Jeremy Taylor week: 'Communicate in all the good'

On this Wednesday of Jeremy Taylor Week, words from a Taylor sermon showing that it is he and not - contrary to Diarmaid MacCulloch - Richard Baxter who exemplifies what it is to be a "Catholick Christian". Despite MacCulloch's rather odd claim (Baxter, after all, refused to conform to the rather minimal standards of episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer) it is not Baxter who embodied the latitude of Anglicanism. As seen in this extract, it is Taylor who, in succession to Hooker, exemplifies the modesty, latitude, and charity of the catholic spirit of the ecclesia Anglicana.

And if we can, by any arts of prudence, separate from an evil proposition, and communicate in all the good, then we may love colleges of religious persons, though we do not worship images; and we may obey our prelates, though we do no injury to princes; and we may be zealous against a crime, though we be not imperious over men's persons; and we may be diligent in the conduct of souls, though we be not rapacious of estates: and we may be moderate exactors of obedience to human laws, though we do not dispense with the breach of the Divine; and the clergy may represent their calling necessary, though their persons be full of modesty and humility; and we may preserve our lights, and not lose our charity. For this is the meaning of the apostle, "Try all things, and retain that which is good"; from every sect and community of Christians take any thing that is good, that advances holy religion and the Divine honour. For one hath a better government, a second a better confession, a third hath excellent spiritual arts for the conduct of souls, a fourth hath fewer errors; and by what instrument soever a holy life is advantaged, use that, though thou grindest thy spears and arrows at the forges of the Philistines; knowing thou hast no master but Christ, no religion but the Christian, no rule but the Scriptures, and the laws, and right reason: other things that are helps, are to be used accordingly.

'Of Christian Prudence' Part III in The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, Volume IV.

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