'The largeness and freedom of his spirit': giving thanks for the eirenicism of Jeremy Taylor

On this commemoration of Jeremy Taylor (he died on this day in 1667), we consider two short extracts from his work, demonstrating one of the most compelling and attractive aspects of his thinking - its eirenic character. We begin with a passage from his The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Statement (1654):

That which seems of hardest explication is the word corporaliter, which I find that Melancthon used; saying, 'corporaliter quoque communicatione carnis Christi Christum in nobis habitare'; which manner of speaking I have heard he avoided after he had conversed with Oecolampadius, who was able then to teach him and most men in that question ...

Here is Taylor praising the eucharistic theology of Oecolampadius, the figure who probably has the best claim to the title 'father of Reformed eucharistic theology'. As Bruce Gordon notes (in his excellent biography of Zwingli), Oecolampadius was "in many respects ... Zwingli's theological better". To some extent, we should perhaps be not entirely surprised by Taylor praising Oecolampadius: Hooker, after all, couched his exposition of eucharistic doctrine as a defence of Zwingli and Oecolampadius (LEP V.67.2). That said, there are aspects of this which are very surprising. Criticism of Zwingli - often due to a wider misrepresentation of his sacramental views - had become standard in avant garde and Laudian circles. Consider, for example, Lancelot Andrewes:

The  truth  is, Zuinglius was more afraid than hurt. It is well known whither he leaned; that, to make this point straight, he bowed it too far the other way. To avoid Est in the Church of Rome's sense, he fell to be all for Significat, and nothing for Est at all. 

Likewise the Laudian polemicist Peter Heylyn:

as the Church of Rome had erred in the point of the Sacrament, so, as well the Lutheran as the Zuinglian Churches had run themselves into some error by opposing the Papists ; the one being forced upon the figment of consubstantiation, the other to fly to signes and figures, as if there had been nothing else in the blessed Eucharist.

With the eucharistic teaching of Zwingli, and therefore by implication Oecolampadius, being routinely criticised in Laudian circles for emptying the Sacrament of meaning, it is at very least noteworthy that Taylor explicitly invokes Oecolampadius and, what is more, praises him for rightly teaching regarding the use of the term 'corporal' to describe the gift of the Lord in the Supper. Add to this, of course, the Laudian suspicion of the Swiss churches with their presbyterian order and Calvinist doctrine, and the surprise only intensifies.

We now move to a passage from Taylor's controversial work Unum Necessarium (1655), his reflections on the doctrine of Original Sin, which provoked widespread controversy and led to the charge of Socinianism. In the work, Taylor quotes from a then recent work of the French Roman Catholic theologian Antoine Arnauld:

Mounsieur Arnauld of the Sorbon hath appeared publickly in reproof of a frequent and easie Communion, without the just and long preparations of Repentance, and its proper exercises and Ministery. Petavius the Jesuit hath oppos'd him ... Mounsieur Arnauld hath the clearest advantage in the pretensions of Antiquity and the Arguments of Truth.

That Taylor should favourably quote from a contemporary Roman Catholic, during the Interregnum, with Episcopalianism - under legal prohibitions - still attacked for 'popery', with his Laudian and Royalist credentials well known, and in a work which he must have known would provoke controversy and criticism, is quite remarkable. 

Fellow Laudians would, perhaps, have not been surprised by this as by the invocation of Oecolampadius: there was much Laudian sympathy for Gallican theologians such as Arnauld, and a hope that affirmation of Gallican liberties would aid the Laudian vision of an arc of national episcopal churches from France, into the Three Kingdoms, and beyond to the Lutheran Kingdoms of Scandinavia. 

This, however, does not detract from the the risk taken by Taylor in favourably quoting Arnauld. Those who were to be the most fervent critics of Unum Necessarium were only going to be encouraged in their attack by this spokesman of 'Prelacy' quoting a French Papist. There is also another complication to consider. As a leading Jansenist, Arnauld was, of course, a committed Augustinian. Not only was Taylor sceptical of Augustinianism in general, Unum Necessarium was explicitly providing an alternative to an Augustinian account of Original Sin. None of this prevented Taylor from turning to and approvingly quoting Arnauld's work. 

Oecolampadius the Reformer and Arnauld the Jansenist, Basel and the Sorbonne. That Taylor would turn to and invoke two such contrasting theologians, with ecclesiastical allegiances contrary to that of Taylor, both with wider theological views with which Taylor disagreed, and both - in their different ways - likely to provoke disagreement from Taylor's readers, is powerful testimony to Taylor's eirenicism and his willingness with to learn from figures across the theological schools. As the Cambridge Platonist George Rust beautifully stated in his funeral sermon, such was "the largeness and freedom of [Taylor's] spirit":

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 Mens 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 Anathema's and Execrations of an infallible Chair, which he look'd upon only as Bug-bears to terrifie weak, and childish minds. He consider'd that it is not likely any one Party should wholly engross Truth to themselves.

After the example of Taylor, may such 'largeness and freedom of spirit' become ours also, that, in an age no less bitterly divided - ecclesiastically and politically - than that known by Taylor, we too may be those who who are not confined by, as Rust said, "the Harshness and Roughness of the Schools".