laudable Practice

I hope it will so happen to us, that it will be verified here, what was once said of the catholics, under the fury of Justina: "Sed tanta fuit perseverantia fidelium populorum, ut animas prius amittere, quàm episcopum mallent;" if it were put to our choice, rather to die, (to wit, the death of martyrs, not rebels) than to lose the sacred order and offices of episcopacy, without which no priest, no ordination, no consecration of the sacrament, no absolution, no rite, or sacrament, legitimately can be performed, in order to eternity. Jeremy Taylor's declaration in his 1642 work Episcopacy Asserted was a statement of Laudian maximalism that would, as we have seen , be later repeated in the very different circumstances of his sermon at the 1661 consecration of two archbishops and ten bishops for the restored Church of Ireland. As previously suggested in the post regarding that sermon, however, there are grounds for understanding this maximalist Laudian claim as fundamentally...

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...

On this day in 1661, Jeremy Taylor entered the pulpit of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin to preach at the consecration of two archbishops and ten bishops (one of whom was Taylor himself) for the restored Church of Ireland. There was something of an understandable atmosphere of Episcopalian and Royalist triumphalism on the day, captured in the anthem written for the occasion: Now, that the Lord hath re-advanced the crown, Which thirst of spoyle and frantick zeal threw down. Now, that the Lord the miter hath restor'd, Which with the crown lay in dust abhor'd ... Taylor's sermon was very well-received. Dudley Loftus , a canny political operator during the Commonwealth and at the Restoration, noted in his account of the proceedings : The Bishop of Downes Sermon was such as gave great and general satisfaction, being elegantly, religiously, and prudently composed, and so convincingly satisfying the judgments of those who have opposed the order and jurisdiction of Episcopacy, ...

Following on from yesterday's post , there are three relevant episodes noted in the introductions by George Ornsby (b. 1809, received orders 1841) to the two volumes of Cosin's correspondence (published in 1869 and 1872). All three episodes suggest the significance of the influence of Bishop Overall (consecrated to the episcopate 1614, Bishop of Norwich 1618-19) on Cosin's understanding of French Reformed orders.  After taking orders, Cosin had been appointed Overall's secretary. The influence upon Cosin of Overall's acceptance of Continental Protestant non-episcopal orders is explicit: With regard to their [i.e. French Reformed] Orders, he would seem to have accepted the judgment of his "lord and master Overall " (as he delighted to term him), who "was wont to say, 'Though we are not to lessen the jus divinum of Episcopacy, where it is established, and may be had, yet we must take heed that we do not, for want of Episcopacy, where it cannot be h...