has done more than any other of
Coleridge's writings to discredit his name with the orthodox. The
frequent occurrence in it of the word 'bibliolatry', borrowed from
Lessing, would sufficiently account for this pious hatred. From
bibliolatry Coleridge was saved by the spiritualism, which, in
questions less simple than that of the infallibility of Scripture, was
so retarding to his culture. Bibliolators may remember that one who
committed a kind of intellectual suicide by catching at any appearance
of a fixed and absolute authority, never dreamed of resting on the
authority of a book. His Schellingistic notion of the possibility of
absolute knowledge, of knowing God, of a light within every man which
might discover to him the doctrines of Christianity, tended to
depreciate historical testimony, perhaps historical realism
altogether. Scripture is a legitimate sphere for the understanding. He
says, indeed, that there is more in the Bible that 'finds' him than he
has experienced in all other books put together. But still, 'There is
a Light higher than all, even the Word that was in the beginning. If
between this Word and the written letter I shall anywhere seem to
myself to find a discrepance, I will not conclude that such there
actually is; nor on the other hand will I fall under the condemnation
of them that would lie for God, but seek as I may, be thankful for
what I have--and wait.' Coleridge is the inaugurator of that _via
media_ of Scriptural criticism which makes much of saving the word
'inspiration', while it attenuates its meaning; which supposes a sort
of modified inspiration residing in the whole, not in the several
parts. 'The Scriptures were not dictated by an infallible
intelligence;' nor 'the writers each and all divinely informed as
well as inspired'. 'They refer to other documents, and in all points
express themselves as sober-minded and veracious writers under
ordinary circumstances are known to do.' To make the Bible itself 'the
subject of a special article of faith, is an unnecessary and useless
abstraction'.

His judgement on the popular view of inspiration is severe. It is
borrowed from the Cabbalists; it 'petrifies at once the whole body of
Holy Writ, with all its harmonies and symmetrical gradations;--turns
it at once into a colossal Memnon's head, a hollow passage for a
voice, a voice that mocks the voices of many men, and speaks in their
names, and yet is but one voice and the same;--and no man utt