HKB
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Often appears with: conversion and faith · reason and the intellect · the problem of evil and theodicy · spirit vs natural · scripture and its interpretation · right reason and conscience · rewards and punishments · reason and understanding · providence and divine governance · moral obligation · language, naming, and meaning · importance of the distinction
Usually: argument (3) · crisis of belief (3) · commentary or gloss (1) · curiosity (1) · detachment (1) · exhortation (1) · lament (1)
The writer introduces the book as a didactic, philosophical vindication of Christianity’s spiritual doctrines, asking readers to clarify what they mean by “spirit” and “spiritual,” and distinguishing the spiritual from the natural as supernatural.
and of spiritual religion, and not only to furnish a fit occasion, but to create an imperious demand, for a Work like that which is here offered to the public. In regard then to the distinguishing character and tendency of the Work itself, it has already been stated to be didactic, and designed to aid reflection on the principles and grounds of truth in our own being; but in another point of view, and with reference…
Coleridge argues that people experience difficulties reconciling being under nature’s law with feeling moral obligation, and that some resolve the conflict by sacrificing spiritual religion to accepted metaphysics.
fully explained in the course of the Work. My present object is merely to show the necessity of some system in relation to these subjects different from the received one. It may perhaps be thought, that the language used above is too strong and too positive. But I venture to ask every candid man, at least every one who has not committed himself by writing and publishing on the subject, whether in considering the gre…
Coleridge declines to define the precise nature of reason versus understanding, but urges careful study of that distinction because it undergirds a truly spiritual religion and philosophy.
*peculiar* powers--of some source of ideas *distinct* from the understanding, differing *in kind* from any and all of those which belong to us in common with inferior and irrational animals. But what these powers are, or what is the precise nature of the distinction between the understanding and reason, it is not my province, nor have I undertaken, to show. My object is merely to illustrate its necessity, and the pa…
In the “On the three Preceding Aphorisms” comment, Coleridge maps his work’s argument from spiritual religion and the limits of understanding, to objections, Scripture, and faith’s role in comprehension.
*On the three Preceding Aphorisms.* To the reader, who has consented to submit his mind to my temporary guidance, and who permits me to regard him as my pupil, or junior fellow-student, I continue to address myself. Should he exist only in my imagination, let the bread float on the waters! If it be the Bread of Life, it will not have been utterly cast away. Let us pause a moment, and review the road we have passed …