'Let us without excuses examine ourselves': reading Taylor's 'The Worthy Communicant' in Lent
A searching self-examination regarding our hearts and interior life are urged as necessary by Taylor in The Worthy Communicant. This, he emphasises, is not " the consideration of single actions", which "will do but little". Rather:
See, therefore, what you are from head to foot, from the beginning to the end, from the first entry to your last progression: and although it be not necessary that we always actually consider all; yet it will be necessary that we always truly know it all, that our relative duties, and our imperfect actions, and our collateral obligations, and the direct measures of the increase of grace, may be justly discerned and understood.
Such a self-examination is, of course, demanding and challenging. For the vast majority of us, it will be painful and humbling. Not least is this so because it is an examination of the heart, of our desires and passions:
Are your desires unreasonable, passionate, impotent, and transporting? If God refuses to give you what you desire, can you lay your head softly down upon the lap of providence, and rest content without it? Do you thankfully receive what he gives, and, when he gives you not what you covet, can you still confess his goodness, and glorify his will and wisdom, without any amazement, dissatisfaction, or secret murmurs? Can you be at peace within, when your purposes are defeated, and at peace abroad with him that stands in the way between you and your desires? And how is it with you in your anger? Does it last so long, or return so frequently as before? Have you the same malice, or have you the same peevishness? For one long anger, and twenty short ones, have no very great difference, save only, that in short and sudden angers we are surprised, and not so in the other: but it is an intolerable thing always to be surprised, and a thousand times to say, 'I was not aware,' or 'I was mistaken.' But let us without excuses examine ourselves in this matter, for this is the great magazine of virtue or vice; here dwells obedience or licentiousness, a close knot, or an open liberty, little pleasures and great disturbances, loss of time, and breach of vows. But if, that we may come to Christ, we have stopped so many avenues of sin, and fountains of temptation, it may be very well; but, without it, it can never.
The passions, the desires of the heart, are "the great magazine of virtue or vice". They must, therefore, be the subject of our self-examination, for it is the intentions of the heart that must be addressed as we approach the Sacrament:
He that comes to the holy communion, must examine himself whether his lusts be mortified, or whether they be only changed. For, many times, we have seeming peace, when our open enemies are changed into false friends: and we think ourselves holy persons, because we are quit of carnal crimes, and yet, in exchange for them, we are dying with spiritual. It is an easy thing to reprove a murderer, and to chide a foolish drunkard, to make a liar blush, and a thief to run away. But you may be secretly proud, when no man shall dare tell you so; and have a secret envy, and yet keep company with the best and most religious persons. A little examination will serve your turn to know, whether you have committed adultery, or be a swearer; but to know whether your intentions be holy, whether you love the praise of men more than the praise of God, whether religious or secular interest be the dearer, whether there be any hypocrisy or secret malice in your heart, hath something of more secret consideration. Do not you, sometimes, secretly rejoice in the diminution or disparagement of your brother? Do not you tell his sad and shameful story with some pleasure? Are you not quick in telling it, and willing enough it should be believed? Would you not fain have him less than yourself; not so eminent, not so well esteemed; and, therefore, do not you love to tell a true story of him, that is not so very much for his commendation?
Taylor is explicit that the point of such searching self-examination of the heart is not to reassure ourselves that such desires, passions, and intentions are somehow absent. Rather, it is to acknowledge them with penitence:
These things must be examined, not that it can be thought that a man must be without fault when he comes, but that he must cherish none, he must leave none unexamined, he must discover as much as he can, and crucify all that he can discover.
Such a searching, humbling self-examination is, of course, rarely, if ever, urged in contemporary sacramental piety. It is, indeed, thoroughly alien to us. Our suspicion is that underlying the practice is a moralising understanding of reception of the holy Sacrament. This despite Taylor's very clear statement that self-examination of the heart is precisely about identifying the presence of sinful desires, passions, and intentions, not their absence.
Why, therefore, does Taylor urge such a self-examination? The foundational answer to the question has already been addressed in this series:
In all the Scriptures of the New Testament, there are no words of particular duty relating to the blessed sacrament, and expressing the manner of our address to the mysteries, but those few words of St. Paul, "Let a man examine himself; and so let him eat."
Hence the words at the outset of this post:
He that comes to the holy communion, must examine himself concerning his passions ...
For Taylor, this requirement for searching self-examination is because no external authority can examine the heart. In The Great Exemplar, discussing the institution of the Lord's Supper, he emphasises that no dominical or Scriptural mandate is to be found for 'fencing the Table' , "but what belong to the communicants themselves" - that is, self-examination:
But this is wholly a matter of discipline, arbitrary, and in the power of the church; nothing in it of divine commandment, but what belongs to the communicants themselves: for St. Paul reproves them that receive disorderly, but gives no orders to the Corinthian presbyters to reject any that present themselves. Neither did our blessed Lord leave any commandment concerning it, or hath the holy Scripture given rules or measures concerning its actual reduction to practice; neither who are to be separated, nor for what offences, nor by what authority, nor who is to be the judge. And indeed it is a judgment that can only belong to God, who knows the secrets of hearts, the degrees of every sin, the beginnings and portions of repentance, the sincerity of purposes, by what thoughts and designs men begin to be accepted, who are hypocrites, and who are true men.
To approach the holy Sacrament, therefore, after self-examination is a more effective penitential discipline in the Church's life than external authorities 'fencing the Table'. Indeed, for one guilty of - in the words of the Prayer Book - "grave and open sin", partaking of the Sacrament after self-examination is "the most effectual cure":
for since we do not find in Scripture that the apostles did drive from the communion of holy things even those whom they delivered over to Satan or other censures, we are left to consider, that in the nature of the thing, those who are in the state of weakness and infirmity have more need of the solemn prayers of the church, and therefore, by presenting themselves to the holy sacrament, approach towards that ministry which is the most effectual cure; especially since the very presenting themselves is an act of religion, and therefore supposes an act of repentance and faith, and other little introductions to its fair reception.
This discipline of self-examination, therefore, stands against the claims of external authorities. Here Taylor has in mind the consistory of the presbyterian order and its claims to authority over who approaches the Table of the Lord:
I intend to defend good people from the tyranny and arbitrary power of those great companies of ministers, who in so many hundred places would have a judicature supreme in spirituals, which would be more intolerable than if they had in one province twenty thousand judges of life and death.
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