(October 21, 1772–July 25, 1834), was an English poet, philosopher and critic. His works, which began the “Romantic Period” of English Literature, include: Kubla Khan, 1797; The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1797–98; and Christabel, 1797–1800. Samuel Taylor Coleridge stated:
I know the Bible is inspired because it finds me at greater depths of my being than any other book.1675
Is it fitting to run Jesus Christ in a silly parallel with Socrates—the Being whom thousands of millions of intellectual creatures, of whom I am a humble unit, take to be their Redeemer—with an Athenian philosopher, of whom we know nothing except his glorification in Plato and Socrates?1676
In 1798, writing in his work The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge composed the lines:
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.1677
In an autographed letter to Mr. Colson, kept in the Wellesley College Library, Coleridge wrote:
But, above all things, I entreat you, my dear Colson, to preserve your faith in Christ. It is my wealth in poverty, my joy in sorrow, my peace amid tumult. For all the evil I have committed, I have found it to be so. I can smile with pity at the infidel whose vanity makes him dream that I should barter such a blessing for the few subtleties from the school of the cold-blooded sophists.1678
As recorded in Studies in Poetry and Philosophy, Coleridge wrote:
I receive, with full and grateful faith, the assurance of Revelation, that the Word, which is from eternity with God, and is God, assumed human nature, in order to redeem me and all mankind from our connate corruption. I believe that the assumption of humanity by the Son of God was revealed to us by the Word made flesh, and manifested to us in Jesus Christ, and that His miraculous birth, His agony, His crucifixion, resurrection and ascension were all both symbols of redemption and necessary parts of that awful process.1679
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote:
There is one art of which every man should be a master—the art of reflection.1680