'A full measure of honour': Jeremy Taylor and the Mother of the Messiah

Throughout Advent, I will be posting some Marian extracts from Jeremy Taylor's Great Exemplar, demonstrating how in Taylor we see that a thoroughly Protestant understanding (evident, for example, in his Dissuasive, with its robust critique of Tridentine Marian practices) is no barrier to a tender reverence for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

We begin today with words from the outset of Taylor's account of 'The History of the Conception of Jesus'. Here we see how Taylor's depiction of the Blessed Virgin evinces love and reverence, a quiet joy that the grace of God had prepared her for "a full measure of honour":

In the days of Herod the king, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a holy maid called Mary, espoused to Joseph; and found her in a capacity and excellent disposition to receive the greatest honour that ever was done to the daughters of men. Her employment was holy and pious, her person young, her years florid and springing, her body chaste, her mind humble, and a rare repository of divine graces. She was full of grace and excellencies. And God poured upon her a full measure of honour, in making her the mother of the Messias.

The reference to the honour of "making her the mother of the Messias" might make us pause. Why not 'Mother of God'? Taylor, after all, was quite used to referring to the Blessed Virgin after that manner - it was not at all controversial for divines of the Church of England. His use at this point of "the mother of the Messias", however, roots the Blessed Virgin in the hopes of Israel, hopes with which Taylor opened The Great Exemplar:

When the fulness of time was come, after the frequent repetition of promises, the expectation of the Jewish nation, the longings and tedious waitings of all holy persons, 'the departure of the sceptre from Judah, and the lawgiver from be tween his feet' ...

Mary, as Taylor oft confessed, is the God-bearer. But she is the God-bearer precisely because Israel's hopes are fulfilled, because the longings of prophets, priests, and kings over centuries have to come to pass in the Child she carries, because she is "the mother of the Messias". This title is indeed "a measure of full honour", for there is no Incarnation apart from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, no Emmanuel apart from the ancient covenant people. To reverence the Daughter of Sion as the Mother of the Messiah is indeed "a full measure of honour", for "Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, as was glad".

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