ABOUT COLERIDGE:

https://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=128660#page_comment_276591

 

Before and after Coleridge's time, there were "Christians" (I use that appellation loosely) who sought to justify the slave trade, on the grounds that the Bible justified it.

And there are today, obnoxious nut jobs, who, on the grounds that The Bible tells them to do so, seek to justify the persecution and ostracisation of men and women who are attracted to people of their own sex.

And I've heard it argued on WOL (usually by those of the "I'm not a racist but...", persuasion) that we should not judge the moral standards of the past by those of the present; however, Coleridge DID know it was wrong then, and so did many of his contemporaries.

 

 

Yeah but, why mummy, why mummy, why why why?

‘Cos that grey-bearded old white man sez it’s so,

He who’s sat on a cloud, up there, in the sky,

With his quill and his inkwell, and a piece of A4,

‘Cos he knows everythin’, that’s bloomin’ why!

So do the Lord’s work; get a hangin’ an’ floggin’,

An’ a shootin’ on behalf of that man in the sky,

Repeat after me, don’t dare use your noggin:

“It’s that old man wot wrote it, that man in the sky!”