Jeremy Taylor Week: the communion of Nicene Christians
at his leaving those parts upon the king's return, some of the remonstrant ministers of the Low Countries coming to take their leaves of this great man, and desiring that, by his means, the Church of England would be kind to them, he had reason to grant it, because they were learned men, and in many things of a most excellent belief; yet he reproved them, and gave them caution against it, that they approached too near and gave too much countenance to the great and dangerous errors of the Socinians.
It was a reminder that, despite the dark allegations of Taylor's Presbyterian opponents, accusing him of Socinianism, he was (as has been clearly seen in this series of posts) robustly committed to Trinitarian and Christological creedal orthodoxy. This, as Taylor declared, was the "the Religion of the four first General Councils", which he, as a loyal son of the Church of England, confessed. It contrasted with "the Anti-trinitarians in Hungary and Poland" who "receive none" of these councils.
The contrast between "the Religion of the four first General Councils" and that of "the Anti-trinitarians" was, for Taylor, a communion-defining matter. Taylor explicitly defined this in his Preface to The Psalter of David (1647), as he set forth his vision of a reconciled Christendom:
For my own particular, since all Christendom is so much divided, and subdivided into innumerable Sects, I knew not how to give a better evidence of my own belief, and love of the Communion of Saints, and detestation of Schism, then by an act of Religion, whose consequence might be (if men please) the advancement of an universal Communion. For in that which is most concerning, and is the best preserver of charity, I mean practical devotion and active piety, the differences of Christendom are not so great and many, to make an eternal disunion and fracture; and if we instance in Prayer, there is none at all abroad (some indeed we have commenced at home, but) in the great divisions of Christendom, none at all but concerning the object of our prayers and adorations. For the Socinian shuts the Holy Ghost from his Litanies, and places the Son of God in a lower form of address. But concerning him I must say, as S. Paul said of the unbelievers, What have I to do with them that are without?
Placing "the Socinian" - the anti-Trinitarian churches of Poland and Hungary - outside what he termed "the communion of ... Christian people of the Nicene faith", Taylor demonstrated how the Trinitarian and Christological confession necessarily defined Christian prayer:
For this very thing that they disbelieve, the article of the holy Trinity, they make themselves uncapable of the communion of other Christian people of the Nicene Faith, and we cannot so much as join with them in good prayers, because we are not agreed concerning the persons to whom our devotions must be addressed; and Christendom never did so lightly esteem the article of the holy Trinity, as not to glory in it, and confess it publicly, and express it in all our offices. The holy Ghost together with the Father and the Son must be worshipped and glorified.
all Christians of any public confession and government, that is, all particular and national Churches, agree in the matter of prayers, and the great object, God in the mystery of the Trinity ...
It is here what we end this year's Jeremy Taylor Week, with Taylor's affirmation that "the Nicene faith" is what gives unity to Christians as we pray. Our differing confessional statements and forms of ecclesiastical polity are therefore secondary to "the Nicene faith", "the Religion of the four first General Councils", that generous orthodoxy in which "we might all once pray together, we might hope for the blessings of peace and charity to be upon us all".
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