laudable Practice

Over the past year or so, I have been revisiting the figure of Thomas Hobbes. Partly this is due to the late Sir Roger Scruton's  affection for Hobbes and recognition of his place in the conservative philosophical tradition. Close to the heart of Scruton's affection for Hobbes is a view I heartily endorse: Like Hobbes I remain attached to the idea of civil government and believe it to be in every way superior to the role of priests. In early 2025 I read Thomas Holden's Hobbes's Philosophy of Religion (2023), an excellent and convincing exploration of how the philosopher from Malmesbury understood theology and - much more importantly for Hobbes - piety. Holden defines Hobbes' understanding of the language and practice of piety as "fit and proper, a laudable and rational expression of reverence before the awe-inspiring power of the great cause": Hobbes holds that reason and proper piety require all seventeenth-century English subjects to participate publicl...

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...

'Everybody agrees that is the worst in Christendom.' This was the somewhat startling judgment of Mary II, when considering the decayed state of the Church of Ireland shortly after the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. These are the words with which Patrick Little (editor) opens the volume of essays that is The Church of Ireland Under the Stuarts (2025). The essays, covering a wide range of subjects - from the role Trinity College Dublin to cathedral music, from the devotional life of the episcopalian second Earl of Cork during the Interregnum to the role of the bishops in the Irish House of Lords - might be considered as something of a revisionist response to the words of Queen Mary. The Church of Ireland which emerges from these essays has greater spiritual, intellectual, and cultural vibrancy than recognised in Old Hat accounts and enduring populist mythology. The intellectual and cultural vibrancy owed much to Trinity College Dublin, driving the "distinctiveness" of th...

Peace is so great a blessing, and disputations and questions in religion are so little friends to peace, that I have thought no man's time can be better spent than in propositions and promotions of peace, and consequently in finding expedients, and putting periods to all contentious learning ... So said Jeremy Taylor in a Preface to his famous sermon Via Intelligentia , preached to Trinity College Dublin in 1661. Those reading Taylor's words would have immediately understood that he was referring to the past three decades in the Three Kingdoms. The heated and embittered theological culture wars of the 1630s had given way in the 1640s and 50s to violent and bloody wars of religion, the constitution overthrown, the established church torn down, and ecclesiastical disorder and confusion reigning in the Three Kingdoms. Looking back over those bitter, bloody, chaotic decades, Taylor's listeners and readers knew only too well that "disputations and questions in religion are ...

On this 30th January, we turn to a 1660 sermon delivered on the anniversary of the day - as its title states - "on which that Sacred Martyr, King Charles the First was murdered". The preacher was John King, who, as Dean of Tuam (the office to which he was appointed in 1638), ministered to and served the interests of King Charles II in exile. (He is found in Bosher's 'A List of Clergy in Exile'.) From January 1660, it was increasingly evident that opinion in the political nation was moving in the direction of the restoration of the monarchy. That said (as Henry Reece has superbly explored in his The Fall: Last Days of the English Republic ), restoration was by no means a foregone conclusion during the days of January 1660. The ending of King's sermon certainly speaks of uncertainty, albeit with a recognition that, unlike even as late as 1659, restoration was now a realistic possibility: The Lord in mercy look upon us, and wipe away these tears from our eyes, ...

Today is the eve of the commemoration of the martyrdom of Archbishop Laud. Tomorrow, particular corners of Anglican social media will indulge in a long-standing Whiggish pursuit - condemning the martyred Archbishop. There are, of course, reasons to critique Laud. Indeed, post-1662 High Church opinion was often cautious about aspects of Laud's primacy, not least because of the shadow cast by the Personal Rule . Laud's character has also proven to be as unlikeable to historians as to his critics in the 1630s. That said, we are long overdue a favourable  interpretation of Laud, described by the Cambridge Platonist George Rust, in his sermon at Jeremy Taylor's funeral, as "the wise Prelate".  This post seeks to consider what I am describing as Archbishop Laud's legacy: a vision of popular Anglicanism, a national church embedded in culture through the liturgical rites and rhythms of the parish, an alternative account of the Christian life to that offered by the se...

Our readings from Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull now reach the publication of Bull's first work, the work which would establish his reputation as the leading divine of the Arminian Conformist stream of thought in the post-Restoration Church of England. His  Harmonia Apostolica   quickly became a defining text of what Samuel Fornecker's excellent study terms Arminian Conformity. It is this which makes Nelson's opening comments on the work particularly interesting: In the Year 1669, he first Printed that excellent Piece, his Apostolical Harmony, &c. which was begun by him, when but Young, with a View of settling Peace in the Church, upon a Point of greatest Importance to all its Members. This Book he Dedicated to his Diocesan the Bishop of Gloucester, Dr. William Nicholson, a very proper Judge and Patron, who had very much also encouraged and supported him in this Work. I have previously mentioned in this series that Stephen Hampton places Nicholson amon...

As Hungary will be featuring in Monday's post, I thought it would be appropriate today - as Saint Bartholomew's Day approaches, the anniversary of the implementation of the 1662 Act of Uniformity - to consider how Episcopalian divine John Durel, in his A view of the government and publick worship of God in the reformed churches beyond the seas wherein is shewed their conformity and agreement with the Church of England (1662), points to the government, ceremonies, and liturgy of the Reformed Churches of Hungary and Transylvania as he defends the episcopal and liturgical order of the English Church. On the matter of church government, Durel notes the account given by the Episcopalian Isaac Basire, who had spent time in Hungary and Transylvania during the Interregnum: Reverend Doctor Basire sheweth out of the very Canons of the Hungarian Churches that they have Bishops both name and thing for their Governors and Pastors; that they think themselves bound to have those several Orde...