foodful or medicinal fruitage, to the deep root,
ramifying in obscurity and labyrinthine way-winning -
In darkness there to house unknown, Far underground, Pierced by no
sound Save such as live in Fancy's ear alone, That listens for the
uptorn mandrake's parting groan!
I should, perhaps, be a happier--at all events a more useful--man if my
mind were otherwise constituted. But so it is, and even with regard to
Christianity itself, like certain plants, I creep towards the light, even
though it draw me away from the more nourishing warmth. Yea, I
should do so, even if the light had made its way through a rent in the
wall of the Temple. Glad, indeed, and grateful am I, that not in the
Temple itself, but only in one or two of the side chapels, not essential to
the edifice, and probably not coeval with it, have I found the light
absent, and that the rent in the wall has but admitted the free light of
the Temple itself.
I shall best communicate the state of my faith by taking the creed, or
system of credenda, common to all the Fathers of the Reformation--
overlooking, as non-essential, the differences between the several
Reformed Churches, according to the five main classes or sections into
which the aggregate distributes itself to my apprehension. I have then
only to state the effect produced on my mind by each of these, or the
quantum of recipiency and coincidence in myself relatively thereto, in
order to complete my Confession of Faith.
I. The Absolute; the innominable [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced] et Causa Sui, in whose transcendent I AM, as the Ground,
IS whatever VERILY is:- the Triune God, by whose Word and Spirit, as
the transcendent Cause, EXISTS whatever SUBSTANTIALLY exists:-
God Almighty--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, undivided, unconfounded,
co- eternal. This class I designate by the word [Greek text which
cannot be reproduced].
II. The Eternal Possibilities; the actuality of which hath not its origin in

God: Chaos spirituale:- [Greek text which cannot be reproduced].
III. The Creation and Formation of the heaven and earth by the
Redemptive Word:- the Apostasy of Man:- the Redemption of Man:- the
Incarnation of the Word in the Son of Man:- the Crucifixion and
Resurrection of the Son of Man:- the Descent of the Comforter:-
Repentance ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced]):-
Regeneration:- Faith:- Prayer:- Grace--Communion with the Spirit:-
Conflict:- Self- abasement:- Assurance through the righteousness of
Christ:- Spiritual Growth:- Love:- Discipline:- Perseverance:- Hope in
death:- [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
IV. But these offers, gifts, and graces are not for one, or for a few. They
are offered to all. Even when the Gospel is preached to a single
individual it is offered to him as to one of a great household. Not only
man, but, says St. Paul,