eason and understanding. He makes the latter the
logical, and the former the intuitive faculty. Even beasts possess
understanding, but reason, the gift of God to no less creature than man,
performs the functions of judgment on supersensual matters. "Reason,"
says he, "is the power of universal and necessary convictions, the
source and substance of truths above sense, and having their evidence in
themselves."[148] This admission to Rationalism has been eagerly seized
by the Coleridgean school, and elaborated in some of their writings.

Sin, according to Coleridge, is not guilt in the orthodox sense. When
Adam fell he merely turned his back upon the sun; dwelt in the shadow;
had God's displeasure; was stripped of his supernatural endowments; and
inherited the evils of a sickly body, and a passionate, ignorant, and
uninstructed soul. His sin left him to his nature, his posterity is heir
to his misfortunes, and what is every man's evil becomes all men's
greater evil. Each one has evil enough, and it is hard for a man to live
up to the rule of his own reason and conscience.[149] Redemption is not
salvation from the curse of a broken law, and Christ did not pay a debt
for man, because the payer must have incurred the debt himself.[150]
But the fruit of his death is the reconciliation of man to God. Man will
have a future life, but it was not the specific object of the Christian
dispensation to satisfy his understanding that he will live hereafter;
neither is the belief of a future state or the rationality of its belief
the exclusive attribute of the Christian religion, but a fundamental
article of all religion.[151]

All attempts to determine the exact theological position of Coleridge
from his own definitions are unsatisfactory. We must derive his real
convictions from the spirit and not from the letter of his works. He was
devout and reverent, never prosecuting his investigations from a mere
love of speculation, but as a sincere inquirer after truth. But his
statements have had their natural result in producing a large and
vigorous school of thinkers. Never bracing himself to write a
philosophical or theological system, but merely stating his views in
aphoristic form--as in the _Aids to Reflection_--he scattered his
thoughts as a careless sower, and left them to germinate in the public
mind. But many of his opinions have been perverted, and speculations
have been based upon them by numerous admirers who, proudly claiming hi