Jeremy Taylor Week: 'without any angry reflexions'

In a sermon to his clergy in 1661 ('The Minister's Duty in Life and Doctrine'), during his primary visitation of his diocese, Taylor lamented that "the catholic church hath been too much and too soon divided". He went on, however, to point to that which Christians held in common, those "things simply necessary" for the common ordering of the church catholic:

in things simply necessary God hath preserved us still unbroken; all nations, and all ages recite the creed, and all pray the Lord's prayer, and all pretend to walk by the rule of the commandments; and all churches have ever kept the day of Christ's resurrection, or the Lord's day, holy; and all churches have been governed by bishops, and the rites of Christianity have been for ever administered by separate orders of men, and those men have been always set apart by prayer and the imposition of the bishop's hands; and all Christians have been baptized, and all baptized persons were or ought to be, and were taught that they should be, confirmed by the bishop, and presidents of religion; and for ever there were public forms of prayer, more or less in all churches; and all Christians that were to enter into holy wedlock, were ever joined or blessed by the bishop or the priest: in these things all Christians ever have consented.

Now we might have questions about Taylor's account of a common ordering of the church catholic. Yes, a generous catholicity is suggested by his emphasis on "the creed" (and note the singular, implying the sufficiency of the Apostles' Creed; as Taylor had stated in Ductor dubitantium, it is "the sign of the orthodox ... the unity of belief, sufficient, full"), Lord's Prayer, and Commandments. Similarly with assembling on the first day of the week in commemoration of the Resurrection. 

The reference to episcopacy, however, might be seeming to lack generosity. But does it? Notice that no claim is made here by Taylor regarding episcopacy as divinely instituted. Instead, he merely states that episcopacy has historically been the common way of governing Christian communities. As was common amongst Laudians, he also makes no particular claim regarding historic succession.  Mindful that Presbyterian communities in Taylor's diocese, with their de jure claims for government by presbytery, rejected his authority, this was a modest, generous claim for the episcopal regiment. 

Indeed, he could have been describing the function of bishops in the Hungarian and Transylvanian Reformed churches. Also noteworthy is that Taylor goes on to refer to bishops as "presidents of religion", evoking the role of superintendents in some Lutheran churches, explicitly accepted by Laud and others as bishops in all but name, while Bramhall included in "personal succession" those churches which did not use the term 'bishop' for their "seniors".

Likewise, Taylor prescribes little about the other orders of ministers, allowing for a variety of ways of ordering the presbyteral and diaconal offices. The only requirement is that they be episcopally ordained.

When it comes to Confirmation, we might again baulk at placing it in a description of the common ordering of the church catholic. Here too, however, Taylor requires no particular theology of Confirmation: it is a common practice that he is affirming.

On the matter of liturgy, nothing is required beyond "public forms of prayer". This obviously allows for a diversity of liturgies in the churches, with no particular ceremonies mentioned.

In other words, in "the things simply necessary" to the common ordering of the church catholic, Taylor does indeed provide an account of generous catholicity. It is an eirenic account that could be very favourably contrasted with the Presbyterianism which Taylor was confronting in his diocese. Comparing Taylor's account of "the things simply necessary" with de jure claims for the presbyterian order and the regulative principle of worship, we more clearly see his generous catholicity.

The debates with Presbyterianism in his diocese are very evident in the Taylor's sermon. The Presbyterian rejection of lawful ceremonies - not things necessary, but a legitimate part of "the exterior part of religion" - was to focus on that which was secondary and rent the church's communion over matters indifferent:

Is it not a shame that the people should be filled with sermons against ceremonies, and declamations against a surplice, and tedious harangues against the poor airy sign of the cross in baptism? These things teach them to be ignorant; it fills them with wind, and they suck dry nurses; it makes them lazy and useless, troublesome and good for nothing. Can the definition of a Christian be, that a Christian is a man that rails against bishops and the common prayer book? and yet this is the great labour of our neighbours that are crept in among us; this they call the work of the Lord; and this is the great matter of the desired reformation; in these things they spend their long breath, and about these things they spend earnest prayers, and by these they judge their brother, and for these they revile their superior.

Against this, Taylor called the clergy of his diocese away from divisive debates to the gentle paths of eirenicism, grounded in the Christian moral vision:

Christian religion loves not tricks nor artifices of wonder, but like the natural and amiable simplicity of Jesus, by plain and easy propositions leads us in wise paths to a place where sin and strife shall never enter ... The kingdom of God consists in wisdom and righteousness, in peace and holiness, in meekness and gentleness, in chastity and purity, in abstinence from evil and doing good to others; in these things place your labours, preach these things, and nothing else but such as these; things which promote the public peace and public good; things that can give no offence to the wise and to the virtuous: for these things are profitable to men, and pleasing to God.

In the face of embittered, angry debates, the gentle paths of eirenicism were to be followed, forsaking self-defeating angry confrontation:

Be more careful to establish a truth than to reprove an error. For besides that a truth will when it is established of itself reprove the error sufficiently; men will be less apt to reprove your truth when they are not engaged to defend their own propositions against you. Men stand upon their guard when you proclaim war against their doctrine. Teach your doctrine purely and wisely, and without any angry reflexions; for you shall very hardly persuade him whom you go about publicly to confute.

The peaceable teaching of peaceable doctrines: such was the eirenic way to which Taylor called his clergy in a time of controversy and division. It is a profoundly attractive vision, embodying "the natural and amiable simplicity of Jesus", and providing a theological and moral basis for Anglican moderation and ecumenical commitments. And for Taylor, of course, it provided an alternative to the bitter, bloody conflicts that had rent the times in which he lived, conflicts that had been encouraged from pulpits and by "angry reflexions" in theological debates, gravely disturbing the peace of church and state. Such memories and experiences were clearly on Taylor's mind as he preached this sermon to his clergy on the need for the eirenic, peaceable way:

But above all things nothing so much will reproach your doctrine, as if you preach it in a railing dialect; we have had too much of that within these last thirty years.