From Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, drawing from Leighton and adding a comment of his own:
The answer is not to be contentious, contemptuous, short-tempered, or impatient in matters of religious difference; but it is a sign of imbalance if we are more zealous in civil matters than in spiritual, or if in spiritual matters we are more zealous for minute points than for major doctrines. As is mentioned a littler further on:
The boasted peaceableness about questions of faith too often proceeds from a superficial temper, and not seldom from a supercilious disdain of whatever has no marketable use or value, and from indifference to religion itself. Toleration is a herb of spontaneous growth in the garden of indifference; but the weed has none of the virtues of the medicinal plant, reared by humility in the garden of zeal. Those, who regard religion as matters of taste, may consistently include all religious differences in the old adage de gustibus non est disputandum. And many there be of Gallio's temper, who care for none of these things, and who account all questions in religion, as he did, but matters of words and names. And by this all religions may agree together.
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I shall believe our present religious tolerancy to proceed from the abundance of our charity and good sense, when I see proofs that we are equally cool and forbearing as litigants and political partizans.
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I shall believe our present religious tolerancy to proceed from the abundance of our charity and good sense, when I see proofs that we are equally cool and forbearing as litigants and political partizans.
The answer is not to be contentious, contemptuous, short-tempered, or impatient in matters of religious difference; but it is a sign of imbalance if we are more zealous in civil matters than in spiritual, or if in spiritual matters we are more zealous for minute points than for major doctrines. As is mentioned a littler further on:
Truth needs not the service of passion; yea, nothing so disserves it, as passion when set to serve it. The Spirit of truth is withal the Spirit of meekness. The Dove that rested on that great champion of truth, who is The Truth itself, is from Him derived to the lovers of truth, and they ought to seek the participation of it. Imprudence makes some kind of Christians lose much of their labour, in speaking for religion, and drive those further off, whom they would draw into it.
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