'As long as Christian religion lasts, no man can see God': Jeremy Taylor and rational adoration of the Holy Trinity
On this day after Trinity Sunday, we turn to words from Jeremy Taylor's Ductor dubitantium (1660), in which he gives a negative answer to the question of whether it is is lawful to depict in imagery the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity. He begins by considering what would be necessary for the explicit prohibition contained in the Second Commandment to be set aside: if it should please God any person of the Blessed and most holy Trinity should appear in any visible shape; that shape might be depicted; of that shape an image might be made; I mean, it might naturally; it might if it were done for lawful ends, and unless a Commandement were to the contrary; and therefore so long as God keeps himself within the secret recesses of his sanctuary, and the Majesty of his invisibility, so long it is plain he intends the very first sense and words of his Commandement: but if he should cancel the great reason of his Commandement; and make that by an act of his own to become possible which in...