"As certainly as the loudest and most clamorous sermons": Jeremy Taylor, the Epiphany, and sober Anglican piety
A comet dangling in the aire,
Presag'd the ruine both of Death and Sin;
And told the wise-men of a King,
The King of Glory, and the Sun
Of Righteousness, Who then begun
To draw towards that blesed Hemisphere.
This is a poetic meditation on the Prayer Book's wonderful Epiphany collect, which begins with "who by the leading of a star" and concludes "may after this life have the fruition of thy glorious Godhead". Taylor's words invite us into the meaning of what it is to share in "thy glorious Godhead", the Star becoming a sign of our restoration to the divine life.
Turning to The Great Exemplar, Taylor points to the star guiding the Magi as exemplifying the catholic truth that grace does not destroy nature:
As it was an unsearchable wisdom, so it was an unmeasurable grace of Providence and dispensation which God did exhibit to those wise men, to them, as to all men, disposing the ministeries of his grace sweetly, and by proportion to the capacities of the person suscipient. For God called the Gentiles by such means as their customs and learning had made prompt and easy. For these magi were great philosophers and astronomers; and therefore God sent a miraculous star to invite and lead them to a new and more glorious light, the lights of grace and glory. And God so blessed them in following the star, to which their innocent curiosity and national customs were apt to lead them, that their custom was changed to grace, and their learning heightened with inspiration, and God crowned all with a spiritual and glorious event.
As Taylor states elsewhere, "grace does not give us new faculties, and create another nature, but meliorates and improves our own".
The Star and the Magi, Taylor also suggests in The Great Exemplar, are suggestive of the relationship between grace and works. Just as the Magi had to follow the Star, so the grace we receive must, through the co-operation of the will, bring forth good works:
This star, which conducted the wise men to Bethlehem, (if at least it was properly a star, and not an angel,) was set in its place to be seen by all; but was not observed, or not understood, nor its message obeyed, by any but the three wise men. And indeed, no man hath cause to complain of God, as if ever he would be deficient in assistances necessary to his service; but, first the grace of God separates us from the common condition of incapacity and indisposition, and then we separate ourselves one from another by the use or neglect of this grace; and God doing his part to us, hath cause to complain of us, who neglect that which is our portion of the work. And however even the issues and the kindnesses of God's predestination and antecedent mercy do very much towards the making grace to be effective of its purpose; yet the manner of all those influences and operations being moral, persuasive, reasonable, and divisible, by concourse of various circumstances, the cause and the effect are brought nearer and nearer in various suscipients; but not brought so close together, but that God expects us to do something towards it. So that we may say with St. Paul, "It is not I, but the grace of God that is with me". And at the same time when by reason of our co-operation we actuate and improve God's grace, and become distinguished from other persons more negligent under the same opportunities, God is he who also does distinguish us by the proportions and circumstantiate applications of his grace to every singular capacity; that we may be careful not to neglect the grace, and yet to return the entire glory to God.
In 'Of Growth in Grace', one of the Sermons Preached at Golden Grove, Taylor expounded "our portion of the work" that is such growth:
he must pray earnestly, and watch diligently, and consult with prudent Guides, and ask of God great measures of his Spirit, and hunger and thirst after righteousnesse: for he that does so, shall certainly be satisfied: and if he understands not his present good condition, yet if he be not wanting in the down right endeavours of piety, and in hearty purposes, he shall then finde that he is grown in grace when he springs up in the resurrection of the just, and shall be ingrafted upon a tree of Paradise.
While the Epiphany is not explicitly mentioned in Sermons Preached at Golden Grove, this extract from his sermon 'The Faith and Patience of the Saints' clearly evokes the Magi and the call "to look beyond the cloud" as an indication of the Christian vocation:
But because God sent wise men into the world, and they were treated rudely by the world, and exercised with evil accidents, and this seemed so great a discouragement to vertue, that even these wise men were more troubled to reconcile vertue, and misery, then to reconcile their affections to the suffering; God was pleased to enlighten their reason with a little beame of faith, or else heightned their reason by wiser principles then those of vulgar understandings; and taught them in the clear glasse of faith, or the dim perspective of Philosophy, to look beyond the cloud, and there to spie that there stood glories behinde their curtain, to which they could not come but by passing through the cloud, and being wet with the dew of heaven and the waters of affliction. And according as the world grew more enlightned by faith so it grew more dark with mourning & sorrowes: God sometimes sent a light of fire and pillar of a cloud and the brightnesse of an angel and the lustre of a star, and the sacrament of a rainbowe to guide his people thorough their portion of sorrows, and to lead them through troubles to rest ... as the Sun of righteousnesse approached towards the chambers of the East, and sent the harbingers of light peeping through the curtains of the night, and leading on the day of faith and brightest revelation.
This sermon was preached against the background of defeat in the civil wars and the ejections of episcopalian clergy, evoking Taylor's description of those years when the call "to look beyond the cloud" was especially necessary:
a time when the Church of England was persecuted, when she was marked with the Characterism of our Lord, the marks of the Cross of Jesus, that is, when she suffered for a holy cause and a holy conscience ... when she could shew more Martyrs and Confessors than any Church this day in Christendom, even then when a King died in the profession of her Religion, and thousands of Priests, learned and pious Men suffered the spoiling of their goods rather than they would forsake one Article of so excellent a Religion.
Returning to The Great Exemplar, the gifts presented by the Magi are interpreted by Taylor as signs not only of the Christ, His Person, and His vocation, but also of "the unitive life", of the "interior virtues":
These magi presented to the holy babe gold, frankincense, and myrrh, protesting their faith of three articles by the symbolical oblation: by gold, that he was a king; by incense, that he was God; by myrrh, that he was a man. And the presents also were representative of interior virtues: the myrrh signifying faith, mortification, chastity, compunction, and all the actions of the purgative way of spiritual life; the incense signifying hope, prayer, obedience, good intention, and all the actions and devotions of the illuminative; the giving the gold representing love to God and our neighbours, the contempt of riches, poverty of spirit, and all the eminencies and spiritual riches of the unitive life. And these oblations, if we present to the holy Jesus, both our persons and our gifts shall be accepted, our sins shall be purged, our under standings enlightened, and our wills united to this holy child, and entitled to a communion of all his glories.
The gifts of the Magi, therefore, are signs of an enduring theme in Taylor's writings, holy living. And in The Rules and Exercises of Holy Living Taylor provides 'An act of oblation' which echoes his thoughts on the gifts of the Magi:
Most holy and eternal God, Lord and Sovereign of all the creatures, I humbly present to thy divine Majesty myself, my soul and body, my thoughts and my words, my actions and intentions, my passions and my sufferings, to be disposed by thee to thy glory, to be blessed by thy providence, to be guided by thy counsel, to be sanctified by thy Spirit, and afterwards that my body and soul may be received into glory.
Finally, in the concluding prayer offered in The Great Exemplar for the Epiphany, Taylor contrasts "the loudest and most clamorous sermons" with the the quiet workings of the Spirit evident in the journey of the Magi:
Most holy Jesu, thou art the glory of thy people Israel, and a light to the Gentiles, and wert pleased to call the Gentiles to the adoration and knowledge of thy sacred person and laws, communicating the inestimable riches of thy holy discipline to all, with an universal undistinguishing love. Give unto us spirits docible, pious, prudent, and ductile, that no motion or invitation of grace be ineffectual, but may produce excellent effects upon us, and the secret whispers of thy Spirit may prevail upon our affections in order to piety and obedience, as certainly as the loudest and most clamorous sermons of the gospel.
No loud, clamorous sermons drew the Magi. It was by means known to their customs and habits that they were called to a supernatural end. The workings of grace within them were secret and quiet, for "the work of Heaven is not done by a flash of lightning". The "sacrament" of the Star revealed the Christ. The Magi offered gifts which spoke of holy living. And they encountered not "secret decrees or obscure doctrines" but the Incarnation of "universal undistinguishing love".
As we celebrate the Epiphany perhaps, with Taylor, we might hear afresh the call to a sober, quiet piety that, after the Magi, bears fruit in the gifts of holy living.
(The photograph is of The Middle Church, Ballinderry, constructed at the direction of Jeremy Taylor, beginning in 1664.)
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