'With piety and confidence resign his soul into the hands of God': Jeremy Taylor and the month of the departed

In The Great Exemplar (1649), as Taylor reflects on the Lord's Passion and Death, he provides a discourse entitled 'Of Death, and the due Manner of Preparation to it'. It is appropriate reading for this month of the departed, not least for its reminder that we are always called to be prepared for our death: 

And indeed, since all our life we are dying and this minute in which I now write, death divides with me, and hath got the surer part and more certain possession, it is but reasonable that we should always be doing the offices of preparation.

Alongside this exhortation to holy living - the "one way of preparing to death" - Taylor also addresses the circumstances of "those days of our last visitation", what the Litany terms "the hour of death". Here he points to the three ministries "at the point of departure", appointed by the Prayer Book: prayer and spiritual counsel, absolution, and reception of the holy Sacrament.

While the presence of a minister at the death bed is, of course, not a necessity, it is, says Taylor, for our spiritual well-being:

let him crave the peace of holy church. For it is all this while to be supposed that he hath used the assistance and prayers, the counsel and the advices of a spiritual man, and that to this purpose he hath opened to him the state of his whole life, and made him to understand what emendations of his faults he hath made, what acts of repentance he hath done, how lived after his fall and reparation, and that he hath submitted all that he did or undid to the discerning of a holy man, whose office it is to guide his soul in this agony and last offices. All men cannot have the blessing of a wise and learned minister, and some die where they can have none at all; yet it were a safer course to do as much of this as we can, and to a competent person, if we can.

Here is the minister providing "ghostly counsel and advice" at the hour of death, a spiritual guide to the one approaching death, seeking to ensure that the dying end their earthly journey in repentance and faith. 

Then there is the ministry of absolution:

And if after this intercourse with a spiritual guide, we be reconciled by the solemn prayer of the church, the prayer of absolution, it will be of great advantage to us: we depart with our Father's blessing, we die in the actual communion of the church, we hear the sentence of God applied after the manner of men, and the promise of pardon made circumstantiate, material, present, and operative upon our spirits.

Note how Taylor - reflecting his wider and consistent views on such absolution - takes care to describe the absolution as making present what is already spiritual reality: the absolution is not our forgiveness but the proclamation of our forgiveness in Christ. Nor is this dependent on 1662's "I absolve thee" formula, which Taylor critiqued. Thus the provision in the Church of Ireland BCP 1926, of using at this point the absolution from the Holy Communion, would have received Taylor's approval. Indeed, in this discourse Taylor urges that the 1662 formula - "that form of absolution which the churches of the west

now use, being indicative, and declaratory of a present pardon" - is "not to be used for death-bed penitents after a vicious life":

but if no more be intended but a prayer, it is better to use a mere prayer and common form of address,

than such words which may countenance unsecure confidences, evil purposes, and worse lives.

This reflects Taylor's wider unease with the "I absolve thee" formula and does suggest the wisdom of both the PECUSA 1789 and Church of Ireland 1878 revisions replacing this formula. Whether it is, then, PECUSA 1789's 'A Prayer for Persons troubled in mind or in conscience' of the Church of Ireland's 1878/1926 "who of his great mercy hath promised forgiveness of sins to all them that with hearty repentance and true faith turn unto him", both function at the death-bed in the manner understood by Taylor, "the solemn prayer of the church".

That the Book of Common Prayer provided a rite for the Communion of the Sick was a cause of some controversy. The rite was defended by Hooker as part of "the charitable order of the Church wherein wee live", giving "contentment tranquillitie and joy" at the "time of most assured departure" (LEP V.68.12). Likewise, the 1618 Articles of Perth - by which James VI/I conformed the Church of Scotland to wise practices in the Church of England - likewise defended Communion of the sick, declaring that "the minister shall not deny to him so great a comfort". This same emphasis is repeated by Taylor:

Let him not, for any excuse less than impossibility, omit to receive the holy sacrament; which the fathers, assembled in the great Nicene council, have taught all the Christian world to call "the most necessary provisions for our last journey;" which is the memory of that death by which we hope for life; which is the seed of immortality and resurrection of our bodies; which unites out spirit to Christ; which is a great defensative against the hostilities of the devil; which is the most solemn prayer of the church, united and made acceptable by the sacrifice of Christ, which is then represented and exhibited to God; which is the great instrument of spiritual increase and the growth of grace; which is duty and reward, food and physic, health and pleasure, deletery and cordial, prayer and thanksgiving, an union of mysteries, the marriage of the soul, and the perfection of all the rites of Christianity. Dying with the holy sacrament in us, is a going to God with Christ in our arms, and interposing him between us and his angry sentence.

Again, as with the presence of the minister (which, of course, is required for Holy Communion), receiving the holy Sacrament is not a saving necessity at death - what Hooker described as "the falslie surmised necessitie" (V.68.11). It is, however, for our spiritual comfort, good, and well-being in the face of death. In the words of the Third Exhortation at the Holy Communion:

he hath instituted and ordained holy mysteries, as pledges of his love, and for a continual remembrance of his death, to our great and endless comfort. 

This is why the holy Sacrament should be received by the faithful at the hour of death.

Prayer and spiritual counsel, absolution, the holy Sacrament: by these ministries we are prepared to draw our last breath and enter into the rest of God's servants, awaiting the resurrection on the last day:

And after these preparatives he may with piety and confidence resign his soul into the hands of God, to be deposited in holy receptacles till the day of restitution of all things; and in the mean time, with a quiet spirit, descend into that state which is the lot of Cæsars, and where all kings and conquerors have laid aside their glories.

The prayer with which Taylor concludes this discourse rather beautifully unfolds the meaning of what it is we pray when, in the Litany, we petition for deliverance "in the hour of death". It is also a prayer worthy of our thoughts and meditations in this month of the departed.

Preserve me ever in the communion and peace of the church; and bless my death-bed with the opportunity of a holy and spiritual guide, with the assistance and guard of angels, with the perception of the holy sacrament, with patience and dereliction of my own desires, with a strong faith and a firm and humble hope, with just measures of repentance, and great treasures of charity to thee, my God, and to all the world; that my soul in the arms of the holy Jesus may be deposited with safety and joy, there to expect the revelations of thy day, and then to partake the glories of thy kingdom, O eternal and holy Jesus. Amen.

(The painting is Robert Weir's 'The Last Communion of Henry Clay', 1852. The African American in the painting is James Marshall, a freedman employed by Clay as a body servant.)