Jeremy Taylor Week: Taylor, Ussher, and episcopal order

For so St Irenaeus who was one of the most Ancient Fathers of the Church, and might easily make good his affirmative: We can (says he) reckon the men who by the Apostles were appointed Bishops in the Churches, to be their Successors unto Us; leaving to them the same power and authority which they had. Thus St. Polycarp was by the Apostles made Bp. of Smyrna; St. Clement Bp. of Rome by St. Peter, and divers others by the Apostles, saith Tertullian, saying also that the Asian Bps. were consecrated by St. John; and to be short, that Bps. are the Successours of the Apostles in the Stewardship and Rule of the Church, is expresly taught by St. Cyprian, and St. Hieron, St. Ambrose, and St. Austin ... and the diadoch, or succession of Bps. from the Apostles hands in all the Churches Apostolical was as certainly known as in our Chronicles we find the succession of our English King.

So Jeremy Taylor declared in his sermon at the consecration of two archbishops and ten bishops (including himself) in Dublin on 27th January 1661. Here was the reassertion of the Laudian vision of episcopal order after the long, dark years of the Interregnum, a declaration of the historic succession from the Apostolic church.

There was, however, nothing distinctively Laudian about such a proclamation of the episcopal succession from the Apostles. In his 1641 work The Judgement of Doctor Rainoldes, a contribution to the fierce debate over episcopacy amidst the political crisis engulfing the Three Kingdoms, Ussher likewise invoked patristic accounts of the historic succession from the Apostles:

Polycarpus placed there by John, and the Church of Rome Clement ordained by Peter; so the rest of the Churches also did shew, what Bishops they had received by the appointment of the Apostles, to traduce the Apostolicall seed unto them. And so before him did Irenaeus urge against them the successions of Bishops, unto whom the Apostles committed the charge of the Church in every place.

Indeed, such succession was seen, claimed Ussher, in the pages of the New Testament, with Timothy being appointed to the episcopal office:

he was ordained the first Bishop of the Church of the Ephesians.

Taylor likewise understood the ministry of Timothy and Titus:

To this purpose St. Paul gave to Titus the Bp. of Crete a special commission, command and power to make Ordinations: and in him, and in the person of Timothy he did erect a Court of Judicature even over some of the Clergy, who yet were called Presbyters.

Ussher also pointed to the language of the Revelation of John as evidence of the apostolic origin of episcopacy:

But, to returne unto the Angels of the seven Churches, mentioned in the Revelation of S. Iohn: by what hath beene said, it is apparent, that seven singular Bishops, who were the constant Presidents over those Churches, are pointed at under that name .

This too was to be found in Taylor's exposition of the episcopal order in his 1661 sermon:

These are great titles, and yet less then what is said of them in Scripture; which calls them Salt of the Earth, Lights upon a candlestick; Stars and Angels.

For both Ussher and Taylor, episcopacy was the apostolic order. Ussher concludes his short work by considering how episcopal order was bestowed by Saint John:

And that he himselfe also, being free from his banishment, did ordaine Bishops in divers Churches, is clearely testified by Clement of Alexandria; who lived in the next age after, and delivereth it as a certaine truth, which he had received from those who went before him and could not be farre from the time wherein the thing it selfe was acted. When S. Iohn (saith he) Domitian the tyrant being dead, removed from the Island of Patmos unto Ephesus, by the intreaty of some he went also unto the neighbouring nations; in some places constituting Bishops, in others founding whole Churches.

And thus much may suffice for the deduction of Episcopacie from the Apostolicall times.

Such an understanding of Saint John was also present in Taylor's sermon, as seen in extract at the beginning of this post: "the Asian Bps. were consecrated by St. John". Taylor's proclamation of episcopacy in his 1661 sermon, therefore, as "the Episcopal or Apostolical order ... the Apostolical government ... the Apostolical order" was not distinctively Laudian - this was the claim Ussher had made in The Judgement of Doctor Rainolde.

We also must consider, of course, Ussher's The Reduction of Episcopacy (written in 1641, as Ussher advised the King, but only published posthumously). At first sight, with its proposal to combine a more local episcopacy with a significant increase in the power of presbyters via local synods, it might be interpreted as radically diverging from Taylor's Laudian vision of episcopal order. Two factors suggest otherwise. 

The first is set forth in William M. Abott's 1990 article 'James Ussher and "Ussherian" Episcopacy, 1640-1656: The Primate and His Reduction Manuscript'. Abbot convincingly demonstrates that The Reduction was not understood in such terms by Ussher or his circle. He quotes Bernard's judgement that the proposal was "occasioned by the present Tempestuous Violence of the Times, as an accommodation by way of Prevention of a totall Shipwrack". In some ways, therefore, the work is similar to Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying (1646): an attempt to salvage something for Episcopalianism from the constitutional and ecclesiastical wreckage of the early 1640s. Abbot also points to a letter, in 1641, from Ussher to Bramhall, the Laudian Bishop of Derry, in which Ussher declares that his intention is to save "the rights of the Church (as much as the violence of the present storm would permit)". This certainly suggests a shared Reformed Conformist-Laudian desperation to hold on to some semblance of episcopal order amidst the chaos of the time.

What is more, as Abbot emphasises, there was little - if any - contemporary sense of Ussher having compromised episcopacy:

In July 1650 ... Ussher had praised and encouraged Hammond [an Arminian] for the latter's defenses of episcopacy, and had himself been praised in October 1651 as one of the "Champions of the Church" by Bishop Henry King of Chichester.

Abbot therefore concludes that "Ussher was not the symbol of limited-episcopal compromise that he became after his death. For M.P.s during the first year of the Long Parliament, 'Ussherian episcopacy" did not exist'".

Any talk of such 'Ussherian episcopacy', however, must recognise that Ussher's proposal retained the fundamental essential of the episcopal order. Ussher's proposals included the appointment of a significant number of suffragan bishops. Of these he stated:

and that the Suffragans mentioned in the second Proposition, may lawfully use the power both of Jurisdiction and Ordination, according to the Word of God, and the practice of the ancient Church.

Orders, in order words, would continue to be bestowed by those who had received episcopal consecration. This would accord with Taylor's key concern, as set forth in his 1661 sermon:

For it is evident and notorious that in Scripture there is no record of ordination, but an Apostolical hand was in it ... and it is as certain in the descending ages of the Church, the Bishop always had that power, it was never denyed to him, and it was never imputed to Presbyters

As Ussher's chaplain and biographer Richard Parr also noted of The Reduction: 

But now to stop the present career of the Presbyterian Discipline, the Lord Primate proposed an expedient, which he called Episcopal and Presbyterial Government conjoyned ... this Expedient would have yet left Episcopacy in a better condition than it is at this day in any of the Lutheran Churches.

This is suggestive of a situation contrary to that proposed by Stephen Hampton in his Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition in the Early Stuart Church of England (2021). While rightly stating that "Reformed Conformists shared a profound theological commitment to episcopacy", he contrasts this with a supposedly different Laudian vision of episcopacy, when the evidence - as seen in this example of Taylor and Ussher - points to a shared commitment to episcopal order, a commitment articulated in incredibly similar fashion, including the understanding of historic succession from the Apostles. 

Such a such commitment to episcopal order aids in explaining an aspect of the important study by Stephen Taylor and Kenneth Fincham of episcopal ordinations during the Interregnum.  Noting "the rising demand for episcopal ordination in the 1650s reveals the enduring appeal of traditional episcopalian orders in a period of proscription and intermittent persecution", Taylor and Fincham explore the theological commitments of the six bishops who were particularly active in ordaining, despite the legal prohibition of episcopacy - Hall of Norwich, Brownrigg of Exeter, Robert Skinner of Oxford, Duppa of Salisbury, King of Chichester, and Morton of Durham. Particularly striking is the number of Reformed Conformists in this group:

These six bishops were a diverse group. They had been appointed to the episcopate over a twenty-five year period (1616 to 1641) and did not represent a single strand of churchmanship. Skinner and Duppa were amongst Laud’s most fervent allies in the 1630s. By contrast, as staunch Calvinists and preaching prelates, Morton and Hall had been reluctant enforcers of the Laudian reformation; Brownrigg was a former chaplain to Morton and another critic of Laud, husband to John Pym’s niece and selected as Cambridge University’s representative at the Westminster Assembly. King was also a Calvinist, who acquiesced in the ceremonial changes of the 1630s.

This is the wider context of the shared commitment of Taylor and Ussher to episcopal order. It was, in the words of Ussher, "the deduction of Episcopacie from the Apostolicall times" which ensured that Reformed Conformist and Laudian bishops covertly ordained significant numbers during the Interregnum (an average of 203 per annum, between 1646 and 1660, according to Taylor and Fincham). Such was the "Apostolical order", defended by Ussher, whose restoration Taylor celebrated in his 1661 sermon.