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'God hath not put the salvation of any man in the power of another': Taylor on authority, freedom, and the ministerial office

In another example of what Kenneth Kirk identified as the "ideal of combining the principle of authority with that of freedom", expounded by "a little group of Anglican divines of the seventeenth century - Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, Sanderson, Hall, and their fellows", we might point to Taylor's understanding (in Part III of his sermon 'The Return of Prayers') of how the clergy are "appointed for the salvation of mankind" (the Ordering of Priests).  

First, what Kirk termed "the principle of authority", evident in Taylor's 'high' account of the ministerial office:

though it were therefore very well that things were thus with all men, yet God, who takes care of us all, makes provision for us in special manner; and the whole order of the clergy are appointed by God to pray for others, to be ministers of Christ's priesthood, to be followers of His advocation, to stand between God and the people, and to present to God all their needs, and all their desires ... and through the descending ages of the synagogue it came to be transmitted also to the christian church, that the ministers of religion are advocates for us under Christ, by "the ministry of reconciliation", by their dispensing the holy sacraments, by "the keys of the kingdom of heaven", by baptism and the Lord's supper, by "binding and loosing", by "the word of God and prayer" ... 

We receive many advantages if the minister be holy ... but yet for want of holy persons to minister, much diminution of blessing and a loss of advantage is unavoidable; therefore if they have great necessities, they can best hope that God will be moved to mercy on their behalf, if their necessities be recommended to God by persons of a great piety, of a holy calling, and by the most solemn offices.

This, however, is importantly balanced and qualified by "freedom", moderating clerical claims and significance:

For we must know that God hath not put the salvation of any man into the power of another; and although the church of Rome, by calling the priest's actual intention simply necessary, and the sacraments also indispensably necessary, hath left it in the power of every curate to damn every many of his parish; yet it is otherwise with the accounts of truth and the divine mercy; and therefore He will never exact the sacraments of us by the measures and proportions of an evil priest, but by the piety of the communicant, by the prayers of Christ, and the mercies of God ...

For we must not think that the effect of the sacraments is indivisibly done at once or by one ministry; but they operate by parts, and by moral operation, by the length of time, and whole order of piety and holy ministries; every man is a fellow-worker with God, in the work of his salvation; and as in our devotion no one prayer of our own alone prevails upon God for grace and salvation, but all the devotions of our life are upon God's account for them; so is the blessing of God brought upon the people by all the parts of their religion, and by all the assistances of holy people, and by the ministries not of one but of all God's ministers, and relies finally upon our own faith and obedience, and the mercies of God in Jesus Christ.

It is a wonderful example of the ethos of the marriage of authority and freedom highlighted by Kirk, an ethos fundamental to the Anglican experience.  The "great excellency" of the ministerial office, "so high a dignity", is maintained, an expression of the "great benefits of thy eternal goodness", "so weighty a work, pertaining to the salvation of man" (all phrases from the Ordering of Priests).  Our salvation, however, is not dependent upon the office and work of a priest but "all the parts of ... religion".  The office and work, life and doctrine of the priest does aid our sanctification, being a part of the "whole order of piety", but only a part.  It is not the priest alone who "is a fellow-worker with God" but "every man", for our salvation "relies finally upon our own faith and obedience, and the mercies of God in Jesus Christ".  

Authority and freedom, then, are wonderfully reconciled and held together in this account of the ministerial office given by Taylor, avoiding both the exalted claims of a clerical tyranny and a demeaning of the gift to the Church of holy orders. It is a deeply attractive aspect of the "combining [of] the principle of authority with that of freedom" seen by Kirk in those divines who sustained Hooker's vision for the ecclesia Anglicana, resisting those who disorder the Church's life by making claims for authority against freedom, and those who exalted freedom against authority.

('The Return of Prayers' is found in The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, Volume IV.)

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