Jeremy Taylor week: Unum Necessarium (IV) "I am ready a thousand times to subscribe to the Article"
But it is objected , that my Doctrine is against the ninth Article of the Church of England ... I have oftentimes subscribed that Article, and though if I had cause to dissent from it, I would certainly do it in those just measures, which my duty on one side, and the intereſt of truth on the other would require of me: yet because I have no reason to disagree, I will not suffer myself to be supposed to be of a differing judgment from my dear Mother, which is the best Church of the World.
A crucial aspect of Taylor's insistence that his views on Original Sin cohere with Article IX is his understanding of the inherent latitude provided by the Articles:
the Church of England speaks moderate words, apt to be construed to the purposes of all peaceable Men that desire her Communion ... it is not unusual for Churches, in matters of difficulty, to frame their Articles so as to serve the ends of peace.
Such latitude was, Taylor states, the intention of the Articles, for the purposes of the Church's peace:
For the Articles being framed in a Church but newly reformed, in which many complied with some unwillingness, and were not willing to have their consent broken by too great a straining, and even in the Convocation itself, so many being of a differing judgment, it was very great prudence and piety to secure the peace of the Church, by as much charitable latitude as they could contrive; and therefore the Articles, in those things which were publickly disputed at that time, even amongst the Doctors of the Reformation, (such were the Articles of Predestination, and this of Original Sin) were described, with incomparable wisdom and temper; and therefore I have reason to take it ill, if any man shall deny me liberty to use the benefit of the Church's wisdom: For I am ready a thousand times to subscribe the Article, if there can be just cause to do it so often; but as I impose upon no man my sense of the Article, but leave my reasons and him to struggle together for the best; so neither will I be bound to any one man, or any company of men, but to my lawful Superiors.
The Articles, then, were devised with "much caution and prudence" to ensure the peace and unity of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana. It is this which leads Taylor to criticise Thomas Rogers' The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England, a 1584 commentary on the Articles, with its Calvinistic interpretation:
many were not only then, but long since very angry at him, that he by his interpretation had limited the charitable latitude which was allowed in the subscription to them.
Against this background of the "charitable latitude" of the Articles, Taylor demonstrates how his reading of the doctrine of Original Sin conforms to Article IX. He provides a clause-by-clause exposition of the Article.
'It is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man':
vitium Natura, so it is in the Latin Copies not a sin properly ... but a disease of the Soul, as blindness, or crookedness; that is, it is an imperfection or state of deficiency from the end whither God did design us.
'Very far gone from original righteousness':
That is, Men are devolved into their Natural condition, divested of all those gifts and graces which God gave to Adam, in order to his supernatural End, and by the help of which he stood in God's Favour, and innocent until the fatal Period of his Fall.
'Of his own nature inclined to evil':
That every Man is inclined to evil, some more, some less, but all in some inſtances, is very true: and it is an effect or condition of nature, but no ſsn properly, 1.Because that which is unavoidable is not a sin. 2. Because it is accidental to Nature, not intrinsecal and essential.
'It deserveth God's wrath and damnation':
altho' some Churches in their confessions express it, yet the Church of England does not: they add the word, Eternal, to Damnation; but our Church abstains from that: therefore God's wrath and damnation can signifie the same that damnation does in S. Paul; all the effects of God's anger. Temporal Death, and the miseries of mortality was the effect of Adam's sin, and of our being reduc'd to the Natural and Corrupted, or worsted state ... So do we naturally fall short of Heaven. This is hatred or the wrath of God, and his Judgment upon the sin of Adam to condemn us to a state of imperfection and misery, and death, and deficiency from supernatural happiness, all which I grant to be the effect of Adam's sin, and that our imperfect Nature deserves this; that is, it can deserve no better.
'This infection of nature':
This imperfection, nor any inherent quality that by contact pollutes the Relatives and Descendants, but this abuse and reproach of our Nature, this stain of our Nature, by taking off the supernatural Grace, and beauties put into it, like the cutting off the beards of David's Embassadors, or stripping a Man of his Robe, and turning him abroad in his natural shame, leaving him naked as Adam and we were.
When the Article turns to concupiscence and declares that it "hath of itself the nature of sin", Taylor had already stated in the Preface that this justifies his understanding of Original Sin. If, as the Article confesses, concupiscence "doth remain ... in them that are regenerated", it must mean, says Taylor, that while concupiscence is "after a certain manner of speaking called sin; because it is made worse by sin, and makes us guilty of sin when it is consented to", yet it cannot be a cause of damnation:
So it is in this Article, Concupiscence remains in the regenerate, and yet concupiscence hath the nature of sin, but it brings not condemnation. These words explain the former. Original imperfection is such a thing as is even in the regenerate; and it is of the nature of sin, that is, it is the effect of one sin, and the cause of many; but yet it is not damning ... it may of itself in its abstracted nature be a sin, and deserve God's anger, viz., in some persons, in all that consent to it but that which will always be in persons that shall never be damned, that is in infants and regenerate, shall never damn them. And this is the main of what I affirm.
And so Article IX, says Taylor, shares his view that Original Sin is privation, not damnation. Thus Taylor acknowledges his willingness "a thousand times to subscribe to the Article". This also provides Taylor with a significant contrast between Article IX and the relevant passage of the Westminster Confession:
Original sin being a transgression of the righteous Laws of God, and contrary thereunto, doth in its own nature bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God and curse of the Law, and so made subject to death with all miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal. These are the sayings of the late Assembly at Westminster ... this heap of errors and dangerous propositions ... One thing more I did, and do reprove in their Westminster Articles, and that is, that Original sin, meaning, our sin derived from Adam, is contrary to the Law of God, and doth in its own nature bring guilt upon the sinner; binding him over to God's wrath, & c. that is, that the sin of Adam imputed to us is properly, formally and inherently a sin.
This critique of the Westminster Confession highlights the latitude which Taylor suggests is present in Article IX. Indeed, the relevant section of the Westminster Confession was designed precisely to exclude such latitude. This certainly aids Taylor's argument, that Unum Necessarium was within the bounds established by Article IX, as does the similar Episcopalian critique set forth in William Parker's 1651 work on The Late Assembly of Divines Confession of Faith examined:
That they fell from their former communion with God, from some degree of original righteousness, and that they became dead, that is liable to eternal death, we grant you: but that they fell wholly from original righteousness, at the first Act of their Apostacy, or that they presently became so wholly defiled as you speak, are great mistakes ... Thus we have proved, that neither the guilt of our first parents sin was imputed, nor their spiritual death in sin and corrupted nature was conveyed to all their posterity, or to any one of them by ordinary generation, contrary to your assertions.
What is more, Taylor's view was explicitly stated to be within the bounds of Article IX in the essential 18th century text on the Articles, Burnet's An Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England (1699). Burnet notes "a greater diversity of opinion" on this Article, summarising two main schools of thought within the Church of England. Against the Augustinian/Calvinist view, there are those who to whom - in words that clearly echo Unum Necessarium - "this seems a harsh and unconceivable Opinion; it seems repugnant to the Justice and Goodness of God, to reckon Men guilty of a Sin which they never committed, and to punish them in their Souls Eternally for that which was no Act of theirs". Like Taylor, he points out that "It is no small prejudice against this Opinion, That it was so long before it first appeared in the Latin Church; that it was never received in the Greek", and that "these Divines" who reject the Augustinian view "have all the Fathers with them before St. Austin". Burnet also echoes Unum Necessarium in invoking Article IX as a means of securing the Church's peace:
not to disturb the Peace and Union of the Church, by insisting too much and too peremptorily upon matters of such doubtful Disputation; but willingly to leave them to all that liberty, to which the Church has left them, and which she still allows them.
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