laudable Practice

For this concluding post of Jeremy Taylor Week, we turn to four sermons, delivered in quite different contexts. One of the sermons was preached just prior to the outbreak of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.  The other three sermons were preached in the years immediately following the Restoration. Two of the sermons marked civic occasions, addressing the polity. Two of the sermons were at funerals, including that preached by George Rust at Taylor's funeral. We begin in 1638, with Taylor's first published work, his Gunpowder Plot sermon , preached, at Laud's direction, in the St. Mary's, Oxford. His text was Luke 9.54, James and John seeking to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritan village. For Taylor, the Gunpowder Plot conspirators - and all those who encouraged the "already too much clashing of armour and effusion of blood for a Christian cause" - followed the path of James and John. When first I considered they were Apostles, I wondered they should be s...

It is not only in Taylor's books of divinity that classical Roman wisdom had a significant presence and role. This was also the case with his sermons. In other words, Taylor's vision of a Christian humanism integrating the wisdom of Cicero and Seneca was also heard in his pulpit ministry. This in itself is revealing, pointing to how Taylor's use of Cicero and Seneca was no mere literary device in his written works (which would be - as we have seen - a rather unconvincing interpretation), but integral to his theological vision.  If we consider the 25 sermons of the Golden Grove Winter volume (preached from Advent Sunday unto Whitsun, published in 1653), we find Cicero, Seneca, and Quintilian appearing regularly. In many cases, they are invoked as Taylor expounds the nature of the moral life.  Sermons XXII, XXIII, and XXIV are jointly entitled 'The Good and Evil Tongue'. In Sermon XXII , Seneca is quoted on how the foolish tongue is contrary to reason: Every beam of ...

For that was the wisdom of the Ancients. Antiqua Sapientia nihil aliud quam facienda & vitanda praecepit: Et tunc meliores erant viri. Postquam docti prodierunt, boni desunt. Simplex enim illa & aperta virtus in obscuram & solertem scientiam versa est; docemurque disputare, non vivere.  [Ancient wisdom prescribed nothing other than what should be done and what should be avoided; and in those days, men were better. Since the arrival of the learned, good men are lacking. For that simple and open virtue has been transformed into an obscure and subtle kind of knowledge; and we are taught how to argue, not how to live.] In the preface to his  Ductor dubitantium, or, The rule of conscience (1660), Jeremy Taylor invokes "the wisdom of the Ancients" by quoting Seneca. He sets out the aim of this work - how to live in "simple and open virtue", not how to argue. In 1660, of course, the Three Kingdoms were looking back upon decades of argument: divisive, harsh, bl...

Unbridled emotion is often treated as a positive quality in nonconformist writings, where 'weeping sessions' figured prominently. But Anglicans of this period stressed head over heart ... Stoic philosophy, with its belief int he importance of exemplary fortitude in the face of difficulties, and in the subordination of emotion to reason, enjoyed a vogue in the early 17th century. Two notable followers, Joseph Hall and Jeremy Taylor, were both sequestered loyalists. Fiona McCall's identification of the place of Stoic influences in conformist episcopalian piety, in her excellent Baal's Priests: The Loyalist Clergy and the English Revolution (2013), introduces us to a significant theme in Taylor's thought. Indeed, McCall particularly highlights Taylor's view of episcopalian suffering during the Interregnum not as a celebration of martyrdom but in Stoic terms of edification: Jeremy Taylor took the stoic view that suffering, rather than being the means to martyrdom, ...

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...

The reference to Samuel Clarke in the recent post regarding the Anglicanism of George Washington has led me to consider Clarke's place in 18th century Anglicanism. On a previous occasion , when reflecting on Clarke's Advent and Christmas sermons, I noted his sermons were popularly received across the 18th century Church of England. This provides a significant example of the 'unity and accord' of 18th century Anglicanism, identified by William Gibson as defining characteristics.  In his ' Some Account of the Life, Writings, and Character of Dr. Samuel Clarke ' - the preface to the 1738 edition of Clarke's sermons - Bishop Benjamin Hoadly indicates something of why the sermons would have such appeal across the Church of England: His Preaching was what One would naturally expect from a Person of so Critical a Genius, and so sedate a Judgment. The Design and Tendency of it was not to move the Passions: nor had he any Talent this way. He wisely never attempted i...

In his discussion of absolution in A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume I (1796), John Shepherd accepts that ordained ministers have "powers to absolve judicially" in matters of ecclesiastical discipline. This, however, is only so in matters of discipline. Outside of this, absolution is "ministerial" and thus declaratory.  As seen in previous posts in this series, Shepherd has pointed to the administration of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper as acts of ministerial absolution. Now he turns to another means of ministerial absolution, what he terms "the Absolution of Word and Doctrine": [this] appears to be that which constitutes the most material part of the ministry of reconciliation, committed by Christ to his ambassadors on earth. (2 Cor. v. 18, 19.) The exercise of this Absolution consists in publishing the terms and conditions, on which remission of sins, reconciliation to God, and everlasting sal...

Our journey through Robert Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull has reached Bull's final days in 1710. In his last illness those clergy ministering to Bishop Bull used the prayers from the Prayer Book's Visitation of the Sick . This office included provision for absolution. Bull, however, required that the indicative form of absolution - "I absolve thee" - in the Visitation of the Sick was not used: The Prayers for the Sick were frequently repeated during the whole time of his Illness, at which he expressed always great Devotion. He would sometimes desire to receive Absolution in the Form used in the Communion-Office, which he thought came nearer to the precatory Forms of Absolution mentioned in the Fathers than any other.  Nelson, who was a Nonjuror until 1710, held an advanced view of priesthood and absolution, then fashionable amongst a stream of High Church partisans, something of a reaction to both the Glorious Revolution, the Toleration Act, and Latitudin...