The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

which forms part of his Introduction to the “Biographia Literaria.”--“He
saw," says his son, "the very mind of St. Paul in the teaching of Luther on
the Law and Justification by Faith." "My father's affectionate respect for
Luther is enough to alienate him from the High Anglican party."--“He
thought the mind of Luther more akin to St. Paul's than that of any other
Christian teacher."--"It is an insult," says Henry Nelson Coleridge,
speaking in his own person, "to the apostolic man's (Luther's) memory, to
defend him from the charge of Antinomianism. He knocked down with his
little finger more Antinomianism than his accusers with both hands. If his
doctrine is the jaw-bone of an ass, he must have been a very Samson, for
he turned numbers with this instrument from the evil of their lives; and the
same instrument, in the hands of mere pigmies in comparison with him,
has wrought more amendment of life among the poor, than the most
eloquent and erudite preachers 6f works and rites have to boast, by their
preaching." Coleridge is here answering some of the aspersions cast by
High-Church writers on Luther. Referring to one of them, who had called
the Commentary on Galatians "silly," he says, "Shakspeare has been
called silly by Puritans, Milton worse than silly by Prelatists and Papists,
Wordsworth was long called silly by Bonaparteans; what will not the
odium theologicum or politicum find worthless and silly? To me, perhaps
from my silliness, his Commentary appears the very Iliad of justification by
faith alone; all the fine and striking things that have been said upon the
subject, are taken from it; and if the author preached a novel doctrine, or
presented a novel development of Scripture in this work, as Mr. Newman
avers, I think he deserves great credit for his originality. The Commentary
contains, or rather is, a most spirited siege of Babylon, and the friends of
Rome like it as well as the French like Wellington and the battle of
Waterloo."--"My father called Luther, in parts, the most evangelical writer
he knew, after the apostles and apostolic men." This he said in view of his
"depth of insight into the heart of man and into the ideas of the Bible, the
fervor and reality of his religious feelings, the manliness and tenderness of
his spirit, the vehement