'Disposing the ministries of His grace sweetly': Jeremy Taylor, the Epiphany, nature and grace
As it was an unsearchable wisdom, so it was an unmeasurable grace of Providence and dispensation which God did exhibit to those wise men, to them, as to all men, disposing the ministeries of his grace sweetly, and by proportion to the capacities of the person suscipient. For God called the Gentiles by such means as their customs and learning had made prompt and easy. For these magi were great philosophers and astronomers; and therefore God sent a miraculous star to invite and lead them to anew and more glorious light, the lights of grace and glory. And God so blessed them in following the star, to which their innocent curiosity and national customs were apt to lead them, that their custom was changed to grace, and their learning heightened with inspiration, and God crowned all with a spiritual and glorious event ...
And thus the astrological divinations of the Magi were turned into the order of a greater design than the whole art could promise, their employment being altered into grace, and nature into a miracle. But then, when the wise men were brought by this means, and had seen Jesus, then God takes ways more immediate and proportionable to the kingdom of grace: the next time God speaks to them by an angel. For so is God's usual manner to bring us to him; first, by ways agreeable to us, and then to increase, by ways agreeable to himself. And when he hath furnished us with new capacities, he gives new lights in order to more perfect employments; and, 'to him that hath shall be given full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over;' the eternal kindness of God being like the sea, which delights to run in its old channel, and to fill the hollownesses of the earth which itself hath made, and hath once watered.
The final sentence in the above extract is a beautiful expression of 'grace does not destroy nature'. Taylor here provides an exposition of the calling of the Magi which encapsulates what John Hughes described as "a particular piety and sensibility which could be seen as characteristically Anglican", with its emphasis on grace not destroying nature; a Hookerian vision in which C.S. Lewis rejoiced:
Few model universes are more filled - one might say, more drenched - with Deity than his. 'All things that are of God' (and only sin is not) 'have God in them and he them in himself likewise', yet 'their substance and his wholly differeth' (V.56.5). God is unspeakably transcendent; but also unspeakably immanent. It is this conviction which enables Hooker, with no anxiety, to resist any inaccurate claim that is made for revelation against reason, Grace against Nature, the spiritual against the secular. We must not honour even heavenly things with compliments that are not quite true: 'though it seem an honour, it is an injury' (II.8.7). All good things, reason as well as revelation, Nature as well as Grace, the commonwealth as well as the Church, are equally, though diversely, 'of God'.
To be clear, I am not at all suggesting that seeing this vision set forth in the Epiphany is a uniquely Anglican perspective: many divines across the Christian traditions have interpreted the calling of the Magi in this way. Rather, it is that Anglican piety has particularly rejoiced in this understanding of the feast. What is more, there is a sense that beholding the Epiphany as 'the feast of grace does not destroy nature' has given rise to a series of sermons and meditations by classical Anglican divines which also reflect characteristics of Anglican piety, pastoral practice, and communal experience. These are summarised by Lewis as the rejection of visions of the Christian life which pitch "revelation against reason, Grace against Nature, the spiritual against the secular".
As Taylor states, we see in the calling of the Magi "God's usual manner to bring us to him":
disposing the ministeries of his grace sweetly, and by proportion to the capacities of the person suscipient.
It is a description we might apply to the liturgy, preaching, pastoral provision, and spirituality which has characterised much of the Anglican experience over centuries, what John Hughes termed an "integral humanism" which rejects "theological and philosophical dualisms".
The observation is sometimes made that 'Anglicans are a Christmas people'. Perhaps there would be merit in revising this to 'Anglicans are an Epiphany people', for whom the calling of the Magi embodies the joyful, sustaining, guiding truth that grace does not destroy nature.
(The photograph is of The Middle Church, in the heart of Jeremy Taylor country, on the days leading to the Epiphany, this year of our Lord 2026.)
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