[Coleridge’s Literary Remains, Volume 4. by Samuel Taylor Coleridge]@TWC D-Link bookColeridge’s Literary Remains, Volume 4. PART IV 15/72
But if the voices and appearances were indeed divine and supernatural, well must we assume that there was a distinctive, though verbally inexpressible, terror and disproportion to the mind, the senses, the whole 'organismus' of the human beholders and hearers, which might both account for, and even in the sight of God justify, the trembling prayer which deprecated a repetition. Ib.p.
164. To justify its application to Christ, the resemblance between him and Moses has often been deduced at large, and drawn into a variety of particulars, among which several points have been taken minute and precarious, or having so little of dignity or clearness of representation in them, that it would be wise to discard them from the prophetic evidence. With our present knowledge we are both enabled and disposed thus to evolve the full contents of the word 'like'; but I cannot help thinking that the contemporaries of Moses (if not otherwise orally instructed,) must have understood it in the first and historical sense, at least, of Joshua. Ib.p.
168. A distinguished commentator on the laws of Moses, Michaelis, vindicates their temporal sanctions on the ground of the Mosaic Code being of the nature of a civil system, to the statutes of which the rewards of a future state would be incongruous and unsuitable. I never read either of Michaelis's Works, but the same view came before me whenever I reflected on the Mosaic Code.
Who expects in realities of any kind the sharp outline and exclusive character of scientific classification? It is the predominance of the characterizing constituent that gives the name and class.
Do not even our own statute laws, though co-existing with a separate religious Code, contain many 'formulae' of words which have no sense but for the conscience? Davison's stress on the word 'covet', in the tenth commandment, is, I think, beyond what so ancient a Code warrants;--and for the other instances, Michaelis would remind him that the Mosaic constitution was a strict theocracy, and that Jehovah, the God of all, was their 'king'.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|