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The first scholarly edition of Sara Coleridge’s religious writings

Sara Coleridge and the Oxford Movement is the first book to be devoted entirely to Sara Coleridge’s religious writings. It presents extracts from important religious works which have remained unpublished since the 1840s. These writings represent a bold intervention by a woman writer in the public spheres of academia and the Church, in the genre of religious writing which was a masculine preserve (as opposed to the genres of religious fiction and poetry). They offer the most original and systematic critique of Tractarian theology to appear in the 1840s. Sara Coleridge’s assertion of religious inclusivity and liberty of conscience is based on a radically Protestant theology underpinned by a Kantian epistemology. The book also presents substantial extracts from her unpublished masterpiece Dialogues on Regeneration (the equivalent of her father’s Opus Maximum) which show her remarkable literary originality and the continuing development of her innovative religious thought.

Preface; Abbreviations; Introduction: ‘Sara Coleridge and the Contexts of Religious Division’; Part 1: Selections from Religious Writings, 1843–1848; Section 1. ‘On Rationalism’; Section 2. Introduction to ‘Biographia Literaria (1847)’; Section 3. ‘Extracts from a New Treatise on Regeneration’; Part 2: Selections from Dialogues on Regeneration, 1850–1851; Section 1. Introductory Dialogues; Section 2. On the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Relation to Time; Section 3. Scriptural Dialogues; Section 4. On the Idea of Personality in Reference to Our Lord Jesus Christ; Bibliography; Index.

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Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Anthem Press
Date de parution	30 janvier 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785272417
Langue	English

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Sara Coleridge and the Oxford Movement
Sara Coleridge and the Oxford Movement
Selected Religious Writings
Edited by
Robin Schofield
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2020
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
© 2020 Robin Schofield editorial matter and selection.
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019955627
ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-239-4 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78527-239-X (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
For Simon Kövesi
CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction: Liberty of Conscience and the Light of Reason: Sara Coleridge and the Contexts of Religious Division
Part One: Selections from Religious Writings, 1843–48
Section 1: On Rationalism
Section 2: Introduction to Biographia 1847
Section 3: Extracts from a New Treatise on Regeneration (1848)
Part Two: Selections from Dialogues on Regeneration , 1850–51
Section 1: Introductory Dialogues
Section 2: Dialogues on the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Relation to Time
Section 3: Scriptural Dialogues
Section 4: Dialogues on the Idea of Personality in Reference to the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Bibliography
Index
PREFACE
Sara Coleridge’s religious writings are significant interventions in the controversies of her times and the major achievement of her authorial career. Yet, they are virtually unknown and unread. When Peter Swaab compiled his selection of Sara Coleridge’s literary criticism, he took a ‘pragmatic decision to omit’ extracts from her ‘theological works’, which, he maintained, require specialist treatment and ‘deserve a separate volume of their own’ ( Criticism , xxxi). Lost from view for more than 160 years, Sara Coleridge’s religious writings constitute a remarkable body of work. In restoring a selection of them to light, this volume seeks to fill a notable gap in our knowledge of nineteenth-century theological literature.
Names and Authorial Status: ‘Coleridge’ and ‘STC’
In presenting this selection of Sara Coleridge’s religious writings, I refer to her as Coleridge and to her father as STC. It would be belittling to Sara Coleridge, and contrary to my intention to show her as a major religious writer of the period of the Oxford Movement, if I were to use her first name in a book devoted to her theological work. I am aware of the potential for confusion in referring, in the same work, to the Romantic poet and metaphysician Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and to the Victorian religious philosopher Sara Coleridge. I have taken precautions to avoid moments of ambiguity, therefore, while upholding Sara Coleridge’s status as an author and theologian in her own right.
Organization of This Book
The extracts from Coleridge’s religious writings are presented in the order in which the works from which they are taken were produced. I have adopted this chronological structure in order to show Coleridge’s literary and intellectual development in response to her politico-religious times of rapid change and deepening division. The Socratic form of her Dialogues on Regeneration , viewed in the light of ‘On Rationalism’, reflects at once Coleridge’s literary development and her progression as a religious thinker.
I contextualize each passage by means of a short introduction in italics; in some cases, I summarize briefly how an argument develops from the point at which an extract ends. I seek to convey the scope and development of ideas in each work in Part One . Similarly, in Part Two , my editorial interventions aim to indicate the full compass of the dialogue from which a passage has been taken, as well as to suggest the significance of that dialogue in the series as a whole.
Textual Notes
The passages from Coleridge’s religious writings in Part One are from her published works, none of which has been republished since the 1840s. The selection begins with ‘On Rationalism’, first published in 1843 and again, with some revisions, in 1848. Coleridge organizes the 1848 text into ten separate chapters, whereas there had been no chapter divisions in the 1843 edition. She adds a header to each page in 1848 which gives its topic. She also cuts and abbreviates some notes. Coleridge also makes significant additions at three points in the 1848 text, which serve to clarify and amplify her themes.
At the end of what is the first chapter in the 1848 version, she adds three paragraphs which summarize her intentions and the direction of her argument. Just short of three-quarters of the way through the essay, Coleridge adds six and a half pages which, with material from the 1843 text, make a sixth chapter comprising ten pages in total, entitled ‘Language of Bishop Taylor and of Hooker on Regeneration’. There is a further addition, which builds towards the essay’s conclusion. In the 1843 version, a passage of 12 pages is devoted to a critique of the Oxford theologians’ investment of authority for their baptismal doctrine in the Church Fathers. In the meantime, Coleridge had conducted further research on the teachings of the ancient church, and rewrote and expanded this passage, so that in 1848 it becomes the essay’s penultimate chapter, consisting of 25 pages. It is entitled ‘Examination of Waterland’s Theory of Baptismal Regeneration. Harmony of Tertullian’s and Cyprian’s doctrine of Baptism and Confirmation’.
The text of ‘On Rationalism’ presented in this selection is that of 1843, with some additional passages taken from the 1848 version, the inclusion of which I indicate in the notes. I have also included the chapter titles from the 1848 text in this selection but have not reproduced the page headings from the later version, because this would have required me to follow the original pagination, which would not have been feasible.
Selections from Coleridge’s ‘Introduction’ to her edition of Biographia Literaria (1847) follow the passages from ‘On Rationalism’, while selections from ‘Extracts from a New Treatise on Regeneration’ (1848) conclude Part One . The texts of the passages in Part One are given exactly as they appear in the published works from which they have been taken. Where I make an omission from a passage or sentence, I use three dots, enclosed by square brackets, with a space before and after.
Coleridge uses footnotes extensively in both versions of ‘On Rationalism’ but trims them somewhat in the 1848 text. This slightly more restrained approach is evident also in the ‘Introduction’ to Biographia 1847 , while in ‘Extracts from a New Treatise on Regeneration’ she uses notes sparingly. Where I have included Coleridge’s footnotes, I have placed them in my series of endnotes, preceded by the tag [SC] . However, I have approached her footnotes selectively. Where a longer note is (in my opinion) of key importance, I have reproduced it in full in my endnotes. I have omitted some notes on grounds of space and have summarized or quoted from others. I have retained short notes by Coleridge which give references to works she cites. Where Coleridge has not provided a reference for a citation from a work by a Church Father, or a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century theologian, I have cited a nineteenth-century edition such as she is likely to have consulted. Occasionally, she specifies the contemporary edition she has used: for example, Henry Alford’s edition of The Works of John Donne in six volumes, published in 1839.
The selections in Part Two are from Sara Coleridge’s major work, Dialogues on Regeneration (1850–51), which has never been published before; nor have selections from it been published. The manuscripts of the Dialogues are held in the archive of the Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. Manuscripts intended for the ‘New Treatise on Regeneration’, earlier extracts of which were published in 1848, are also held at the Ransom Center. The Dialogues and the Treatise are discrete works, which represent quite distinct literary approaches to contemporary religious and cultural division, as I argue in the Introduction.
Many of the Dialogues on Regeneration manuscripts are in, or approaching, finished form, particularly those in the first (‘Introductory’) series, the series entitled ‘On the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Relation to Time’, and the final series (written from September to November 1851) ‘On the Idea of Personality in Reference to the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ’. The dialogues in the series which examine ‘Scriptural’ evidence regarding baptismal regenerat