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Jeremy Taylor week: 'a controversy is a stone in the mouth of the hearer'

On this commemoration of Jeremy Taylor, and the final day of Jeremy Taylor week, words from a Taylor sermon illustrating the characteristic Anglican desire to avoid disturbing the Church's peace with controversies and contentions, instead promoting ecclesial peace and communal concord, "unity and godly love", through "the natural and amiable simplicity of Jesus, by plain and easy propositions".

Do not trouble your people with controversies: whatsoever does gender strife, the apostle commands us to avoid; and, therefore, much more the strife itself: a controversy is a stone in the mouth of the hearer, who should be fed with bread, and it is a temptation to the preacher, it is a state of temptation; it engages one side in lying, and both in uncertainty and uncharitableness; and after all, it is not food for souls; it is the food of contention, it is a spiritual lawsuit, and it can never be ended; every man is right, and every man is wrong in these things, and no man can tell who is right, or who is wrong. For as long as a word can be spoken against a word, and a thing be opposite to a thing; as long as places are hard, and men are ignorant, or "knowing but in part"; as long as there is money and pride in the world, and forever till men willingly confess themselves to be fools and deceived, so long will the saw of contention be drawn from side to side. "That which is not, cannot be numbered", saith the wise man: no man can reckon upon any truth that is got by contentious learning; and whoever troubles his people with questions, and teaches them to be troublesome, note that man, he loves not peace, or he would fain be called 'Rabbi, Rabbi'. Christian religion loves not tricks nor artifices of wonder; but like the natural and amiable simplicity of Jesus, by plain and easy propositions, leads us in wise paths to a place, where sin and strife shall never enter ...

Teach them to fear God and honour the king, to keep the commandments of God, and the king's commands, because of the oath of God; learn them to be sober and temperate, to be just and to pay their debts, to speak well of their neighbours and to think meanly of themselves; teach them charity, and learn them to be zealous of good works ...

"The kingdom of God consists in wisdom and righteousness, in peace and holiness, in meekness and gentleness, in chastity and purity, in abstinence from evil and doing good to others"; in these things place your labours, preach these things, and nothing else but such as these; things which promote the public peace and public good; things that can give no offence to the wise and to the virtuous: for these things are profitable to men, and pleasing to God.

'The Minister's Duty in Life and Doctrine', Part II in The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, Volume IV.

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