Coleridge, Sara (1802-1852). - Letter, from an unstated address, to Edward Quillinan (1791-1851) (?), at an unstated address, dated 21 December 1849 (?). WLMS A / Coleridge, Sara / 48.

My dear Friend

It is curious that the day before yesterday I sent you a message by Mr Robinson, half of which was that, ere very long, I hoped to answer an interesting letter which I had received from you some months ago. No I will reply to your last after its own style and manner and to my other by and by I wish my hasty letters were as clearly written and expressed as yours - still retaining my intention as to the other.

Your last hasty letter I shall despatch - or quote from to my friend Mrs: Townsend. She will be much pleased at what you say of her collection on the Passion. The new volume is at least as good, I think, and has been very favourably received, except by a few bigot-friends, and several dictatorial relations, who seem to think relationship endows them with the privilege of making themselves disagreeable indefinitely or to an unlimited extent.

Pray give my kindest love to Mr: and Mrs: Wordsworth. I have most interesting and, latterly, cheering reports of them from various persons. I meditate a letter to dear Mrs: Wordsworth, containing more particular accounts of the Coleridge family than she can receive from any but a member of it.

I have not seen Dr Wordsworth's sermon, but am not surprised at your report of its concluding portion. The doctor is a man of ability, and I believe of much zeal and disinterestedness, but his manners, both

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as an author and a man, are the reverse of happy. He seldom makes any public manifesto in sermon, pamphlet, or speech at meeting, without committing some marked fault of style; and he has the art of being personal, even on subjects which seem to call aloud for abstract treatment, more than any man in all clerkdom. His very face and person are unfortunate in respect of what I have been observing; he looks so dark and square, so positive and contradictory. Yet Derwent and Mary, when he visited St Marks some time ago, thought him wondrously improved, very agreeable, refined and gentlemanly. I think he has a little too much self-confidence, and whatever he feels positive about he thrusts in his adversary's face, at the risk of poking his eye out, like Machlin the actor, who very nearly got hanged through his awkwardness and precipitancy.

Thursday Morning. I have been reading with some interest the Gorham trial; or rather I await with interest the decision, for the long arguments on either side brought forward nothing new to me - that is, nothing of a new sort - making any difference in my view of the matter. I had not examined every particular separate authority, which Dr Addams and Mr Baddeley advanced against Gorham's position: but we might deduce from the mere fact that the doctrine of spiritual regeneration in Baptism remained in the Church - or that our formularies, taken in the more obvious sense, imply it, or, if you will, declare I, that it must have had all that sort of authority which Mr B. brings forward. [[?]] it would not be there. I wonder how Gorham can think to mention that baptismal

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2) Friday December 21 Dear Friend I rushed on through four pages more of theology, and as this would but weary you and was scrawly in penship I withdrew it and will only add, on the subject of Gorham verses Exeter, that Mr Baddeley outheroded Herod on the last day of his argument in affirming that a person going hypocritically to the font without faith or repentance, obtains there and then, spiritual regeneration, which is a curse to him and not a blessing. This learned gentleman is to me a tiny proof how cleverly a man may talk about and about a doctrine, into the true nature of which he has not the smallest insight. In making the declaration just mentioned Mr B. departs from all the fathers of the Church from Polycarp to Pusey. In Augustine's time it was debated whether a hypocritical recipient of baptism was excluded for ever from the benefits of the sacrament, or whether he might not enjoy them upon his becoming faithful & penitent. The Just Father himself held the opinion that the virtue of the rite might remain in suspense, & come into play, when the necessary internal conditions were acquired. But I believe it was never even debated whether a man could obtain the grace of the sacrament while he was in a state of actual sin and impenitence. Children were supposed to obtain it, because & being innocent & free from actual sin, they opposed no bar to the entrance of the Spirit.

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yet the same Mr B. accuses the Church of Rome of holding the doctrine of opus operatum superstitiously, of teaching that men obtain the benefit of the sacrament, sine bono motu intentis. Now the fact is, that the doctrine of the Council of Trent is precisely the same as the Anglican, at least as expounded by one set of doctrines. It teaches as you know better than I that infants obtain spiritual regeneration in Baptism, without moral conditions and acts, but that in adults these things are required, in order to their obtaining baptismal graces faith, repentance and resolution of not sinning. Mustrop Bethall brings the same charge against the Church of Rome and imputes to Calom on the one hand and to your Doctors on the other; opinions which they have ever repudiated.

The truth is Church exists & strong [[?]] in this country is attached to the sacramental doctrine of the Church of Rome in general. When Mr B. is asked, "How is your tenet distinguished from the opus operatum of Romish doctors?" he is eager to shew that there is a clear difference; and this he cannot do without imputing to them a gross superstition and anti-moralism from which their doctrine is further removed than his own.

Had Lord Campbell been a theologian & up to the work before him he might have [[?]] Mr B. into some confusion, I think, by asking him to state the doctrine of St Austin upon the care of an unrepentant adult who comes hypocritically to baptism. But what an incompetent tribunal was this judici

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cal committee to try such a cause as that - between the recurrant clergyman & his diocesan!

Lately I went into Mr Dodworth & it [[?]] clock and there was the whole High Church conclave, Exeter, Pusey, Marshall, Sinclair, and others laying their heads together. No doubt Gorham puts a non-natural sense upon some part of the office of Baptism & but great part of those clergy who take that service naturally, put a non-natural sense on the articles respecting justification by faith alone; and use the formularies to be tightened up at one end and let to hang loose at the other?

Is one half of the clergy to go out of the Church at the North door, & another to go out the South? Or is the Church to be reduced by one half or rather perhaps by two thirds?

I have just heard that Jane Ayre is by a lady, the daughter of a clergyman at York. Miss Martineau has seen & conversed with her. I am greatly surprised. I thought, with Mrs Eastlake, that the style had a masculine stride [[?]] it which could belong to a man only. Edith & I are agreed in thinking Mrs Jameson more interesting than Miss Martineau, judging by what we have seen of both. Mrs J. is a good woman at bottom, and works and cares for her parents and other relations. She

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is also a woman of refined intellect, and more genius, an eloquent writer, and full of feeling for [[?]], though Laurence considers her knowledge superficial, judging both from her writings and conversation. But one thing she lackeths easy gentlewomanly manners. She is in general company too exacting. She seems to forget that that talent and literary power form only one claim to notice; that there are many others founded on birth, station, connection, popular character, attractive person &c &c She always seems to think that everybody should be introduced to her, & that she ought to obtain the notice of every person of note. Hence she is pleasanter in a tête à tête call, than in a party. This defect in her partly arises from her unaristocratic early breeding

Mrs. Eastlake is a woman of more knowledge of the world - She is very striking in person & courteous and unexacting in manner at least she is [[?]] from the positively exacting manner of Mrs J. But she has her fault. She is too obviously artificial. There is as Mr de Vere says, a want of mobility in her face; it is like a goodly mask; and there is the same want of life & reality, the same automaton artificiality, in her manner. Always the same smile, the same smooth way, the same movements of the head - [[?]] at last. I saw a little of this at first. But I see it the more the oftener I meet her. Mrs. March is to me I think the most interesting, upon the whole, of all these lionesses. Mr Kenyon calls her "a predominant woman" - She is as tall as

Mrs Eastlake - about 5 foot 9 inches - and as courteous, but simpler and more overflowing. She evidently desires to be [[?]] and treated as a lioness. But she is good natured and ready to admire as well as to be admired. She has been very handsome, and is still improving her appearance.

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Object summary: WLMS A / Coleridge, Sara / 48