Jeremy Taylor week: 'His graces pursue the methods of nature'

In this week when the Church of Ireland calendar of 'worthies' commemorates Jeremy Taylor, who died on 13th August 1667, laudable Practice will each day be sharing extracts from Taylor's sermons.

Each extract will seek to illustrate how Taylor gave expression to defining aspects of the Anglican experience. Today, how Grace does not destroy but perfects Nature.

Which principle divers fanaticks, both among us and in the church of Rome, misunderstanding, look for new revelations, and expect to be conducted by ecstasy, and will not pray but in a transfiguration, and live upon raptures and extravagant expectations, and separate themselves from the conversation of men by affectations, by new measures and singularities, and destroy order, and despise government, and live upon illiterate phantasms and ignorant discourses. These men 'they belie the holy Ghost': for the Spirit of God makes men wise; it is an evil spirit that makes them fools. The Spirit of God makes us 'wise unto salvation'; it does not spend its holy influences in disguises and convulsions of the understanding: God's spirit does not destroy reason, but heightens it; He never disorders the beauties of government, but is a God of order; it is the Spirit of humility, and teaches no pride; He is to be found in churches and pulpits, upon altars and in the doctors' chairs; not in conventicles and mutinous corners of a house: He goes in company with His own ordinances, and makes progressions by the measures of life; His infusions are just as our acquisitions, and His graces pursue the methods of nature; that which was imperfect He leads on to perfection, and that which was weak He makes strong: He opens the heart, not to receive murmurs, or to attend to secret whispers, but to hear the word of God.

'Via Intelligentia; a sermon preached to the University of Dublin' in The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, Volume IV.

Comments

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

1928 practices and the 1979 book: unthinking conservatism or popular piety?

Those responsible for Earth & Altar - a new blog emanating from a group within TEC - are to be congratulated for an excellent contribution to wider Anglican discussion and debate. The commitment to "an expansively conceived credal orthodoxy as fully compatible with LGBTQ inclusion, gender equality, and racial justice" is an important part of a wider retrieval of creedal orthodoxy within what we might call the post-liberal generation. It is in this spirit that I want to respond to a recent post on the site by Andrew McGowan , Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School. Against the background of another round of "ill-defined" liturgical revision in TEC, he understandably urges that a fuller reception of the 1979 BCP should occur before further reforms. In doing so, however, he takes aim at what he describes as "clinging to the ritual structures of 1928" while using the text of 1979. We ...

laudable Practice

Search This Blog