'The whole body of orthodox religion': Jeremy Taylor and the influence of the Remonstrant tradition

... and one thing more I shall remark, that 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 reprov'd 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. 

This was Jeremy Taylor, preaching at the funeral of Archbishop John Bramhall in 1663. I have previously pointed to this reference as evidence of Taylor's willingness to critique Remonstrant theology. Recent reading, however, has made me look afresh at this extract.

That there is a critique of the Remonstrants here is, of course, obvious: they have been willing to draw too close to the Socinians. Alongside this, however, is high praise for the Remonstrants:

Learned Men, and in many things of a most excellent belief ...

This echoes, albeit cautiously, something Taylor had stated privately in January 1660. In a letter to a fellow of Trinity College Dublin, Taylor recommended a series of books to aid those who sought "improve in the understanding of the doctrine of the church of England, so as to bee able to teach others". The extensive list begins with divines of the Church of England. He then moves on to "forreiners". Amongst his list of the works of the foreign divines, he states:

For a little breviary or institution of divinity, I very much commend to you a little booke called Declaratio sentential eoruni qui ex foederato Belgio vocantur Remonstrantes, together with the Apologia they published in defence of it.

This is the Remonstrant Confession of 1621 and the 1629 Apologia pro Confessione, a response to the Censure of the Confession produced by Leiden theologians. Both were the work of the leading Remonstrant divine Simon Episcopius. Taylor "very much" recommends both the Confession and the Apologia without any hesitation or qualification. They are, he says, an "institution of divinity": we might wonder if Taylor is deliberately echoing the title of Calvin's great work. 

Of all the confessions of the churches of the Reformation, it is the Remonstrant Confession that Taylor recommends as a summary of divinity. This is, to say the least, significant because of how it locates Taylor. Of the various streams of 17th century continental European Protestant theology, Taylor places himself in the Remonstrant tradition, amongst those "Learned Men ... in many things of a most excellent belief". 

This is seen even more clearly when we consider the works of "forreiners" that appear in his list of recommendations. He first mentions the Lutheran Martin Chemnitz's Examen Concilii Tridentini (1574), followed by the later Lutheran Johann Gerhard, whose Loci communes theologici was published between 1610 and 1622. Of this work (and by implication that of Chemnitz), however, Taylor warns:

you must pare away his two Lutheran spots, viz., of consubstantiation and ubiquity.

The French Calvinist Daniel Chamier is also listed. Here again there is a warning:

Chamier is a very good writer, but you must abate his Calvinisme.

Both Lutheran and Calvinist figures, therefore, are recommended but with cautions about distinctive aspects of their confessional commitments. 

No such cautions are offered when Episcopius is mentioned in the list:

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

In itself, it is a glowing recommendation. Placed alongside the carefully qualified recommendations of Lutheran and Calvinist theologians, it is incredibly striking. Taylor's feels no need to state caution about Remonstrant teaching on church order or the Sacraments. The Leiden Calvinists had robustly critiqued what they regarded as weakness in the Remonstrant Confession's Trinitarian statement. Taylor (who himself would urge what I have termed 'Trinitarian minimalism') offers no caution about this. It is the works of Episcopius - not least the Confession and Apologia - which are "the whole body of orthodox religion". 

Taylor, as George Rust declared in the sermon at his funeral, was "a Zealous Son of the Church of England". The 1640s and 1650s had demonstrated that he was "the Champion" of "the King and Church". His 1660 praise for the works of Episcopius, particularly the Remonstrant Confession and the Apologia, points to how he regarded the Remonstrants, of all the continental churches of the Reformation, as doctrinally closest to the Church of England. 

What is more, however, it is also suggestive of how Taylor viewed himself. Having been in Laud's circle and living through the early 1640s, he was well aware of English debates surrounding 'Arminianism'. That this did not stop him explicitly recommending Episcopius and the Remonstrant Confession is highly significant. It also allows us to see key enduring themes in his works - what I have described as his 'Trinitarian minimalism', his emphasis on the Apostles' Creed as containing all that is necessary to salvation (a feature of the 1621 Confession), the critique of Augustine (first seen in The Liberty of Prophesying), the place given to reason and conscience throughout his theology, his controversial account of original sin (already evident in his Golden Grove sermons, before the 1655 publication of Unum Necessarium) - as being clear expressions of the influence of Remonstrant thought. Indeed, we might regard this is a (perhaps the) unifying feature of Taylor's works. 

Which brings us back to his reference to the Remonstrants in the sermon at Bramhall's funeral. We have no reason to think that Taylor's thinking had changed since his January 1660 letter.  But, by this time, Taylor had been assaulted by the Presbyterian clergy of Down and Connor for 'Socinian' tendencies. Now a bishop and not merely a divine, perhaps this necessitated a politique critique of Socinian influence on the Remonstrants. Perhaps he was merely repeating Bramhall's account of the meeting or protecting Bramhall's posthumous reputation for having met with Remonstrants. What we do notice, however, is that his description of the Remonstrants as "of a most excellent belief" echoes the phrase he used in the January 1660 letter to describe the works of Episcopius, "whose whole works are excellent, and containe the whole body of orthodox religion". There can be little doubt, I think, that as Taylor recalled Bramhall's meeting with the Remonstrant clergy, he regarded himself as being alongside those "Learned Men", for whom Episcopius' 1621 Confession was a wise and faithful "institution of divinity".