Jeremy Taylor week: Unum Necessarium (II) a rejection of Augustine?

Is Unum Necessarium an anti-Augustinian work?  There is no doubt, of course, that Taylor rejects key aspects of Augustine's formulation of the doctrine of Original Sin.  Taylor is clear, however, that Augustine had to contend with and overthrow the Pelagian error, for "their capital error was a great one, and such against which all men while there was need ought to have contended earnestly".  But in the heat of theological combat Augustine made mistakes:

But his zeal against a certain error, made him take in auxiliaries from an uncertain or less discerned one, and caused him to say many things which all antiquity before him disavowed, and which the following ages took up on his account.

From this, Taylor suggests, came the Augustinian error to regard sin as intrinsically part of human nature, leading us to "entertain our sins infallibly, and never to part with them, upon pretence that they are natural, and irresistible". On the matter of the fate of unbaptised infants, Taylor notes that "S. Austin and his followers, Fulgentius, Prosper, and others" cannot be taken as the sole orthodox voice, not least because Augustine himself had stated contrary views:

S. Austin called them all Pelagians who were of the middle opinion concerning Infants, and yet many Catholicks both before and since his time do profess it ...  if everything which was said against S. Austin in these Controversies, be Pelagianism, then all Antiquity were Pelagians, and himself besides: For he, before his Disputes in these Questions, said much against what he said after, as every learned Man knows. 

Taylor repeats his view that Augustine's response to Pelagius was lacking in prudence and again invokes pre-Augustinian accounts of Original Sin, including Augustine's own rendering of the doctrine before the Pelagian controversy:

Original Sin as it is at this day commonly explicated, was not the Doctrine of the Primitive Church; but when Pelagius had puddled the stream, St. Austin was so angry that he stampe and disturbed it more: And truly my Lord, if these who object St. Austin's authority to my Doctrine, will be content to be subject to all that he says, I am content they shall follow him in this too, provided that they will give me my liberty, because I will not be tied to him that speaks contrary things to himself, and contrary to them that went before him; and though he was a rare person, yet he was as fallible as any of my brethren at this day.

The fundamental contention of Augustine rejected by Taylor is explicitly stated in Unum Necessarium:

the main of all is this; that this sin of Adam is not imputed unto us to Eternal Damnation.

The belief that Adam's sin does damn us, says Taylor, "is the worst of St. Augustin's opinion", a view "that no Catholick Writer, for 400 Years after Christ did ever affirm it".

The rejection of Augustine on this aspect of Original Sin is, therefore, explicit and robust.  But does this make Unum Necessarium an anti-Augustinian work?  I think a good case can be made that this does not follow from Taylor's admittedly trenchant criticism of the Augustinian view.  As already noted, Taylor remarks in a number of places in this work that Augustine's views on the matter were not always consistent or coherent.  In addition to the above references, Taylor - while discussing the nature of sin - also points elsewhere in the work to "a more favourable discourse of S. Austin". In other words, Taylor responds to his opponents' allegation that he was rejecting Augustine with the question 'which Augustine?'.

In addition to this, he favourably cited Augustine throughout the work. To give but a few examples of this: "this also was affirmed by St. Austin"; "an excellent observation by St. Austin"; "St. Austin reckons"; "St. Austin well observed"; "St. Austin affirms"; "This was St. Austin's rule"; "they are excellent words which were spoken by St. Austin"; "they are excellent words which S. Austin said"; "hath warrant from the words of S. Austin"; "which distinction we learn from St. Austin".  Rather than being a rejection of Augustine, Unum Necessarium is a meaningful engagement with the corpus of Augustine's teaching: yes, definitely critical in parts, but certainly not uniformly - or, it might be suggested, even mostly - negative.  

In doing so, Taylor was reflecting a wider movement amongst those Episcopalian divines critical of the radical Augustinianism of Dort and the Westminster Confession.  As Thomas Palmer has stated:

he exemplified that more comprehensive approach to Augustine’s thought among mid-seventeenth century Anglicans which their one-sided rejection of his determinism can sometimes obscure. Taylor did not reject Augustine, but an Augustine whose anti-Pelagian themes had been made the ruling principle of all his thought.

As recent scholarship on Augustine has rightly emphasised, his teaching should not be reduced to later pronouncements on Original Sin and predestination.  Thus, Rowan Williams' superb collection of essays on Augustine does not address the Pelagian controversy, focussing instead on "finite selfhood in its relation to God, the character of Trinitarian love and its embodiment in Christ".  Similarly, the Augustine explored by William Harmless and by Lewis Ayres is significantly removed from the caricatures which follow from a narrow focus on the Pelagian disputes. This points to how Augustine's teaching is much richer and more diverse than a reductive interpretation which equates it to particular theories on Original Sin and predestination.  Something of this is seen in Unum Necessarium.  Taylor points to the Augustine beyond the harshest of formulations declared in the heat of controversy, the Augustine whose teaching encourages us in the necessary doctrine and practice of repentance. Unum Necessarium is not an anti-Augustinian work. Its critique of aspects of Augustine's teaching was, to again quote Palmer, "only the more keenly to accentuate the insights of Augustine, the psychologist of conversion, and Augustine the theologian of love".