'All taught the contrary': 'The Liberty of Prophesying' and the Remonstrant critique of Augustine

Jeremy Taylor's 1647 The Liberty of Prophesying has often been interpreted as an aberration in his body of works. For those who present Taylor as a straightforward 'Laudian', The Liberty of Prophesying is to be dismissed as the unfortunate influence of Chillingworth and Great Tew, quickly forgotten by its author, who returned to conventional 'Laudian' ways. For those who praise The Liberty of Prophesying as an anticipation of the Broad Church tradition, it is a matter of regret that Taylor abandoned this spirit for conventionally harsh High Church tendencies.

What both approaches overlook, however, is how central themes of The Liberty of Prophesying echo throughout Taylor's work. The place it gives to the conscience and reason, and a scepticism about excessive claims for ecclesiastical tradition, are both prominent in Ductor Dubitantium, or the Rule of Conscience, published in 1660. Likewise, the critique of Augustine, fundamental to Taylor's 1655 Unum Necessarium and its rejection of Augustine's account of original sin, finds early expression in The Liberty of Prophesying.

Here Taylor relativises appeals to Augustine, presenting him as merely one - albeit "excellent" - patristic bishop and divine among others:

The fathers of the first ages spake unitedly concerning divers questions of secret theology, and yet were afterwards contradicted by one personage of great reputation, whose credit had so much influence upon the world, as to make the contrary opinion become popular: why, then, may not we have the same liberty, when so plain an uncertainty is in their persuasions, and so great contrariety in their doctrines? But this is evident in the case of absolute predestination, which, till St. Austin's time, no man preached, but all taught the contrary; and yet the reputation of this one excellent man altered the scene. But, if he might dissent from so general a doctrine, why may not we do so too, it being pretended that he is so excellent a precedent to be followed, if we have the same reason? He had no more authority nor dispensation to dissent, than any bishop hath now. And therefore St. Austin hath dealt ingenuously; and as he took this liberty to himself, so he denies it not to others, but, indeed, forces them to preserve their own liberty. 

Not only had Augustine no more authority than other patristic bishops, he had no more authority "than any bishop hath now". The very liberty exercised by Augustine, therefore, in declaring the doctrine of "absolute predestination" is the same liberty that can be legitimately used to reject his account of predestination. What is more, dissenting from Augustine's scheme of predestination places one alongside the "fathers of the first ages", who did not teach "absolute predestination". 

There is no doubt that Taylor's relativising of Augustine's authority follows and is shaped by Remonstrant thought. It is, for example, clearly seen in the works of both Episcopius and Grotius. Hence Episcopius, in his 1631 Answer to the Specimen of Calumnies:

What is plainer than that the ancient divines, for three hundred years after Christ, those at least who flourished before St. Augustine, maintained the liberty of our will, or an indifference to two contrary things, free from all internal and external necessity.

With Taylor's 1647 work echoing Episcopius, we see the roots of a 1660 statement by Taylor in a letter to a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin on recommendations for books of "practical divinity":

Episcopius, whose works are excellent, and containe the whole body of orthodox religion ...

Contrary, therefore, to Sarah Mortimer's otherwise excellent Reason and Religion in the English Revolution: The Challenge of Socianism (2010), it was not "in the 1650s" that Taylor began to challenge Augustinian doctrine: this had already been clearly signalled in 1647.

The Remonstrant critique of Augustine in The Liberty of Prophesying leads, nearly a decade later, to Unum Necessarium, in which Taylor says of Augustine's teaching that unbaptised infants are damned for Adam's sin:

no Catholick Writer, for 400 Years after Christ did ever affirm it, but divers affirmed the contrary.

In the heat of theological controversy, Augustine radically rejected the understanding of "the Primitive Church":

Original Sin as it is at this day commonly explicated, was not the Doctrine of the Primitive Church; but when Pelagius had puddled the stream, St. Austin was so angry that he stampt and disturbed it more ...

The result of this was that the accusation of 'Pelagianism' was emptied of meaning, particularly when applied to the many voices contrasting with and contradicting Augustine before and during the controversies of the early 5th century AD:

if everything which was said against S. Austin in these Controversies, be Pelagianism, then all Antiquity were Pelagians.

The Liberty of Prophesying, rather than being an aberration, introduces fundamental and enduring themes of Taylor's theology. Central to these was his application of the Remonstrant critique of Augustine, for the bishop of Hippo's teaching on "absolute predestination" was but one voice, with which Christians are at liberty to disagree and from which they can legitimately dissent, standing in agreement with the many other early Christian voices.