[Coleridge’s Literary Remains, Volume 4. by Samuel Taylor Coleridge]@TWC D-Link book
Coleridge’s Literary Remains, Volume 4.

BOOK I
37/39

405.
As for the democratical conceit of them that say that the Parliament hath their governing power, as they are the people's representatives, and so have the members of the convocation, though those represented have no governing power themselves, it is so palpably self-contradicting, that I need not confute it.
Self-contradicting according to Baxter's sense of the words "represent" and "govern." But every rational adult has a governing power: namely, that of governing himself.
Ib.p.

412.
That though a subject ought to take an oath in the sense of his rulers who impose it, as far as he can understand it; yet a man that taketh an oath from a robber to save his life is not always bound to take it in the imposer's sense, if he take it not against the proper sense of the words.
This is a point, on which I have never been able to satisfy myself .-- The only safe conclusion I have been able to draw, being the folly, mischief, and immorality of all oaths but judicial ones,--and those no farther excepted than as they are means of securing a deliberate consciousness of the presence of the Omniscient Judge.

The inclination of my mind is at this moment, to the principle that an oath may deepen the guilt of an act sinful in itself, but cannot be detached from the act; it being understood that a perfectly voluntary and self-imposed oath is itself a sin.

The man who compels me to take an oath by putting a pistol to my ear has in my mind clearly forfeited all his right to be treated as a moral agent.

Nay, it seems to be a sin to act so as to induce him to suppose himself such.


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