ABSTRACT
Coleridge, whose father had been vicar and schoolmaster of Ottery St Mary, always considered himself a religious man and a Christian, even when political sympathies allied him with atheists like Thel-wall and Godwin. This underlies the poetry and much of the critical prose and, as was seen, in politics Coleridge often preferred religiously supported moral solutions to political ones. Here the connection between religious and political thought which was so much a part of general thinking at the time of the French Revolution is clearly apparent. The move away from the optimism of Hartleian necessarianism to a deeply felt dependence on the atonement of Christ for salvation, which is reflected in many of Coleridge's mature works, is a development which underpins the failures of Coleridge's life, his marriage, his opium-addiction, his loss of friends.
