"There would nothing perish to the faith": Jeremy Taylor, plain churches, and the absence of imagery
This is where we turn to Jeremy Taylor. He can hardly be regarded an unimpressive divine or a purveyor of shallow theological thought. Nor, to state the very obvious, was he a 'Puritan' or, indeed, even a Reformed Conformist. Taylor's critique of Calvinist soteriology, his robust defence of episcopal order, and his commitment to the "holy Liturgy" of the Church of England, with its "excellent Prayers, perfect Sacraments", ensures that he certainly cannot be dismissed as holding - to use words from the translators of the Authorised Version - "the scrupulosity of the Puritans".
It is Taylor's teaching on imagery, however, that we see reflected in the plain character of The Middle Church, King Charles the Martyr Church, Shelland, and Old Wye Church, Maryland. His views on imagery are rather well summarised in this extract from The Dissuasive:
we exhort our people to follow the plain words of Scripture, and the express Law of God in the second Commandment; and add also the exhortation of S. John, Little children, keep your selves from Idols. To conclude, it is impossible but that it must be confessed, that the worship of Images was a thing unknown to the primitive Church; in the purest times of which, they would not allow the making of them.
The plain character of the above-mentioned churches, therefore, with their lack of imagery, reflects "the purest times". In The second part of the Dissuasive, Taylor points to the Synod of Elvira in 305AD as exemplifying those "purest times":
The Council of Eliberis is of great concern in this Question ... the Council was in the year 305 of 19. Bishops, who in the 36. Canon, decreed this: It hath pleas'd us that pictures ought not to be in Churches; That's the decree: The reason they give is, lest that which is worshipped be painted on the walls. So that there are two propositions; 1. Pictures ought not to be in Churches. 2. That which is worshipped ought not to be painted upon walls ... This was the doctrine and sentiment of the wise and good men above 800. years since ...
For the Council did not forbid only to paint upon the walls, for that according to the common reading is but accidental to the decree; but the Council commanded that no picture should be in Churches. Now then let this Canon be confronted with the Council of Trent, Sess. 25. decret. de S. S. invoc, that the images of Christ, and of the Virgin Mother of God, and of other Saints be had and kept especially in Churches: and in the world there cannot be a greater contradiction between two, than there is between Eliberis and Trent, the old and the new Church.
Those plain, ordinary Anglican and Episcopal churches adhere to the teaching of the early 4th century Synod of Elvira - in stark contrast to the Council of Trent. As Taylor states, the absence of imagery in those churches is no innovation; rather, it is "old". This also reflects the 8th century Council of Frankfurt and its rejection of the Second Council of Nicaea:
the Fathers at Francfurt commanded that the second Nicene should not be called a general Council, that matter is sufficiently cleared in the proof of the first particular; for if they abrogated it, and called it pseudosynodum, and decreed against it; hoc ipso, they caused it should not be, or be called a General Synod.
Taylor would have very little time for those contemporary Anglicans who desire to embrace Nicaea II and insert into Anglican worship and piety a quite foreign practice. They might also be aghast at Taylor, in a very Reformed manner, explicitly invoking the second Commandment regarding such practice:
the second Commandment is so plain, so easie, so peremptory against all the making and worshipping any image or likeness of any thing, that besides that every man naturally would understand all such to be forbidden, it is so expressed, that upon supposition that God did intend to forbid it wholly, it could not more plainly have been expressed. For the prohibition is absolute and universal, and therefore of all particulars; and there is no word or sign by the vertue of which it can with any probability be pretended that any one of any kind is excepted.
that which I choose to follow is the way of the Church of England, which as it hath the greater and more certain authority from Antiquity, so it hath much the greater reasonableness. For when God had commanded the worship of himself alone excluding all false Gods: In the next words he was pleas'd also to forbid them to worship him in that manner by which all the Gods of the Nations were worshipped, which was, by images: insomuch that their images were called Gods, not that they thought them so; but that the worshipping of false Gods, and worshipping by images were by the idolaters ever join'd. Now this being a different thing from the other: one regarding the object, the other the manner of worship it is highly reasonable to beleeve that they make two Commandements.
It is the case that Taylor accepts that "the Lutheran Churches ... have indeed as little reason for their division, and a much less interest and necessity to serve and to provide for". The Lutheran concern was driven, he noted, by their practice:
lest it should be Unlawful to make, or to have Pictures or images; for they still keep them in their Churches, and are fearful to be aspersed with a crime forbidden in the second Commandement; they keep them I say, but for Memory onely, not for worship or direct Religion.
Note, "they still keep them in their Churches": here, in other words, is a particularly Lutheran practice. By implication, Taylor is saying that it is not so in the Church of England and Ireland, as with the "all the Churches that follow Calvin; and by the other Protestants not Lutherans". And while, it is true, Taylor does not consider this usage of images as forbidden by the Commandment, it is quite different to his view that "in the purest times ... they would not allow the making of them", as seen in his account of the teaching of Elvira.
Taylor accepts that "it is neither impious nor unreasonable of itself to have or to make the picture or image of Christ's Humanity". In doing so, however, he takes care to note, "the question being here onely of the making or having of it, abstractedly from all other appendages or collateral considerations". As he goes on to state of images of Our Lord in His Humanity and other images:
it is not lawful to have them, not lawful to make them with designes of ministring to religion or the service and worship of God.
This, then, is not intended as a condemnation of the Lutherans, reflecting both wider Conformist and also Laudian concerns to affirm the place of the Lutherans amongst the 'Reformed churches'. However, placed alongside his comments on the Second Commandment, the ordering of the Commandments, the Synod of Elvira, and the exhortation quoted at the outset, it is clear that Taylor is certainly not commending the Lutheran approach to imagery to the Churches of Ireland and England. Instead, he moves to provide a distinctly Reformed account of worship, in which imagery has no place:
And all this is perfectly consenting to the analogy of the Gospel which is a spiritual worship, unclothed of bodily ceremonies, strip'd naked of beggarly rudiments, even those which God had commanded in the Old law; Christ placed but two mysterious ceremonies in the place of all the shadowes of Moses: and since Christianity hath shak'd off that body and outsides of religion, that law of a carnal commandement, that we might serve God in spirit and truth, that is, proportionable to his perfections, it cannot be imagined that this spiritual religion which worships God in praises and love, in charity and almes, in faith and hope, in contemplation and humility, in self-denial and separations from all corporal adherencies that are not necessary, and that are not Natural, I say it cannot be imagined that this spiritual religion should put on a phantastick body, which as much as it can separates from a real ... A Christian must worship God with genuine and proper worshippings, that is, with the pure and only worship of the Soul. Now if the Ceremonials of Moses were contrary to this spirituality, and therefore was taken away by the Gospel: it cannot be imagined that images which are more contrary to a spiritual worship, should be let in by Christ, when they were shut out by Moses.
It is to this that those plain churches - The Middle Church, King Charles the Martyr Church, Shelland, and Old Wye Church, Maryland - testify: a thoroughly Reformed understanding of what it is to worship "in spirit and in truth", with the only 'images' being the water of Baptism and the bread and cup of the Supper, given to us by Christ. Taylor articulates a deep theological rationale for the absence of imagery, rooting it in Law and Gospel.
When we consider Lutheran practice, or the imagery which often became standard in Anglican churches during the Victorian era (stained glass, cross upon or behind the Holy Table, restored statuary in some cathedrals), it is not that Taylor would necessarily have condemned this. As we have seen, he accepts that there can be a use for imagery that is "neither impious nor unreasonable". It certainly is not, however, required; what is more, there are serious Scriptural and theological reasons to avoid such imagery.
Now if we consider, that if the Christian Church were wholly without images, there would nothing perish to the faith or to the charity of the Church, or to any grace which is in order to Heaven.
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