033 



TAYLOR, JEREMY. 



TAYLOR, JEREMY. 



654, 





teniplations on the State of Man,' a posthumous work ; ' Holy Living 

 and Holy Dying,' 1651 ; and his Sermons, which appeared at various 

 periods. A work entitled ' Christian Consolation' baa been referred 

 to him, and published in the collected edition of his wirings by Bishop 

 Heber in 1820-22 ; but it has since been published in the name of 

 J'.Lshop Huckett, who appears to have been its true author. _The 

 second comprises his 'Episcopacy asserted against the Acephali and 

 Aorians New and Old,' 1642; 'An Apology for Authorized and Set 

 Forms of Liturgy,' 1644; his 'Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying, 

 with its just limits and temper; showing the unreasonableness of 

 prescribing to other men's faith, and the iniquity of persecuting 

 differing opinions,' 1647; the 'Unurn Necessarium ; or the Doctrine 

 and Practice of Repentance,' 1665; 'Deus Justificatus, or a Vindica- 

 tion of the Glory of the Divine Attributes in the question, of Original 

 Sin, against the Presbyterian way of understanding it,' 1656; ' Tbe 

 Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, 

 proved against the Doctrine of Transubstautiation,' 1654; 'A Dis- 

 suasive from Popery," 1664. The third includes his ' Discourse of the 

 Nature, Offices, and Measures of Friendship, with Rules of Conducting 

 it,' 1657 ; and the 'Ductor Dubitantium, or Rule of Conscience in all 

 Her general Measures,' 1660. The fourth comprises his ' Clerus 

 Domini, or a Discourse of the Divine Institution, Necessity, Sacred- 

 ness, and Separation of the office Ministerial, together with the 

 Nature and Manner of its Power and Operation,' 1651; 'The Golden 

 Grove, or a Manual of Daily Prayers and Litanies, fitted to the Days 

 of the Week,' 1654; 'The Psalter of David, with Titles or Collects, 

 according to the Matter of each Psalm,' 1644 ; ' A Collection of Offices 

 or Forms of Prayer in cases ordinary and extraordinary ; taken out 

 of the Scriptures, and the Ancient Liturgies of several Churches, 

 especially the Greek,' 1658 ; 'Devotions for Various Occasions;' and 

 ' The Worthy Communicant, or a Discourse of the Nature, Effects, 

 and Blessings consequent to the worthy receiving of the Lord's Supper, 

 and of all the Duties required in order to a worthy preparation; 

 together with the Cases of Conscience occurring in the duty of him 

 that ministers and of him that communicates/ 1660. 



Mr. Hallam ranks the Sermons of Bishop Taylor " far above any 

 that had preceded them in the Church of England. An imagination 

 essentially poetical, and sparing none of the decorations which by 

 critical rules are deemed almost peculiar to verse ; a warm tone of 

 piety, sweetness, and charity ; an accumulation of circumstantial 

 accessories whenever he reasons, or persuades, or describes; an eru- 

 dition pouring itself forth in quotation till his sermons become in 

 some places almost a garland of flowers from all other writers, and 

 especially from those of classical antiquity, never before so redun- 

 dantly scattered from the pulpit, distinguish Taylor from his contem- 

 poraries by their degree, as they do from most of his successors by 

 their kind. His sermons on the Marriage Ring, on the House of 

 Feasting, on the Apples of Sodom, may be named without disparage- 

 ment to others, which perhaps ought to stand in equal place. But 

 they are not without considerable faults, some of which have just been 

 hinted. The eloquence of Taylor is great, but it is not eloquence of 

 the highest class ; it is far too Asiatic, too much in the style of 

 Chrysostom and other declaimers of the 4th century, by the study of 

 whom he had probably vitiated his taste ; his learning is ill-placed, 

 and his arguments often much so ; not to mention that he has the 

 common defect of alleging nugatory proofs ; his vehemence loses its 

 effect by the circuity of his pleonastic language ; his sentences are of 

 endless length, and hence not only altogether unmusical, but not 

 always reducible to grammar. But he is still the greatest ornament 

 of the English pulpit up to the middle of the 17th century ; and we 

 have no reason to believe, or rather much reason to disbelieve, that 

 he has any competitor in other languages." (Hallam's ' Introduction to 

 the Literature of Europe,' vol. iii., c. ii.) 



He has been accused of having copied a work of a similar character 

 by Ludolphus de Saxonia, a Roman Catholic writer, in his ' Life of 

 Christ ; ' but Bishop Heber, who had examined both works, asserts 

 that there is scarcely any resemblance between them, and none which 

 authorises the imputation of plagiarism. 



' The Liberty of Prophesying ' (that is, of interpretation) is the most 

 popular in the second division of Taylor's writings. A very good 

 sketch of it will be found in the third volume of Hallam's ' Introduc- 

 tion to the Literature of Europe,' and a more detailed one in the first 

 volume of Heber's edition of Taylor's works. But the discourse itself 

 is not long, and will well repay the reading. It considerably diminishes 

 the admiration with which we are disposed to connect this production 

 of Taylor with the man, his order, and the times, when we take into 

 account the motives which he afterwards assigned for its publication. 

 " In the dedication to Lord Hatton of the collective edition of his 

 controversial writings after the Restoration, he declares that when a 

 persecution did arise against the Church of England, he intended to 

 make a reservation for his brethren and himself, by pleading for a 

 liberty to our consciences to persevere in that profession, which was 

 warranted by all the laws of God and our superiors." (Hallam, 

 'Introduction to the Literature of Europe,' vol. iii., p. 116.) Bishop 

 Heber has vindicated Taylor from the charge of tergiversation, founded 

 not upon the above testimony which Taylor himself furnishes, but 

 upon the character of his proceedings when episcopacy was restored. 

 Jf we must allow in refereuco to his Sermon preached before the 



Irih privy council, that the obedit nee which ho there insists upon ia 

 only, as Bishop Heber suggests, that obedience to the laws of eccle- 

 siastical superiors whicli is paid by the members (clergy) of their own 

 communion ; and that it is in fact no more than the privilege (which 

 every Christian society exerts and must exert for its own preservation) 

 to have the offices of its ministry supplied by such men as conform to 

 the regulation imposed by the body at large on those to whom its 

 powers are delegated ; we ought to add that this distinction is left in 

 much ambiguity ; that principles are maintained with a much more 

 general signification than this explanation allows; and, in one word, 

 upon ninety-nine out of a hundred readers the sermon before the 

 Irish privy council would produce impressions totally inconsistent 

 with those derived from the ' Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesy- 

 ing.' After expressing his sorrow at seeing the horrid mischiefs whicli 

 come from rebellion and disobedience, and his hopes of better things, 

 the Bishop of Down and Connor proceeds in his sermon before the 

 Privy Council to say that he sees no objection " against his hopes but 

 that which ought least of all in this case to be pretended : men pre- 

 tend conscience against obedience, expressly against St. Paul's doctrine 

 teaching us to obey for conscience sake ; but to disobey for conscience 

 in a thing indifferent is never to be found in the books of our reliuiou. 

 It is very hard when the prince is forced to say to his rebellious 

 subjects, as God did to his stubborn people, 'Quid faciara tibi?' 

 ' I have tried all the ways I can to bring thee home, and what shall 

 I now do unto thee ? ' The. subject should rather say, ' Quid me via 

 facere ? ' ' What wilt thou have me to do ] ' This question is the 

 best end of disputations. ' Corrumpitur atque dissolvitur imperantw 

 officium, si quis ad id quod facere jussus est, non obsequio debito, sed 

 consilio non considerate, respondeat,' said one in A. Gellius : When a 

 subject is commanded to obey, and he disputes, and says, ' Nay, but 

 the other is better,' he is like a servant that gives his master necessary 

 counsel when he requires of him a necessary obedience. ' Utilius 

 parere edicto quani efferre consilium; ' ' he had better obey than give 

 counsel ; ' by how much it is better to be profitable than to be witty, 

 to be full of goodness rather than full of talk and argument." Farther 

 on, in the same sermon, he distinguishes between a " tender con- 

 science," which is such in reference to age or ignoranc?, or of "new 

 beginners," and that which is the " tenderness of a boil ; that is sore- 

 ness indeed, rather than tenderness, is of the diseased, the abused, 

 and the mispersuaded.'' The first is to be dealt tenderly with. " But 

 for that tenderness of conscience which is the disease and soreness of 

 a conscience, it must be cured by anodynes and soft usages, unless 

 they prove ineffective, and that the lancet may be necessary. ' 



Mr. Hallam refers to the 'Ductor Dubitantium' as the most extensive 

 and learned work on casuistry which has appeared in the English lan- 

 guage. "As its title shows, it treats of subjective morality, or the 

 guidance of the conscience. But this cannot be much discussed with- 

 out establishing some principle of objective right and wrong, some 

 standard by which the conscience is to be ruled. ' The whole measure 

 and rule of conscience/ according to Taylor, 'is the law of God, or 

 God's will signified to us by nature or revelation ; and by the several 

 manners and times and parts of its communication it hath obtained 

 several names : the law of nature, the consent of nations, right reason, 

 the Decalogue, the sermon of Christ, the canons of the Apostles, the 

 laws ecclesiastical and civil of princes and governors, expressed by 



proverbs and other instances and manners of public honesty 



These being the full measures of right and wrong, of lawful and 

 unlawful, will be the rule of conscience and the subject of the present 

 book.' The heterogeneous combination of things so different in nature 

 and authority, as if they were all expressions of the law of God, does 

 not augur well for the distinctness of Taylor's moral philosophy, and 

 would be disadvantageously compared with the Ecclesiastical Polity of 

 Hooker. Nor are we deceived in the anticipations we might draw. 

 With many of Taylor's excellences, his vast fertility, and his frequent 

 acuteness, the ' Ductor Dubitantium ' exhibits his characteristic 

 defects : the waste of quotations is even greater than in his other 

 writings, and his own exuberance of mind degenerates into an 

 intolerable prolixity. His solution of moral difficulties is often 

 unsatisfactory ; after an accumulation of argument and authorities we 

 have the disappointment to perceive that the knot is neither untied 

 nor cut; there seems a want of close investigation of principles, a 

 frequent confusion and obscurity, which Taylor's two chief faults 

 excessive display of erudition and redundancy of language conspire 



to produce Taylor seems inclined to side with those who 



resolve all right and wrong into the positive will of God. The law of 

 nature he defines to be 'the universal law of the world or of mankind, 

 to which we are inclined by nature, invited by consent, prompted by 

 reason, but which is bound upon us only by the command of God.' 

 Though in tho strict meaning of the word law, this may be truly said, 

 it was surely required, considering the large sense which that word 

 has obtained as coincident with moral right, that a fuller explanation 

 should be given than Taylor has even intimated, lest the goodness of 

 the Deity should seem something arbitrary and precarious. And, 

 though in maintaining against most of the scholastic metaphysicians 

 that God can dispense with the precepts of the Decalogue, he may bo 

 substantially right, yet his reasons seem by no means the clearest and 

 most satisfactory that might be assigned. It may be added, that in 

 his prolix rules concerning what he calls a probable conscience, ho 



