laudable Practice

For this concluding post of Jeremy Taylor Week, we turn to four sermons, delivered in quite different contexts. One of the sermons was preached just prior to the outbreak of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.  The other three sermons were preached in the years immediately following the Restoration. Two of the sermons marked civic occasions, addressing the polity. Two of the sermons were at funerals, including that preached by George Rust at Taylor's funeral. We begin in 1638, with Taylor's first published work, his Gunpowder Plot sermon , preached, at Laud's direction, in the St. Mary's, Oxford. His text was Luke 9.54, James and John seeking to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritan village. For Taylor, the Gunpowder Plot conspirators - and all those who encouraged the "already too much clashing of armour and effusion of blood for a Christian cause" - followed the path of James and John. When first I considered they were Apostles, I wondered they should be s...

It is not only in Taylor's books of divinity that classical Roman wisdom had a significant presence and role. This was also the case with his sermons. In other words, Taylor's vision of a Christian humanism integrating the wisdom of Cicero and Seneca was also heard in his pulpit ministry. This in itself is revealing, pointing to how Taylor's use of Cicero and Seneca was no mere literary device in his written works (which would be - as we have seen - a rather unconvincing interpretation), but integral to his theological vision.  If we consider the 25 sermons of the Golden Grove Winter volume (preached from Advent Sunday unto Whitsun, published in 1653), we find Cicero, Seneca, and Quintilian appearing regularly. In many cases, they are invoked as Taylor expounds the nature of the moral life.  Sermons XXII, XXIII, and XXIV are jointly entitled 'The Good and Evil Tongue'. In Sermon XXII , Seneca is quoted on how the foolish tongue is contrary to reason: Every beam of ...

For that was the wisdom of the Ancients. Antiqua Sapientia nihil aliud quam facienda & vitanda praecepit: Et tunc meliores erant viri. Postquam docti prodierunt, boni desunt. Simplex enim illa & aperta virtus in obscuram & solertem scientiam versa est; docemurque disputare, non vivere.  [Ancient wisdom prescribed nothing other than what should be done and what should be avoided; and in those days, men were better. Since the arrival of the learned, good men are lacking. For that simple and open virtue has been transformed into an obscure and subtle kind of knowledge; and we are taught how to argue, not how to live.] In the preface to his  Ductor dubitantium, or, The rule of conscience (1660), Jeremy Taylor invokes "the wisdom of the Ancients" by quoting Seneca. He sets out the aim of this work - how to live in "simple and open virtue", not how to argue. In 1660, of course, the Three Kingdoms were looking back upon decades of argument: divisive, harsh, bl...

Unbridled emotion is often treated as a positive quality in nonconformist writings, where 'weeping sessions' figured prominently. But Anglicans of this period stressed head over heart ... Stoic philosophy, with its belief int he importance of exemplary fortitude in the face of difficulties, and in the subordination of emotion to reason, enjoyed a vogue in the early 17th century. Two notable followers, Joseph Hall and Jeremy Taylor, were both sequestered loyalists. Fiona McCall's identification of the place of Stoic influences in conformist episcopalian piety, in her excellent Baal's Priests: The Loyalist Clergy and the English Revolution (2013), introduces us to a significant theme in Taylor's thought. Indeed, McCall particularly highlights Taylor's view of episcopalian suffering during the Interregnum not as a celebration of martyrdom but in Stoic terms of edification: Jeremy Taylor took the stoic view that suffering, rather than being the means to martyrdom, ...

With a slightly later Summer break this year, Jeremy Taylor Week on Laudable Practice has missed his commemoration on 13th August (the date of Taylor's death in 1667). We resume, however, with a week of posts considering an aspect of Taylor's thought. This year's Jeremy Taylor Week will consider what seems to be a quite overlooked theme in Taylor's works - the place he gives to the thought of classical Roman philosophers.  The topic suggested itself as I read through Taylor's Golden Grove sermons last year. The sermons regularly invoked the writings and thought of classical Roman philosophers. This led me to explore such references in other Taylor works, were the same pattern is found. In other words, this was a consistent characteristic in Taylor's writings. What hinted at the significance of this characteristic was a comment in Ian Green's Humanism and Protestantism in Early Modern English Education (2009), noting that the "conservative episcopalian...

Preaching, in 1663, at the funeral of John Bramhall , Archbishop of Armagh, Jeremy Taylor referenced a 1660 incident when the Laudian Bramhall, returning from exile with King Charles II, received a delegation of Dutch Remonstrant clergy: at his leaving those parts upon the king's return, some of the remonstrant ministers of the Low Countries coming to take their leaves of this great man, and desiring that, by his means, the Church of England would be kind to them, he had reason to grant it, because they were learned men, and in many things of a most excellent belief; yet he reproved them, and gave them caution against it, that they approached too near and gave too much countenance to the great and dangerous errors of the Socinians. It was a reminder that, despite the dark allegations of Taylor's Presbyterian opponents, accusing him of Socinianism, he was (as has been clearly seen in this series of posts) robustly committed to Trinitarian and Christological creedal orthodoxy. Th...

Having established a rational for the place of the Nicene Creed in the Church's life - as an exposition of the rule of faith, the Apostles' Creed; as reliant upon the authority of holy Scripture; and as an expression of the Trinitarian and Christological truths confessed by the first four general councils - Taylor also demonstrated the place of Nicene faith in Christian prayer and piety. In his Collection of Offices (1657), liturgical texts to be used in place of the then prohibited Book of Common Prayer, Taylor proposed that at Morning Prayer "The Nicene Creed [is] to be said upon the great Solemnities of the yeare". This reflected what Taylor would urge his clergy at the Restoration : Let every Preacher in his Parish take care to explicate to the people the Mysteries of the great Festivals, as of Christmas, Easter, Ascension-day, Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday, the Annunciation of the blessed Virgin Mary; because these Feasts containing in them the great Fundamentals o...

Next to this analogy or proportion of faith, let the consent of the Catholic Church be your measure, so as by no means to prevaricate in any doctrine, in which all Christians always have consented. This will appear to be a necessary rule by and by; but, in the mean time, I shall observe to you, that it will be the safer, because it cannot go far ...   When Taylor, as the newly-consecrated Bishop of Down and Connor, preached to his clergy during the primary visitation at Lisnagarvey in 1661, he thus instructed them to conform their expounding of the Scriptures to "the consent of the Catholic Church". The words following define Taylor's understanding of 'Catholic consent': "doctrine ... in which  all Christians  have consented" (emphasis added). This was the understanding of the Trinitarian and Christological teaching of the first four general councils, as Taylor made explicit in the accompanying  Rules and Advices to his clergy: Every Minister ought to ...