Jeremy Taylor Week: 'our prayers and religious offices are fit for wise men'

With a slightly later Summer break this year, Jeremy Taylor Week on Laudable Practice has missed his commemoration on 13th August (the date of Taylor's death in 1667). We resume, however, with a week of posts considering an aspect of Taylor's thought. This year's Jeremy Taylor Week will consider what seems to be a quite overlooked theme in Taylor's works - the place he gives to the thought of classical Roman philosophers. 

The topic suggested itself as I read through Taylor's Golden Grove sermons last year. The sermons regularly invoked the writings and thought of classical Roman philosophers. This led me to explore such references in other Taylor works, were the same pattern is found. In other words, this was a consistent characteristic in Taylor's writings.

What hinted at the significance of this characteristic was a comment in Ian Green's Humanism and Protestantism in Early Modern English Education (2009), noting that the "conservative episcopalian" Taylor and "moderate Calvinist" Sanderson, against the arguments of "high Calvinists", defended the place of Aristotle's Ethics in the moral theologies of the Lutheran divine Keckerman. The "high Calvinists ... felt unhappy at giving such prominence to a pagan text rather than the Bible".

The corpus of Taylor's works certainly demonstrates that he was entirely unmoved by the critique of the 'high Calvinists'. What I am going to term classical Roman humanism is a rich stream of thought running throughout Taylor's works. The concluding post of this Jeremy Taylor week will seek to draw out some of the implications of this, which was also be suggested in the daily posts, exploring particular works. We begin with one of the earliest of Taylor's works, An Apology for Authorised and Set Forms of Liturgy, published in 1649, amidst the attack on the Prayer Book liturgy in the Westminster Assembly's Directory for Public Worship.

We might immediately suggest that the appearance of the tradition of classical Roman humanism is rather odd in a defence of Christian liturgy against what Taylor termed "the Pretence of the Spirit" in extemporary prayer. What is more, the partisans of the Directory were hardly likely to be swayed the invocation of classical Roman philosophers. Why, then, does Taylor quote from both Seneca and Quintilan in his defence of the Prayer Book liturgy?

It is not merely a matter of passing references to both figures. Seneca and Quintilian are integral to Taylor's understanding that liturgy as a "publick forme ... designed for publick use" by a "publick Communion" must be written by "publick persons". Seneca, therefore, is quoted to defend liturgy as a means of ensuring that public worship is not crude, but wise:

The consideration of the vast distance between God and us, Heaven and Earth, should create such apprehensions in us, that the very best and choicest of our offertories are not acceptable but by God's gracious vouchsafing and condescension: and therefore since we are so much indebted to God for accepting our best, it is not safe ventured to present him with a dowbaked sacrifice, and put him off with that which in nature and humane consideration, is absolutely the worst; for such is all the crude and imperfect utterance of our more imperfect conceptions; Hoc non probo in philosopho cujus oratio sicut vita debet esse composita, said Seneca, A wise mans speech should be like his life, and actions; composed, studied, and considered. And if ever inconsideration be the cause of sinne, and vanity; it is in our words, and therefore is with greatest care to be avoided in our prayers, we being most of all concerned that God may have no quarrell against them, for folly, or impiety.

This is a particularly suggestive emphasis, indicating how Taylor shared the vision of what Herschel C. Baker termed "Christian Humanism", the fruit of the reading particularly of classical Roman philosophy by the Renaissance as cohering with the Christian revelation. This eirenic, wise, peaceable synthesis was, Baker declares, torn asunder by the sectarianism of the 17th century. In this context, by the way, we should also note Taylor's praise for and admiration of Cassander, Erasmus and Grotius, exemplars of such Christian humanism. As the Prayer Book liturgy was "composed, studied, and considered", one obvious expression of the sectarian assault on the wisdom of Christian humanism was the rejection of the Prayer Book. Taylor describes this in the prefaces to both Holy Living (1650) and Golden Grove (1655):

and now that Religion pretends to stranger actions upon new principles; and men are apt to prefer a prosperous errour before an afflicted truth; some will think they are religious enough if their worshipings have in them the prevailing ingredient; and the Ministers of Religion are so scattered that they cannot unite to stop the inundation, and from Chaires or Pulpits, from their Synods or Tribunals, chastise the iniquity of the errour and the ambition of evil Guides, and the infidelity of the willingly seduced multitude (Holy Living);

But now, instead of the excellency of condition, and constitution of religion, the people are fallen under the harrows and saws of impertinent and ignorant preachers, who think all religion is a sermon, and all sermons ought to be libels against truth and old governors; and expound chapters, that the meaning may never be understood; and pray that they may be thought able to talk, but not to hold their peace (Golden Grove).

Against the extemporary prayers of the "impertinent and ignorant preachers" in English pulpits during the Interregnum, Taylor pointed to Seneca:

Nihil enim ordinatum est quod praecipitatur & properat, said Seneca. Nothing can be regular and orderly, that is hasty and precipitate, and therefore unlesse Religion be the most imprudent, trifling, and inconsiderable thing, and that the worke of the Lord is done well enough, when it is done negligently, or that the sanctuary hath the greatest beauty, when it hath the least order, it will concerne us highly to thinke our prayers and religious offices are actions fit for wise men, and therefore to be done as the actions of wise men use to be, that is, deliberately, prudently, and with greatest consideration.

Seneca is again invoked to defend the liturgy as a means of ensuring that public worship is prudently shaped by deliberation, learning, and study:

Sic itaque habe, ut istam vim dicendi rapidam, aptiorem esse circulanti judices, quam agenti rem magnam & seriam docentique. They are the words of Seneca, and expresse what naturally flowes from the premises. The pretence of the Spirit, and the gift of prayer is not sufficient to justifie the dishonour they doe to Religion in serving it in the lowest and most indeliberate manner, nor quit such men from unreasonablenesse and folly who will dare to speake to God in the presence of the people, and in their behalf, without deliberation, or learning, or study. Nothing is a greater disreputation to the prudence of a Discourse, then to say it was a thing made up in haste, that is, without due considering.

The Prayer Book liturgy, then, is, read in the light of Seneca, a wise and prudent means of protecting public worship against the rants and ill-considered words of a minister's extemporary prayers. 

This is also seen in Taylor's use of Quintilian:

Scribendum ergo quoties licebit; Si id non dabitur cogitandum: ab utroque exclusi, debent tamen adniti, ut neque deprehensus orator, neque destitutus esse videatur. In making our Orations and publike advocations, we must write what we meane to speake, as often as we can; when we cannot, yet we must deliberate, and study; and when the suddennesse of the accident prevents both these, we must use all the powers of art and care that we have a present mind, and call in all our first provisions, that we be not destitute of matter and words apt for the imployment.

This was Quintilian's rule for the matter of prudence, and in secular occasions; but when the instance is in Religion, and especially in our prayers, it will concern us nearer, to be curious and deliberate what we speak in the audience of the eternal God, when our lives and our soules, and the honour of God, and the reputation of Religion are concern'd, and whatsoever is greatest in it self, or dearest to us.

The Prayer Book liturgy prevents an unwise and imprudent reliance on the minister's own stock of wisdom. It ensures that the act of public worship is approached with due diligence, recognising its character as public oration. 

Part of the sectarian assault on the peaceable vision of Christian humanism was the populism of the former, already indicated in Taylor's reference to "the willingly seduced multitude". Taylor can, of course, be criticised for 'elitism' - language also central to contemporary populist discourse. Mindful of the use to which such language is put by contemporary populisms, we might have a greater understanding of why the 'conservative episcopalian' Taylor willingly quotes Quintilian against religious populism:

And that I may disgrace no mans person, we see Trades-men of the most illiberable arts, and women pretend to it, and doe it with as many words, (and that's the maine thing) with as much confidence, and speciousnesse of spirit as the best among them. Sed nec tumultuarii nec fortuiti sermonis contextum mirabor unquam quem jurgantibus etiam mulierculis superfluere video, said Quintilian. And it is but a small portion of learning that will serve a man to make conceived Formes of Prayer, which they may have easily upon the stock of other men, or upon their own fancy, or upon any thing in which no learning is required.

'In which no learning is required'. Against public worship defined by the absence of learning, wisdom, and prudence, Taylor invoked the classical Roman humanism of Seneca and Quintilian to defend the Prayer Book liturgy. Such use of these philosophers not only placed the Prayer Book within the context of the Christian humanism of the Renaissance, it also evoked that wider vision - ecclesiastical, political, cultural, and intellectual - even as it was assailed by sectarian passions in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, as had been the case in central Europe during the Thirty Years War. 

The wider vision of Christian humanism is seen as Taylor concludes An Apology for the Liturgy, summarising his critique of extemporary prayer:

He therefore that considers that this way of Prayer is without all manner of precedent in the Primitive Church, against the example of all famous Churches in all Christendome, in the whole descent of XV Ages, without all command or warrant of Scripture, that it is unreasonable in the nature of the thing, against prudence and the best wisdome of humanity ...

Historic Christian teaching and practice, including liturgy for divine service, cohered with "prudence and the best wisdom of humanity", particularly as seen in classical Roman humanism. With the approval of the wisdom of Seneca and Quintilian, therefore, the Prayer Book liturgy is understood by Taylor as ensuring that "our prayers and religious offices are fit for wise men". In an age of sectarian passions and violence, of "impertinent and ignorant preachers", of "crude ... utterance" in public worship, well might Taylor look to the prudence and wisdom of Seneca and Quintilian in defence of the Prayer Book, as an expression of Christian humanism. As Taylor says of the authorised liturgy, its "use and exercise is instrumentall to peace and publike charity".