"Sufficient, full": Taylor, the Trinity, and the Apostles' Creed

A key aspect of Taylor's emphasis on reserve and moderation in Trinitarian claims is the focus he places on the Apostles' Creed.  This, of course, had been famously stated in his Liberty of Prophesying, written amidst the ecclesiastical wreckage of the late 1640s:

the faith of the apostle's creed is entire; and he that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved, that is, he that believeth such a belief as is sufficient disposition to be baptized, that faith with the sacrament is sufficient for heaven.

Taylor's view expressed here in the 1640s remained a consistent stance in his later works.  As seen in an earlier post, Taylor would state in The Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Sacrament "the doctrine of the holy Trinity is set down in ... the Apostles' Creed".  In The Rule of Conscience, Taylor would also declare that the Creed of Nicaea and Constantinople was an exposition of the Apostles' Creed, not a statement of new articles of faith:

It is true, that the church of God did explicate two of the articles of this creed, that of the second and that of the third person of the Holy Trinity; the one at Nice, the other at Constantinople; one against Arius, the other against Macedonius; they did explicate, I say, but they added no new matter, but what they supposed contained in the apostolical creed.

Such exposition was trustworthy because of the proximity of these councils to the Apostolic era:

And, indeed, the thing was very well done ... they had reason for what they did, and were so near the ages apostolical that the explication was more likely to be agreeable to the sermons apostolical.

This 'explication', then, did not detract from the centrality of the Apostles' Creed.  What it does mean, however, is that the saving faith professed in the Apostles' Creed is inherently Trinitarian.  Not only is this explicit in his statements already quoted, it is also evident in his exposition of the Apostles' Creed in The Golden Grove. Thus the article confessing faith in Jesus Christ is explained to mean that He is "very God by essence ... as God, all one in nature with the Father".  Explanation of the article of faith in the Holy Spirit is preface by this statement:

Who is the third person of the holy, undivided, ever blessed Trinity, which I worship, and adore, and admire, but look upon with wonder, and am not in a capacity to understand.

To confess the Apostles' Creed, then, is to confess saving faith in the God who, as Taylor states in his catechism, "being one in nature, is also three in person; expressed in Scripture by the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit". It is this Trinitarian confession which fundamentally shapes the prayer of Christians, as Taylor explicitly states: 

When you first go off from your bed, solemnly and devoutly bow your head, and worship the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Similarly, he pointed to the consistent praise of the Trinity in the church's liturgy:

Christendom never did so lightly esteem the article of the holy Trinity, as not to glory in it, and confess it publicly, and express it in all our offices. The Holy Ghost, together with the Father and the Son, must be worshipped and glorified.

Rather than viewing Taylor's emphasis on the Apostles' Creed as doctrinal minimalism, we should instead recognise it as an acknowledgement of the inherently Trinitarian nature of the apostolic faith.  This is also, we might note, reflected in how the Prayer Book Catechism expounds the Apostles' Creed, in addition, of course, to reflecting its liturgical usage in Morning and Evening Prayer, Holy Baptism, and Confirmation. It is precisely because Taylor refuses to regard the Apostles' Creed as an expression of doctrinal minimalism that he regards it as the chief, primary confession of apostolic, orthodox faith:

this was the sacrament of the Christian faith, the fulness of believers, the characteristic of Christians, the sign of the orthodox, the sword of all heresies and their sufficient reproof, the unity of belief, sufficient, full, immovable, unalterable; and it is that alone, in which all the churches of the world do, at this day, agree.

Taylor's reading of the Apostles' Creed, inherently Trinitarian in its confession while yet modest and reserved in its Trinitarian claims, can be regarded as pointing to that which Karen Kilby has urged as a corrective to the excessive, speculative claims of social Trinitarianism:

One could say that as long as Christians continue to believe in the divinity of Christ and the Spirit, and as long as they continue to believe that God is one, then the doctrine [of the Trinity] is alive and well; it continues to inform the way they read the Scriptures and the overall shape of their faith.  

Or, as Taylor put it:

O blessed, ineffable, and most mysterious Trinity, how admirable are thy beauties, how incomparable are thy perfections, how incomprehensible are those relations of the three most blessed persons, which we believe, and admire, and adore, but understand not!