'Never but in heaven was there more joy and ecstasy': Jeremy Taylor, the Visitation, and heaven

Our Advent series of Marian reflections from Jeremy Taylor's The Great Exemplar today comes to the Visitation. Taylor offers a beautiful, rich meditation, rejoicing in the meeting of "two mothers of two great princes":

It is not easy to imagine what a collision of joys was at this blessed meeting: two mothers of two great princes, the one 'the greatest that was born of woman' and the other was his Lord, and these made mothers by two miracles, met together with joy and mysteriousness; where the mother of our Lord went to visit the mother of his servant, and the Holy Ghost made the meeting festival, and descended upon Elizabeth, and she prophesied.

Never but in heaven was there more joy and ecstasy. The persons who were women, whose fancies and affections were not only hallowed, but made pregnant and big with religion, meeting together to compare and unite their joys and their eucharist, and then made prophetical and inspired, must needs have discoursed like seraphims and the most ecstasied order of intelligences; for all the faculties of nature were turned into grace, and expressed in their way the excellent solemnity. For 'it came to pass, when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost'.

What is immediately obvious Taylor's description of the Visitation is how he captures the profound joy of this encounter: "collision of joys ... made the meeting festival ... joy and ecstasy ... their joys and their eucharist ... most ecstasied". It is a powerful reminder that when we think of the Mother of the Lord, she who Saint Elizabeth hailed, joy is to be our first and most significant response. Debates between Christians over Marian doctrine and practices must take second place to a Marian joy: to a realisation, with Saint Elizabeth, that she of whom we talk is "the mother of my Lord".

Also evident in Taylor's meditation is a deep reverence for the Forerunner and his mother. The phrase "two great princes" is rather striking, clearly indicating the place of Saint John the Baptist in salvation history. It is a term which not only points to the Visitation; it also conveys something of the significance of John in the Gospel accounts, "the friend of the bridegroom". Related to this is how Taylor places Saint Elizabeth alongside the Blessed Virgin as "like seraphims", both "prophetical and inspired". Mindful of how the Gospel of Saint Luke opens with Zechariah and Elizabeth - "of the daughters of Aaron" - Taylor's reverence for the mother of the Forerunner leads us to behold afresh the place of Saint John the Baptist in the proclamation of the four Evangelists.

Finally, there is Taylor's declaration that "Never but in heaven was there more joy and ecstasy". The comparison to heaven could be made because the Blessed Virgin is "the mother of our Lord", bearing Him to Saint Elizabeth and the Forerunner. Mary, in words Taylor used just prior to today's excerpt, "was now full of God, bearing God in her virgin womb". And so, with Saint Elizabeth, we recognise, in the words of Donne, "Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb".

"Never but in heaven was there more joy and ecstasy": here is the glorious reason for a piety which rejoices in and honours the Blessed Virgin Mary.

(The stained glass depiction of the Visitation is from the Church of Sainte-Radegonde in Poitiers, c. 1270-75.)

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant. To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

laudable Practice

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