Wisdom from Jeremy Taylor: "wrought upon secular content"

Taylor on why religion is good for us:

But because such is the bounty of God that He hath provided a better life for the inheritance of man, if God is so merciful in making fair provisions for our less noble part, in order to the transition toward our country, we may expect that the mercies of God have rare arts to secure to us His designed bounty in order to our inheritance, to that which ought to be our portion for ever. And here I consider, that it is an infinite mercy of the almighty Father of mercies that He hath appointed to us such a religion that leads us to a huge felicity through pleasant ways. For the felicity that is designed to us is so above our present capacities and conceptions, that while we are so ignorant as not to understand it, we are also so foolish as not to desire it with passions great enough to perform the little conditions of its purchase. God therefore, knowing how great an interest it is, and how apt we would be to neglect it, hath found out such conditions of acquiring it, which are eases and satisfaction to our present appetites. God hath bound our salvation upon us by the endearment of temporal prosperities, and because we love this world so well, God hath so ordered it that even this world may secure the other ...

So is the embroidery of our virtue; the glories of the Spirit dwell upon the face and vestment, upon the fringes and the borders, and there we see the beryl and the onyx, the jasper and the sardonyx, order and perfection, love, and peace, and joy, mortification of the passions and ravishment of the will, adherences of God and imitation of Christ, reception and entertainment of the Holy Ghost, and longings after heaven, humility and chastity, temperance and sobriety; these make the frame of the garment, the clothes of the soul, that it may not be found naked in the day of the Lord's visitation; but through these rich materials a thread of silk is drawn, some compliance with worms and weaker creatures, something that shall please our bowels, and make the lower man to rejoice; they are wrought upon secular content and material satisfactions: and now we cannot be happy unless we be pious, and the religion of a Christian is the greatest security, and the most certain instrument of making a man rich, and pleasing, and healthful, and wise, and beloved, in the whole world.

From Taylor's sermon 'The Miracles of the Divine Mercy', Part II, in The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, Volume IV.

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'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

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laudable Practice

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