"Sweetly and gently": reading Bishop Hall in Whitsun week
We could easily imagine the words coming from Hooker or Taylor. Indeed, Taylor's counsel to his clergy comes to mind:
Let the business of your Sermons be to preach holy Life, Obedience, Peace, Love among neighbours, hearty love, to live as the old Christians did, and the new should; to do hurt to no man, to do good to every man: For in these things the honour of God consists, and the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus.
Comparisons between Hall the Calvinist and Taylor the Arminian have been made often over the centuries, and this Whitsun sermon exemplifies the deep and attractive Episcopalian irenicism they both articulated. It was an irenicism which would profoundly shape Anglican thought and piety, a sweet and gentle irenicism flowing from Whitsunday, the gift of the Comforter.
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