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'Articles of so mysterious a philosophy': Jeremy Taylor on the Communion of Saints

O Almighty God, who hast built thy Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the head corner-stone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The collect for Saint Simon and Saint Jude, Apostles, wonderfully orients us towards the celebration of the Communion of Saints on All Saints' Day. In his Whitsun sermon 'Of the Spirit of Grace', Jeremy Taylor powerfully expounds the passage from Ephesians on which the collect is based, unfolding the mystery of the Communion of Saints as our participation in Christ:

that God should so love us as to be willing to be reconciled to us, and yet that Himself must die that He might pardon us; that God's most holy Son should give us His body to eat, and His blood to crown our chalices, and His spirit to sanctify our souls, to turn our bodies into temperance, our souls into minds, our minds into spirit, our spirit into glory; that He who can give us all things, who is Lord of men and angels and King of all the creatures, should pray to God for us without intermission; that He who reigns over all the world, should at the day of judgment 'give up the kingdom to God the Father,' and yet after this resignation Himself and we with Him should for ever reign the more gloriously; that we should be justified by faith in Christ, and that charitv should be a part of faith, and that both should work as acts of duty and as acts of relation; that God should crown the imperfect endeavours of His saints with glory, and that a human act should be rewarded with an eternal inheritance; that the wicked for the transient pleasure of a few minutes should be tormented with an absolute eternity of pains; that the waters of baptism, when they are hallowed by the Spirit, shall purge the soul from sin; and that the spirit of a man should be nourished with the consecrated and mysterious elements, and that any such nourishment should bring a man up to heaven: and after all this, that all Christian people, all that will be saved, must be 'partakers of, the divine nature', of the nature, the infinite nature, of God, and must dwell in Christ, and Christ must dwell in them, and they must be in the Spirit, and the Spirit must be for ever in them? These are articles of so mysterious a philosophy that we could have inferred them from no premises, discoursed them upon the stock of no natural or scientifical principles; nothing but God and God's spirit could have taught them to us: and therefore the gospel is Spiritus patefactus, 'the manifestation of the Spirit,' ad edificationem, as the apostle calls it, 'for edification' and building us up to be a holy temple to the Lord.

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