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Coleridge's Theory of the Church in the Social Order
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
The era of the English Reform Bill of 1832 presented difficulties and dangers to both state and church. For the state it set the task of achieving a social order—of forming a new social mind—in a period when social change had destroyed the basis of custom in English life and thought. The rise and growth of mechanized industry had produced both a new working class separated from the land and the processes of production and with only its labor to sell in return for a meager livelihood, and a new industrial middle class which, finding itself excluded from the rights and privileges of the state, had set about the task of acquiring a political position comparable to its new economic status. Though the latter group secured the passage of the Reform Bill, to secure social stability was a much more difficult task. The industrial society showed itself as a divided society, described by Disraeli as “two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy … as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets,” a society in whose towns a French writer of the period could discover “nothing but masters and operatives.”
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1934
References
1 Disraeli, Benjamin, Sybil, Book ii, chapter 5.
2 Léon Faucher, quoted by J. L., and Hammond, Barbara, The Age of the Chartists, p. 336.Google Scholar
3 Quoted by Christie O. F., The Transition from Aristocracy, p. 45.
4 Coleridge, S. T., Essays, ed. by Coleridge, H. N., 1837, II, p. 197.Google Scholar
5 Quoted by Cobban, Alfred, Edmund Burke and the Revolt Against the Eighteenth Century, p. 157.Google Scholar
6 The Friend, ed. by H. N. Coleridge, 1837, I, p. 166.Google Scholar
7 The quotations given below are from the 1839 edition, edited by H. N. Coleridge.
8 Ibid., pp. 402–403.
9 Ibid., p. 404.
10 Ibid., pp. 404–5.
11 Ibid., p. 409.
12 Ibid., p. 413.
13 Ibid., p. 406. See also pp. 402, 412.
14 Ibid., p. 403.
15 Ibid., p. 359.
16 Ibid., p. 423.
17 “Letter to Courier,” Sept. 26, 1811, Essays, III, p. 925.
18 “By an idea I mean (in this instance) that conception of a thing, which is not abstracted from any particular state, form, or mode, in which the thing may happen to exist at this or that time; nor yet generalized from any number or succession of such forms or modes; but which is given by the knowledge of its ultimate aim.” On the Constitution of Church and State according to the Idea of Each, ed. by H. N. Coleridge, 1839, p. 11.Google Scholar
19 Ibid., p. 12.
20 Ibid., pp. 18–19.
21 Ibid., p. 19.
22 Ibid., p. 22.
23 Ibid., p. 23.
24 Muirhead, J. H., Coleridge as a Philosopher, p. 190.Google Scholar
25 On the Constitution of Church and State, p. 32.
26 Ibid., p. 25.
27 Ibid., pp. 26, 29.
28 Ibid., p. 30.
29 Though Coleridge's intention was to make philosophy and not history the foundation of his theory of the state, a conflict exists between his philosophic and historical appeal, and ho turns more and more to the positive facts of historical evolution in the development of his theory. Cf. Cobban, op. cit., p. 179.
30 “My assertion is simply this, that its formation has advanced in this direction. The line of evolution, however sinuous, has still tended to this point, sometimes with, sometimes without, not seldom, perhaps, against, the intention of the individual actors but always as if a power, greater and better than the men themselves had intended it for them.” (On the Constitution of Church and State, p. 33). Coleridge's qualification in this respect is caused by his recognition of the paramount position the landed interests have assumed politically due to the defects in the realization of the constitution and idea, so that “they now constitute,” he says, “a very large proportion of the political power and influence of the very class of men whose personal cupidity and whose partial views of the Landed Interest at large they were meant to keep in cheek.” (Ibid., p. 31). Even these defects, he believes, have been offset by the increased force of public opinion resulting from the extension and development of roads, canals, machinery, and the press. (Ibid., p. 32).
31 Ibid., p. 47.
32 Ibid., pp. 47, 70; The Friend, III, p. 64.
33 On the Constitution of Church and State, p. 38, 45 ff
34 Ibid., pp. 49–51.
35 Ibid., p. 49.
36 Ibid., p. 139.
37 Ibid., p. 124.
38 Ibid., p. 48.
39 Ibid., p. 127.
40 Ibid., p. 127.
41 Ibid., p. 125.
42 Ibid., p. 127.
43 Ibid., p. 126.
44 Ibid., p. 128.
45 Ibid., p. 88.
46 Ibid., p. 113.
47 Ibid., pp. 130–132.
48 Ibid., p. 135.
49 Ibid., p. 54.
50 Ibid., p. 53.
51 Ibid., p. 61.
52 Ibid., p. 76.
53 Ibid., p. 76.
54 Ibid., p. 58.
55 Ibid., p. 58.
56 Ibid., p. 58.
57 He called them “the saving distinctions.” See ed. note Table Talk, Jan. 1, 1823 in Works, ed. by Shedd, , 1854, VI, p. 259.Google Scholar
58 On the Constitution of Church and State, p. 59.
59 Ibid., p. 60.
60 Ibid., p. 71.
61 Ibid., p. 71.
62 Ibid., p. 61. Cf. Table Talk, may 31, 1834, Works, VI, p. 514. “The national Church requires and is required by the Christian Church for the perfection of each.” The reasons given in this citation, however, emphasize more the need of the Christian for the national church than vice versa.
63 On the Constitution of Church and State, pp. 61–62.
64 Table Talk, Preface, by Coleridge, H. N., in Works, VI, p. 237.Google Scholar
65 Table Talk. February. 22, 1832, in Works, VI, p. 382. See also inter alia, pp. 419, 428.
66 Ibid., Preface by H. N. Coleridge, p. 237.
67 On the Constitution of Church and State, p. 65.
68 Ibid., p. 67.
69 Ibid., pp. 69–70.