Jeremy Taylor Week: 'that great Hurricane' and 'the design of Heaven'

This year's Jeremy Taylor Week began by reflecting on how the experience of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms shaped Taylor's eirenicism. In those decades, Taylor maintained an eirenic vision of the church catholic, in a time when - as he declared in the preface of The Golden Grove - "the supplanters and underminers are gone out, and are digging down the foundations", having "destroyed all public forms of ecclesiastical government, discountenanced an excellent Liturgy, taken off the hinges of unity".

In his sermon at Taylor's funeral, his friend George Rust looked back upon those years in which wars of religion had engulfed the Three Kingdoms:

This Great Man had no sooner launch'd into the World, but a fearful Tempest arose, and a barbarous and unnatural War, disturb'd a long and uninterrupted Peace and Tranquillity; and brought all things into disorder and confusion ... he and his little fortune were shipwrackt in that great Hurricane, that overturn'd both Church and State.

It is surely not without significance that Rust's words quite clearly echo those of Taylor in the dedication of The Liberty of Prophesying:

In this great Storm which hath dasht the Vessell of the Church all in pieces, I have been cast upon the Coast of Wales, and in a little Boat thought to have enjoyed that rest and quietnesse, which in England in a greater I could not hope for: Here I cast Anchor, and thinking to ride safely, the Storm followed me with so impetuous violence, that it broke a Cable, and I lost my Anchor: And here again I was exposed to the mercy of the Sea, and the gentlenesse of an Element that could neither distinguish things nor persons.

Rust was, we might justifiably think, signalling that The Liberty of Prophesying, rather than being an contradictory exception amongst Taylor's works, exemplified an eirenicism evident throughout his life and writings. Similarly, Taylor's eirenic preface to his work on the Psalter was also somewhat echoed by Rust in the same passage of the funeral sermon:

In this most unnaturall Warre commenced against the greatest solemnities of Christianity, and all that is called, God, I have been put to it to run somewhither to Sanctuary ... It was my custome long since to secure my selfe against the violences of Discontents abroad ... in my books and my retirements: But now I was deprived of both them, and driven to a publick view and participation of those dangers and miseries which threatned the Kingdome, and disturbed the eavennesse of my former life.

In bringing to mind "that great Hurricane" and the destruction it wrought, Rust set the scene in his funeral sermon for a recognition and appreciation of Taylor's eirenic spirit. In contrast to the destructive fury of the "fearful tempest", Rust pointed to Taylor bearing the peaceable "design of Heaven":

that which made his Wit and Judgment so considerable, was the largeness and freedom of his Spirit, for truth is plain and easie to a mind dis-intangled from Superstition and Prejudice; He was one of the eklektikoi a sort of brave Philosophers that Laërtius speaks of, that did not addict themselves to any particular Sect, but ingenuously sought for Truth among all the wrangling Schools; and they found her miserably torn and rent to pieces, and parcell'd into Raggs, by the several contending Parties, and so disfigur'd and mishapen, that it was hard to know her; but they made a shift to gather up her scatter'd Limbs, which as soon as they came together by a strange sympathy and connaturalness, presently united into a lovely and beautiful body. 

This was the Spirit of this Great Man; he weighed Men's Reasons, and not their Names, and was not scar'd with the ugly Vizars men usually put upon Persons they hate, and Opinions they dislike; nor affrighted with the Anathemas and Execrations of an infallible Chair, which he look'd upon only as Bugbears to terrifie weak, and childish minds. 

He consider'd that it is not likely any one Party should wholly engross Truth to themselves; that Obedience is the only way to true Knowledge ... that God always, and only teaches docible and ingenuous minds, that are willing to hear, and ready to obey according to their Light; that it is impossible, a pure, humble, resigned, God-like Soul, should be kept out of Heaven, whatever mistakes it might be subject to in this state of Mortality; that the design of Heaven is not to fill men's heads, and feed their Curiosities, but to better their Hearts; and mend their Lives. 

Such Considerations as these, made him impartial in his Disquisitions, and give a due allowance to the Reasons of his Adversary, and contend for Truth, and not for Victory.

After the decades of "railing dialect" from pulpits, "when Religion [had put] on Armor", of "most unnaturall Warre", of bitter divisions occasioned by "vain notions ... pitiful contentions, and disputes about little things", of  the "the intangled links of the fanatic chain of predestination" exalted to a defining article of faith, Rust led his hearers to rejoice in how Taylor had exemplified "the natural and amiable simplicity of Jesus", for "the design of Heaven is not to fill men's heads, and feed their Curiosities, but to better their Hearts; and mend their Lives".

After the decades of controversies, troubles, and confusions, Taylor had told his clergy in his 1661 visitation sermon:

Do not trouble your people with controversies ... a controversy is a stone in the mouth of the hearer, who should be fed with bread, and it is a temptation to the preacher, it is a state of temptation; it engages one side in lying, and both in uncertainty and uncharitableness; and after all, it is not food for souls; it is the food of contention, it is a spiritual law-suit, and it can never be ended; every man is right and every man is wrong in these things, and no man can tell who is right or who is wrong.

The "design of Heaven" was being restored to the pulpits of the Diocese of Down and Connor. Rather than controversies and confusions, clergy in the pulpit were to "press those Graces most that do most good, and make the least noise", as Taylor noted in his Rules and Advices to the Clergy:

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.

Here was the outworking of Taylor's eirenic vision, of the times mended, of truth gently and peaceably restored.

It is fitting, therefore, that this year's Jeremy Taylor Week should conclude with a prayer from Taylor, in Holy Living, 'For the whole Catholick Church':

O holy Jesus King of the Saints, and Prince of the Catholick Church, preserve thy spouse whom thou hast purchased with thy right hand, and redeemed and cleansed with thy blood; the whole Catholick Church from one end of the Earth to the other; she is founded upon a rock, but planted in the sea. O preserve her safe from schisme, heresy, and sacriledge. Unite all her members with the bands of Faith, Hope and Charity, and an external communion, when it shall seem good in thine eyes: let the daily sacrifice of prayer and Sacramental thanksgiving never cease, but be for ever presented to thee, and for ever united to the intercession of her dearest Lord, and for ever prevail for the obtaining for every of its members grace and blessing, pardon and salvation. Amen.

(The photograph is of the interior of The Middle Church, Ballinderry, the heart of Jeremy Taylor country. Taylor directed that the church be built; it was consecrated in 1668. It is close to Portmore, the area in which Taylor found refuge during the late 1650s, of which Rust said in the funeral sermon, "a place made for study and contemplation, which he therefore dearly lov'd".)