T A Y 



122 



I \ Y 



- of the University; and its advanu. over- ! 



irliich Taylor i-n i tin.- same | 



. when the criaia of the civil war 



-cmirse, 'The I.il>i 



in 1 dclVat of the royalists Ta\lor was 



il, but only tor .-.hurt pciiods. During 



,-torate he supported himself by 



-I. 111 Wales, in company with Nicholson, 



,i \Vyat. afterwards 



:ulary of Lincoln, by his occasional writings, and by 



whatever contribution llic friendship of the carl of Car- 



bcry. on whose estate he exercised his ministry, might 



: to him. In tile year lo-">K lie wa- cd by 



Lord .i:id, when 1 he divided liis 



, a Lisburn auJ 1'ort more, ami lie officiated 



in the ministry at both these places. The pi. 



whieh he received was however so inadequate to his wants, 



>liged to remain under obligations to his 



friend John E\elyn, who generously allowed him a yearly 



In the' obscurity of Portmore Taylor did not 



iiiihiippv persecutions of that period. He was 



, an info'rmcr with having used the sign of the 



in baptism, and dragged before the Iri--.li pri\y coun- 



cil, from a distance and in the middle of a severe winter, 



to be examined. A fever was the consequence of his 



. whieh probably induced the council to act leniently 



ds him. 



In 1CCO he travelled to London to prepare for publica- 

 tion his 'Ductor Dubitantium," when he attached his sig- 

 nature to the declaration of the royalists, dated April 'Jllli, 

 in which they expressed the moderation of their \iews. 

 and their confidence in the wisdom and justice of Monk. 

 Taylor was thus favourably brought under the notice of 

 Charles II., 'whose restoration took place this year, and to 

 whom he dedicated the Ductor Dubitantium. The king 

 nominated him under the privy seal to the bishopric of 

 Down and Connor, to which he was const eiated in 

 January, 10C1 : in the following month he was made a. 

 member of the Irish privy council: and in the next, in 

 addition to his original diocese, he was intrusted with the 

 administration of the small adjacent one of Dromore, on 

 account, in the words of the writ, of his virtue, his wisdom, 

 and industry.' IH the course of the same year he vv;u 

 i v ice-chin oUor of the Universitv of Dublin. 

 Bishop Heber has deemed it necessary to account fin- 

 Taylor's not having received an English bishopric. Bc- 

 iiie eminent abilities, and his faithful adherence to 

 the cause of the church and the king, he had married 

 the natural daughter of Charles 1., who was his second 

 wife, and then living. This la.-.t circumstance howe\er, if 

 pleaded wilh the king in favour of preferment for Taylor, 

 as Bihop Helx-r thinks may have contributed to deter- 

 mine the scene of his promotion : -Charles may not ha\e 

 been unwilling to remove to a distance a person whose 

 piety might have led him to reprove many paits of his 

 conduct, and who would have a plausible pretence for 

 in:; more freely than the rest of the dignified 



Tim new station which Taylor was called upon to till 

 had peculiar and rreat difficulties connected with it. In 

 the revolution through which religion had passed, livings 

 had been conferred on men whose feelings were at variance 

 with episcopacy, and they had to be conciliated to a will- 

 ing obedience, or,a time pio\cd, to submit to the severest 



I' principle in the sacrifice of their emoluments. In 

 Ireland there were additional circumstances to contend 

 with. The Episcopal or Protestant church was unpopu- 

 lar; the preachers were almost exclusively English: the 

 ritual was English, and to the mats of the natives unintel- 

 ligible ; there was no translation of the Scriptures, and yet 



dance at the established churches was ((imp 

 Bishop Taylor laboured wilh much zeal and 

 the establishment of the Protestant religion: hut with 

 little effect. He w*s attacked bv fever on the :; 

 l'i(>7. at Lisburn, and died in ten days, in the fiity-linli 

 year of his age, and the seventh of his episcopal -v . The 

 children of his first wife died before him; by his second, 

 who survived him. he left three daupl 



The writing* of Jeremy laylor maybe bronchi under 

 r our description* : practical, theological, casuistic, and 

 (ievutional. The first comprises his ' Life of Christ.' which 

 he i>ubluhd in 10.13 ; ' Contemplations on the State of 



Man,' a posthumous work; II. .'v Living and Holy Dy- 



ii..">l ; and In- S .lions 



. A work entitle.! 'ion' has 



'am. and published mlhc colic. -ted edition 



of his writing^ by Bishop ,ut it has 



since been published in tli. kett, who 



appears to have been its ' com- 



!iis ' Episcopacj ;:s-ertid 



: Old,' 1012; An Ap 

 !' Liturg) ,' 101 1 : b 



Liberty of Prophesying, with its just limits and ten. 

 showing the unreasonableness of p. 

 men's faith, and the iniquity of persecuting difl 

 opinions,' 1G47; the 'Vnuni Nrcrsxuium : or the 

 trine and I' 



tus, or a Vindication of the Glory of the Divine 

 in the question of Oi . -' the 1': 



Spiritual of Christ ill the Blessed Sucramcnt. p. 

 iigaiiisl the Doctrine of Transubstantiation,' 1(>5! : A 

 smusivc from Popery,' 1064. The third include - 

 course of the Nature, Offices, and M. 



with Rules of Conducting it,' 1057 ; and the 'Ductor Du- 

 bitantium, or liule of Conscience in all Her general 



10GO. The fourth comprises his Clerus Domini, 

 or a Discourse of the Divine Institution, Necessity, 

 credness. and Separation of tile office Ministerial, together 

 with the Nature and Manner of its Power and ( ' 

 10T>1 : 'The Golden Grove, or a Manual of Da. 

 and Litanies, titled to the Days of the Week,' li 



i of David, with Titles or 



.Matter of each Psalm,' 1044; ' A Collection of Ofli' 

 Forms of Prayer in cases ordinary and ixtiaordi 

 taken out of the Scriptures, and the Ancient IJtuix 

 several Churches, especially the Ctn ek,' Ki.'iS; Devotions 

 for Various Occasions ;' mid ' The Worthy Communi- 

 cant, 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 pre- 

 paration ; together with the Cases of Conscience occurring 

 in the duty of him that ministers and of him that commu- 

 nicates,' 1UGO. 



Mr. Hallam lanks the Sermons of Bishop Taylor ' far 

 above any that had preceded them in the Church of Eng- 

 land. An imagination essentially poetical, and sp 

 none of the decoiations which by critical rules are deemed 

 almost peculiar to verse ; a warm tone of piety, 

 and charity; an accumulation of circumstantial acces- 

 sories whenever lie reasons, or persuades, or describes; an 

 erudition 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 an- 

 tiquity, never before so redundantly scattered from the 

 pulpit, distinguish Taylor from his contemporaries by their 

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

 Hi- M'iiuonson the Marriage King, on the House of Feast- 

 ing, on the Apples of Sodom, may be named without dis- 

 paragement to others, which perhaps ought to stand in 

 equal place, lint they are not without considerable faults, 



of which have just been hinted. The elc. 

 Taylor is great, but it is not eloquence of the highest claw; 

 it is i'ar too Asiatic, too much in the style of Chrys. 

 and other declaimers of the fourth 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 men- 

 tion that he bu the common defect of alleging nugi 

 proofs ; his vehement - effect by the circuity of 



liis pleonastic language; his sentences are of endless 

 length, and hence not only altogether unmusical, but not 



. reducible to grammar. But he is still tl. 

 ornament of the English pulpit up to the middle of the 

 seventeenth century ; ana we have no reason to believe, or 

 rather much reason to disbelieve, that he ha* any compe- 

 titor in other languages.' (Hallam's Introduction ti> the 



Inn 1 iif l-jini/u; vol. iii.. c. il.. ]>. 1U5-6.) 

 He has been accused of having copied a work of a 

 similar character by Ludolphi: nia. a Homan 



Catholic writer, in Ins ' Life of Christ :' but Bishop Ilebcr, 



who hail examined both work*, averU that there is scarcely 



any resemblance between them, and none which authorizes 

 the imputation of plagiarism. 



The Liberty of Prophesying' (that is of interpretation) 

 is the most popular in the second division of Taylor's writ 



