Jeremy Taylor Week: 'the great Erasmus, the incomparable Hugo Grotius'

In his defence of an eirenic vision of the churches of the British Isles and of Europe - amidst bitter division and bloody conflict - Taylor invoked two towering eirenic figures, Erasmus and Grotius. That he did so in his highly controversial works outlining a non-Augustinian account of Original Sin (Unum Necessarium and Deus Justificatus, published in 1655) only added to the controversy: the Papist Erasmus and the Arminian Grotius were hardly likely to endear Taylor to his critics.  

The praise Taylor heaped on Erasmus and Grotius in these two works gives some idea of the esteem in which he held them and their thinking:

I shall not be ashamed to profess what company I now keep ... the great Erasmus, and the incomparable Hugo Grotius;

Erasmus and Grotius, who are to be reckoned amongst the greatest, and the best expositors of Scripture, that any age since the Apostles and their immediate successors.

What Taylor valued in how Erasmus and Grotius handled Scripture is indicated in a sermon he gave to the University of Dublin in 1661:

I remember a saying of Erasmus, that when he first read the New testament with fear and a good mind, with a purpose to understand it and obey it, he found it very useful and very pleasant: but when afterwards he fell on reading the vast differences of commentaries, then he understood it less than he did before, then he began not to understand it. For indeed the truths of God are best dressed in the plain culture and simplicity of the Spirit; but the truths that men commonly teach are like the reflections of a multiplying glass.

Erasmus and Grotius exemplified a reading of Scripture which drew Christians together rather than employing scriptural texts as proofs for divisive scholastic speculations. Such readings of Scripture, as Taylor said in his 1661 sermon, brought us to the Church's centre: 

Let us go to the Truth itself, to Christ; and he will tell us an easy way of ending all our quarrels.

Taylor's praise for Grotius was reflected in the thought of other Laudians. Bramhall's Vindication of himself and the Episcopal Clergy from the Presbyterian Charge of Popery (published posthumously in 1672) was a response to Baxter's The Grotian religion discovered and its allegation that a "Grotian party" of Episcopal divines plotted "to introduce Popery into England". Bramhall, of course, rejected such a fantasy out of hand. Instead, he freely praised Grotius amongst other eirenicist thinkers:

Next for Grotius and others of his charitable way, I acknowledge freely, that I prefer one page of Wicelius, or Cassander [both Catholic humanists], or Grotius, for true judgment.

What is more, whereas Baxter accused Grotius of Popery, Bramhall presented Grotius as "in desire a true Son of the Church of England":

He was in affection a friend, and in desire a true Son of the Church of England. And upon his Death-bed recommended that Church, as it was legally established, to his Wife, and such other of his Family as were then about him, obliging them by his Authority to adhere firmly to it, so far as they had opportunity. And both my self, and many others have seen his Wife in obedience to her Husband's commands, which she declared publickly to the World, to repair often to our Prayers and Sacraments, and to bring at least one of his Grandchildren to Sir Richard Brown's house then Resident for the King in Paris to be baptized into the Faith and Communion of the Church of England, and be made a Member thereof.

For Bramhall and the Laudians, the natural ecclesial home for Grotius' eirenic vision was the Church of England.

Taylor's high praise for Erasmus is also to be found elsewhere in his works. In The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1655) and The Second Part of the Dissuasive from Popery (1667), regarding transubstantiation, Taylor referred to "the great Erasmus". There is a particular significance to pointing to Erasmus in the context of discussing Eucharistic doctrine. In the Dissuasive, Taylor goes on to quote Erasmus:

In the Communion the Church hath but lately defin'd Transubstantiation, which both in the thing and in the name was unknown to the Ancients.

If Dort's prying into the mystery of predestination was divisive and unnecessary, this was matched by Trent's insistence on transubstantiation as a divisive and unnecessary attempt to define the real and spiritual presence of Christ in the Sacrament. Taylor was distinctly Erasmian in the opening words of The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament:

It was happy with Christendom, when she in this article retained the same simplicity which she always was bound to doe in her manners and intercourse; that is, to believe the thing heartily, and not to enquire curiously; and there was peace in this article for almost a thousand years together.

This was also echoed in Via Intelligentia, his 1661 Sermon to the University of Dublin, referring to various eirenic attempts to reconcile the Western Church on Eucharistic doctrine:

Some very wise men ... have undertaken to reconcile the differences of Christendom by a way of moderation. Thus they have projected to reconcile the papists and the Lutherans, the Lutherans and the Calvinists, the Remonstrants and Contra-remonstrants, and project that each side should abate of their asperities, and pare away something of their propositions, and join in common terms and phrases of accommodation, each of them sparing something, and promising they shall have a great deal of peace or the exchange of a little of their opinion. This was the way of Cassander, Modrevius, Andreas Frisius, Erasmus, Spalato, Grotius ...

Taylor is well aware that such attempts failed, because the relevant parties "either disclaimed their moderation, or their respective princes had some other ends to serve". However, an Erasmian and Hookerian respect for eirenic attempts to move the churches beyond divisive attempts to define Eucharistic doctrine beyond what it is necessary, is a consistent theme in Taylor's sacramental teaching:

we had kneeled before the same altars, and adored the same mystery, and communicated in the same rites, to this day. For, in the thing itself, there is no difference amongst wise and sober persons; nor ever was, till the manner became an article, and declared or supposed to be of the substance of the thing ... So that now the question is not, whether the symbols be changed into Christ's body and blood, or no? For it is granted on all sides ... Nor is it, whether Christ be really taken - Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ I.3 & 13; 

But seeinge that by openinge the severall opinions which have bene held, they are growen (for ought I can see) on all sides at the lengthe to a generall agreement, concerning that which alone is materiall, Namelye the reall participation of Christe and of life in the bodie and bloode by meanes of this sacrament, wherefore should the world continewe still distracted, and rent with so manyfold contentions ...? - LEP V.67.2.

Taylor's eirenicism is not only evident in his approach to Eucharistic doctrine. It is also seen in his defence of a practice that was (and had been for nearly a century) a matter of profound controversy in England, kneeling to receive the holy Sacrament. In The Worthy Communicant (1660), Taylor pointed to Erasmus to defend the practice:

and accordingly this reverence is practised by the churches of the east, and west, and south; by the Christians of India ... by all the Lutheran churches; by all the world, says Erasmus; only now of late, some have excepted themselves. But the church of England chooses to follow the reason and the piety of the thing itself, the example of the primitive church, and the consenting voice of Christendom.

Here is an example of how Laudianism promoted an eirenic, Erasmian vision of the Church of England. Kneeling to receive the Sacrament was condemned by its opponents as contrary to the practice of 'best Reformed churches'. Taylor, by contrast, invokes Erasmus in order to portray a greater vision of the church catholic, in which kneeling to receive was a practice common amongst many Christians over centuries. For the Church of England to direct - by lawful authority - communicants to kneel to receive the blessed Sacrament was to give expression, by a common practice, to what Taylor termed "the sign of unity, the contesseration of the Christian communion".

Even in a dark time, there was a deeply joyful, hopeful character to the Erasmian, Grotian vision of Taylor the Laudian. It also helps explains why Laudians like Taylor continued to to promote understanding of the Episcopalian tradition even as the Episcopal Church of England ceased to exist in the 1650s. In a time of bitter confessional strife in these Islands, religious war, and divisive theological claims, Taylor saw "the great Erasmus, and the incomparable Hugo Grotius" articulating a vision embodied in the Episcopalian tradition, a vision holding out the hope of the distracted, divided churches gathered in catholic peace, charity, and unity around Christ.