laudable Practice

Preaching, in 1663, at the funeral of John Bramhall , Archbishop of Armagh, Jeremy Taylor referenced a 1660 incident when the Laudian Bramhall, returning from exile with King Charles II, received a delegation of Dutch Remonstrant clergy: 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 reproved 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. It was a reminder that, despite the dark allegations of Taylor's Presbyterian opponents, accusing him of Socinianism, he was (as has been clearly seen in this series of posts) robustly committed to Trinitarian and Christological creedal orthodoxy. Th...

Having established a rational for the place of the Nicene Creed in the Church's life - as an exposition of the rule of faith, the Apostles' Creed; as reliant upon the authority of holy Scripture; and as an expression of the Trinitarian and Christological truths confessed by the first four general councils - Taylor also demonstrated the place of Nicene faith in Christian prayer and piety. In his Collection of Offices (1657), liturgical texts to be used in place of the then prohibited Book of Common Prayer, Taylor proposed that at Morning Prayer "The Nicene Creed [is] to be said upon the great Solemnities of the yeare". This reflected what Taylor would urge his clergy at the Restoration : Let every Preacher in his Parish take care to explicate to the people the Mysteries of the great Festivals, as of Christmas, Easter, Ascension-day, Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday, the Annunciation of the blessed Virgin Mary; because these Feasts containing in them the great Fundamentals o...

Next to this analogy or proportion of faith, let the consent of the Catholic Church be your measure, so as by no means to prevaricate in any doctrine, in which all Christians always have consented. This will appear to be a necessary rule by and by; but, in the mean time, I shall observe to you, that it will be the safer, because it cannot go far ...   When Taylor, as the newly-consecrated Bishop of Down and Connor, preached to his clergy during the primary visitation at Lisnagarvey in 1661, he thus instructed them to conform their expounding of the Scriptures to "the consent of the Catholic Church". The words following define Taylor's understanding of 'Catholic consent': "doctrine ... in which  all Christians  have consented" (emphasis added). This was the understanding of the Trinitarian and Christological teaching of the first four general councils, as Taylor made explicit in the accompanying  Rules and Advices to his clergy: Every Minister ought to ...

Yesterday's post considered Taylor's understanding of the Creed of Nicaea in The Liberty of Prophesying , published in 1646. Taylor was then a relatively young 33 years old, in holy orders for 13 years, and belonging to the defeated party in the first Civil War. If, as was suggested yesterday, The Liberty of Prophesying was intended to a theological justification for the royal policy of seeking an accommodation with the Independents amongst the Parliamentarians, we might have expected Taylor's thinking to have significantly changed when we reach the final years of his life, when he wrote the Dissuasive from Popery , published in 1664 and 1667 , the year of his death. He was then a bishop in the restored established Church, with the monarch again upon his throne, and the bitter experiences of the 1640s and 50s in the past.  It is significant, however, that Taylor's understanding of the Creed of Nicaea's relationship to Scripture is maintained across these decades. ...

On this 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, this year's Jeremy Taylor Week - the days around his commemoration on 13th August - will be considering Taylor's understanding and use of the Nicene Creed. We begin with a text from Taylor's writings that has often produced some puzzlement, The Liberty of Prophesying (1646). There is, I think, little cause for such puzzlement. The Liberty of Prophesying reflects two contexts.  The first is the theological thought centred on the Great Tew Circle, not least Chillingworth's The Religion of Protestants (1637). Taylor's affinity with Great Tew is well established, as are his interactions with Chillingworth. The Liberty of Prophesying breathes the same air as The Religion of Protestants , setting forth a generous Protestant irenicism, best embodied, in the view of both works, in the Church of England. The second context, however, is the radically different political landscape addressed by the The Liberty of Prophes...

... the Church of England is the best Reformed Church in the world. Jeremy Taylor's declaration in his sermon at Bramhall's funeral would have won the vigorous agreement of Bramhall's predecessor as Archbishop of Armagh, Ussher. Something of this was indicated by  Richard Parr , a chaplain to Ussher and later biographer, describing how the Archbishop viewed the fate of the Church of England in the 1640s as "the greatest blow that had been ever given to the Reformed Churches". When Charles Richard Elrington - Regius Professor of Divinity, Trinity College Dublin - edited the works of Ussher in the mid-19th century, his introduction used the same phrase to describe Ussher's view of the Churches of England and Ireland: "the best reformed in the world". For Taylor, no less than for Ussher, the Churches of England and Ireland were Reformed . Both Taylor the Laudian and Ussher the Reformed Conformist were sons of the Reformation. In controversy with Count...

... whosoever shall hereafter maintain, that the Kings-Majesty hath not the same authority in causes Ecclesiastical, that the godly Kings had amongst the Jews, and Christian Emperors in the Primitive Church, or impeach in any part his Regal supremacy in the said causes restored to the Crown, and by the laws of this Realm therein established, let him be excommunicated, and not restored but only by the Archbishop of the Province, after his repentance, and publick revocation of his error. So declared the Canons adopted by the Convocation of the Church of Ireland in 1634. It was Ussher, as Archbishop of Armagh, who had insisted that the Irish Church should have its own Canons, rather than - as the Laudian Bramhall had desired - merely adopt those of the Church of England. What was never in question, however, was that the Irish Canons would robustly affirm, like the English Canons of 1604 , the Royal Supremacy.  Ussher's commitment to the Royal Supremacy was already evident through his...

So that now the question is not, whether the symbols be changed into Christ's body and blood, or no? For it is granted on all sides: but whether this conversion be sacramental and figurative? Or whether it be natural and bodily? Nor is it, whether Christ be really taken, but whether he be taken in a spiritual, or in a natural manner? We say, the conversion is figurative, mysterious, and sacramental; they say it is proper, natural, and corporal: we affirm, that Christ is really taken by faith, by the Spirit, to all real effects of his passion; they say, he is taken by the mouth, and that the spiritual and the virtual taking him, in virtue or effect, is not sufficient, though done also in the sacrament. Taylor's statement in his The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654) is indicative of how he fundamentally shared with Ussher a Reformed understanding of the gift of the Lord in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The similarity with Ussher'...

For so St Irenaeus who was one of the most Ancient Fathers of the Church, and might easily make good his affirmative: We can (says he) reckon the men who by the Apostles were appointed Bishops in the Churches, to be their Successors unto Us; leaving to them the same power and authority which they had. Thus St. Polycarp was by the Apostles made Bp. of Smyrna; St. Clement Bp. of Rome by St. Peter, and divers others by the Apostles, saith Tertullian, saying also that the Asian Bps. were consecrated by St. John; and to be short, that Bps. are the Successours of the Apostles in the Stewardship and Rule of the Church, is expresly taught by St. Cyprian, and St. Hieron, St. Ambrose, and St. Austin ... and the diadoch, or succession of Bps. from the Apostles hands in all the Churches Apostolical was as certainly known as in our Chronicles we find the succession of our English King. So Jeremy Taylor declared in his sermon at the consecration of two archbishops and ten bishops (including himself...