Chapter VIII: Part II: s. 74 (1)

... To yield not only passive obedience (which is due) but active
also, &c.

'Which is due.' What in the name of common sense can this mean, that is, speculatively? Practically, the meaning is clear enough, namely, that we should do what we can to escape hanging; but the distinction is for decorum, and so let it pass.

Ib. s. 75.

This is the venom of this new doctrine, that by making us the King's
creatures, and in the state of minors or children, to take away all
our property; which would leave us nothing of our own, and lead us
(but that God hath given us just and gracious Princes) into slavery.

And yet this just and gracious Prince prompts, sanctions, supports, and openly rewards this envenomer, in flat contempt of both Houses of Parliament,--protects and prefers him and others of the same principles and professions on account of these professions! And the Parliament and nation were inexcusable, forsooth, in not trusting to Charles's assurances, or rather the assurances put in his mouth by Hyde, Falkland, and others, that he had always abhorred these principles.

Ib. s. 136.

When they saw he was not 'selfish' (it is a word of their own new
mint), &c.

Singular! From this passage it would seem that our so very common word 'selfish' is no older than the latter part of the reign of Charles I.

Ib. s. 137.

Their political aphorisms are far more dangerous, that His Majesty is
not the highest power in his realms; that he hath not absolute
sovereignty; and that a Parliament sitting is co-ordinate with him in
it.

Hacket himself repeatedly implies as much; for would he deny that the King with the Lords and Commons is not more than the King without them? or that an act of Parliament is not more than a proclamation?

Ib. s.154.

What a venomous spirit is in that serpent Milton, that black-mouthed
Zoilus, that blows his viper's breath upon those immortal devotions
from the beginning to the end! This is he that wrote with all
irreverence against the Fathers of our Church, and showed as little
duty to the father that begat him: the same that wrote for the
Pharisees, that it was lawful for a man to put away his wife for every
cause,--and against Christ, for not allowing divorces: the same, O
horrid! that defended the lawfulness of the greatest crime that ever
was committed, to put our thrice-excellent King to death: a petty
schoolboy scribbler, that durst grapple in such a cause with the
prince of the learned men of his age, Salmasius, [Greek: philosophiás
pásaes aphroditae kaì lyra], as Eunapius says of Ammonius, Plutarch's
scholar in Egypt, the delight, the music of all knowledge, who would
have scorned to drop a pen-full of ink against so base an adversary,
but to maintain the honor of so good a King ... Get thee behind me,
Milton! Thou savourest not the things that be of truth and loyalty,
but of pride, bitterness, and falsehood. There will be a time, though
such a Shimei, a dead dog in Abishai's phrase, escape for a while ...
It is no marvel if this canker-worm Milton, &c.

A contemporary of Bishop Racket's designates Milton as the author of a profane and lascivious poem entitled Paradise Lost. The biographer of our divine bard ought to have made a collection of all such passages. A German writer of a Life of Salmasius acknowledges that Milton had the better in the conflict in these words: 'Hans (Jack) von Milton--not to be compared in learning and genius with the incomparable Salmasius, yet a shrewd and cunning lawyer,' &c. 'O sana posteritas!'

Ib. s. 178.

Dare they not trust him that never broke with them? And I have heard
his nearest servants say, that no man could ever challenge him of the
least lie.

What! this after the publication of Charles's letters to the Queen! Did he not within a few months before his death enter into correspondence with, and sign contradictory offers to, three different parties, not meaning to keep any one of them; and at length did he not die with something very like a falsehood in his mouth in allowing himself to be represented as the author of the Icon Basilike?

Ib. s. 180.

If an under-sheriff had arrested Harry Martin for debt, and pleaded
that he did not imprison his membership, but his Martinship, would the
Committee for privileges be fobbed off with that distinction?

To make this good in analogy, we must suppose that Harry Martin had notoriously neglected all the duties, while he perverted and abused all the privileges, of membership: and then I answer, that the Committee of privileges would have done well and wisely in accepting the under-sheriff's distinction, and, out of respect for the membership, consigning the Martinship to the due course of law.

Ib.

'That every soul should be subject to the higher powers.' The higher
power under which they lived was the mere power and will of Cæsar,
bridled in by no law.

False, if meant 'de jure'; and if 'de facto', the plural 'powers' would apply to the Parliament far better than to the King, and to Cromwell as well as to Nero. Every even decently good Emperor professed himself the servant of the Roman Senate. The very term 'Imperator', as Gravina observes, implies it; for it expresses a delegated and instrumental power. Before the assumption of the Tribunitial character by Augustus, by which he became the representative of the majority of the people,--'majestatem indutus est,--Senatus consulit, Populus jubet, imperent Consules', was the constitutional language.

Ib. s. 190.

Yet so much dissonancy there was between his tongue and his heart,
that he triumphed in the murder of Cæsar, the only Roman that exceeded
all their race in nobleness, and was next to Tully in eloquence.

There is something so shameless in this self-contradiction as of itself almost to extinguish the belief that the prelatic royalists were conscientious in their conclusions. For if the Senate of Rome were not a lawful power, what could be? And if Cæsar, the thrice perjured traitor, was neither perjured nor traitor, only because he by his Gaulish troops turned a republic into a monarchy,--with what face, under what pretext, could Hacket abuse 'Sultan Cromwell?'

[Footnote 1: By Thomas Plume. Folio, 1676.--Ed.]

[Footnote 2:

'Ea omnia super Christo Pilatus, et ipse jam pro sua conscientia
Christianus, Cæsari tum Tiberio nuntiavit.'

Apologet, ii. 624. See the account in Eusebius. Hist. Eccl. ii. 2.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: See 'M. T. Ciceronis de Republica quæ supersunt. Zell. Stuttgardt'. 1827.--Ed.]

[Footnote 4: See 'supra'.--Ed].

[Footnote 5: Folio. 1693.--Ed.]

[Footnote 6: See The Church and State.--Ed.]

NOTES ON JEREMY TAYLOR.

I have not seen the late Bishop Heber's edition of Jeremy Taylor's 'Works'; but I have been informed that he did little more than contribute the 'Life', and that in all else it is a mere London booksellers' job. This, if true, is greatly to be regretted. I know no writer whose works more require, I need not say deserve, the annotations, aye, and occasional animadversions, of a sound and learned divine. One thing is especially desirable in reference to that most important, because (with the exception perhaps of the 'Holy Living and Dying') the most popular, of Taylor's works, 'The Liberty of Prophesying'; and this is a careful collation of the different editions, particularly of the first printed before the Restoration, and the last published in Taylor's lifetime, and after his promotion to the episcopal bench. Indeed, I regard this as so nearly concerning Taylor's character as a man, that if I find that it has not been done in Heber's edition, and if I find a first edition in the British Museum, or Sion College, or Dr. Williams's library, I will, God permitting, do it myself. There seems something cruel in giving the name, Anabaptist, to the English Anti-pædo-baptists; but still worse in connecting this most innocent opinion with the mad Jacobin ravings of the poor wretches who were called Anabaptists, in Munster, as if the latter had ever formed part of the Baptists' creeds. In short 'The Liberty of Prophesying' is an admirable work, in many respects, and calculated to produce a much greater effect on the many than Milton's treatise on the same subject: on the other hand, Milton's is throughout unmixed truth; and the man who in reading the two does not feel the contrast between the single-mindedness of the one, and the 'strabismus' in the other, is--in the road of preferment.

GENERAL DEDICATION OF THE POLEMICAL DISCOURSES. [1]

Vol. vii. p. ix.

And the breath of the people is like the voice of an exterminating
angel, not so killing but so secret.

That is, in such wise. It would be well to note, after what time 'as' became the requisite correlative to 'so,' and even, as in this instance, the preferable substitute. We should have written 'as' in both places probably, but at all events in the latter, transplacing the sentences 'as secret though not so killing;' or 'not so killing, but quite as secret.' It is not generally true that Taylor's punctuation is arbitrary, or his periods reducible to the post-Revolutionary standard of length by turning some of his colons or semi-colons into full stops. There is a subtle yet just and systematic logic followed in his pointing, as often as it is permitted by the higher principle, because the proper and primary purpose, of our stops, and to which alone from their paucity they are adequate,--that I mean of enabling the reader to prepare and manage the proportions of his voice and breath. But for the true scheme of punctuation, [Greek: h_os emoige dokei], see the blank page over leaf which I will try to disblank into a prize of more worth than can be got at the E.O.'s and little goes of Lindley Murray. [2]

Ib. p. xv.

But the most complained that, in my ways to persuade a toleration, I
helped some men too far, and that I armed the Anabaptists with swords
instead of shields, with a power to offend us, besides the proper
defensitives of their own ... But wise men understand the thing and
are satisfied. But because all men are not of equal strength; I did
not only in a discourse on purpose demonstrate the true doctrine in
that question, but I have now in this edition of that book answered
all their pretensions, &c.

No; in the might of his genius he called up a spirit which he has in vain endeavored to lay, or exorcise from the conviction.

Ib. p. xvii.

For episcopacy relies not upon the authority of Fathers and Councils,
but upon Scripture, upon the institution of Christ, or the institution
of the Apostles, upon a universal tradition, and a universal practice,
not upon the words and opinions of the doctors: it hath as great a
testimony as Scripture itself hath, &c.

We must make allowance for the intoxication of recent triumph and final victory over a triumphing and victorious enemy; or who but would start back at the aweless temerity of this assertion? Not to mention the evasion; for who ever denied the historical fact, or the Scriptural occurrence of the word expressing the fact, namely, 'episcopi, episcopatus?'? What was questioned by the opponents was,

1;--Who and what these 'episcopi' were; whether essentially different from the presbyter, or a presbyter by kind in his own 'ecclesia', and a president or chairman by accident in a synod of presbyters:

2;--That whatever the 'episcopi' of the Apostolic times were, yet were they prelates, lordly diocesans; were they such as the Bishops of the Church of England? Was there Scripture authority for Archbishops?

3;--That the establishment of Bishops by the Apostle Paul being granted (as who can deny it?)--yet was this done 'jure Apostolico' for the universal Church in all places and ages; or only as expedient for that time and under those circumstances; by Paul not as an Apostle, but as the head and founder of those particular churches, and so entitled to determine their bye laws?

DEDICATION OF THE SACRED ORDER AND OFFICES OF EPISCOPACY.

Ib. p. xxiii.

But the interest of the Bishops is conjunct with the prosperity of the
King, besides the interest of their own security, by the obligation of
secular advantages. For they who have their livelihood from the King,
and are in expectance of their fortune from him, are more likely to
pay a tribute of exacter duty, than others, whose fortunes are not in
such immediate dependency on His Majesty.

The cat out of the bag! Consult the whole reigns of Charles I. and II. and the beginning of James II. Jeremy Taylor was at this time (blamelessly for himself and most honourably for his patrons) ambling on the high road of preferment; and to men so situated, however sagacious in other respects, it is not given to read the signs of the times. Little did Taylor foresee that to indiscreet avowals, like these, on the part of the court clergy, the exauctorations of the Bishops and the temporary overthrow of the Church itself would be in no small portion attributable. But the scanty measure and obscurity (if not rather, for so bright a luminary, the occultation) of his preferment after the Restoration is a problem, of which perhaps his virtues present the most probable solution.

Ib. p. xxv.

A second return that episcopacy makes to royalty, is that which is the
duty of all Christians, the paying tributes and impositions.

This is true; and it was an evil hour for the Church,--and led to the loss of its Convocation, the greatest and, in an enlarged state-policy, the most impolitic affront ever offered by a government to its own established Church,--in which the clergy surrendered their right of taxing themselves.

Ib. p. xxvii.

I mean the conversion of the kingdom from Paganism by St. Augustine,
Archbishop of Canterbury; and the Reformation begun and promoted by
Bishops.

From Paganism in part; but in part from primitive Christianity to Popery. But neither this nor the following boast will bear narrow looking into, I suspect.

'In fine.'

Like all Taylor's dedications and dedicatory epistles, this is easy, dignified, and pregnant. The happiest 'synthesis' of the divine, the scholar, and the gentleman was perhaps exhibited in him and Bishop Berkeley.

Introd. p.3.

In all those accursed machinations, which the device and artifice of
hell hath invented for the supplanting of the Church, 'inimicus homo,'
that old superseminator of heresies and crude mischiefs, hath
endeavoured to be curiously compendious, and, with Tarquin's device,
'putare summa papaverum.'

Quoere-spiritualiter papaveratorurn?

Ib.

His next onset was by Julian, and 'occidere presbyterium,' that was
his province. To shut up public schools, to force Christians to
ignorance, to impoverish and disgrace the clergy, to make them vile
and dishonorable, these are his arts; and he did the devil more
service in this fineness of undermining, than all the open battery of
ten great rams of persecution.

What felicity, what vivacity of expression! Many years ago Mr. Mackintosh gave it as an instance of my perverted taste, that I had seriously contended that in order to form a style worthy of Englishmen, Milton and Taylor must be studied instead of Johnson, Gibbon, and Junius; and now I see by his introductory Lecture given at Lincoln's Inn, and just published, he is himself imitating Jeremy Taylor, or rather copying his semi-colon punctuation, as closely as he can. Amusing it is to observe, how by the time the modern imitators are at the half-way of the long breathed period, the asthmatic thoughts drop down, and the rest is,--words! I have always been an obstinate hoper: and even this is a 'datum' and a symptom of hope to me, that a better, an ancestral, spirit is forming and will appear in the rising generation.

Ib. p. 5.

First, because here is a concourse of times; for now after that these
times have been called the last times for 1600 years together, our
expectation of the great revelation is very near accomplishing.

Rather a whimsical consequence, that because a certain party had been deceiving themselves for sixteen centuries they were likely to be in the right at the beginning of the seventeenth. But indeed I question whether in all Taylor's voluminous writings there are to be found three other paragraphs so vague and misty-magnific as this is. It almost reminds me of the "very cloudy and mighty alarming" in Foote.

S. i. p. 4.

If there be such a thing as the power of the keys, by Christ
concredited to his Church, for the binding and loosing delinquents and
penitents respectively on earth, then there is clearly a court erected
by Christ in his Church.

We may, without any heretical division of person, economically distinguish our Lord's character as Jesus, and as Christ, so far that during his sojourn on earth, from his baptism at least to his crucifixion, he was in some respects his own Elias, bringing back the then existing Church to the point at which the Prophets had placed it; that is, distinguishing the 'ethica' from the 'politica,' what was binding on the Jews as descendants of Abraham and inheritors of the patriarchal faith from the statutes obligatory on them as members of the Jewish state.

Jesus fulfilled the Law, which culminated in a pure religious morality in principles, affections, and acts; and this he consolidated and levelled into the ground-stead on which the new temple 'not made with hands,' wherein Himself, even Christ the Lord, is the Shechinah, was to rise and be raised.

Thus he taught the spirit of the Mosaic Law, while by his acts, sufferings, death, resurrection, ascension, and demission of the Comforter, he created and realized the contents, objects, and materials of that redemptive faith, the everlasting Gospel, which from the day of Pentecost his elect disciples, [Greek: t_on mystaeri_ón hierokáerykes], Were Sent forth to disperse and promulgate with suitable gifts, powers, and evidences.

In this view, I interpret our Lord's sayings concerning the Church, as applying wholly to the Synagogue or established Church then existing, while the binding and loosing refers, immediately and primarily as I conceive, to the miraculous gifts of healing diseases communicated to the Apostles; and I am not afraid to avow the conviction, that the first three Gospels are not the books of the New Testament, in which we should expect to find the peculiar doctrines of the Christian faith explicitly delivered, or forming the predominant subject or contents of the writing.

S. viii. p. 25.

Imposition of hands for Ordination does indeed give the Holy Ghost,
but not as he is that promise which is called 'the promise of the
truth'.

Alas! but in what sense that does not imply some infusion of power or light, something given and inwardly received, which would not have existed in and for the recipient without this immission by the means or act of the imposition of the hands? What sense that does not amount to more and other than a mere delegation of office, a mere legitimating acceptance and acknowledgment, with respect to the person, of that which already is in him, can be attached to the words, 'Receive the Holy Ghost', without shocking a pious and single-minded candidate? The miraculous nature of the giving does not depend on the particular kind or quality of the gift received, much less demand that it should be confined to the power of working miracles.

For "miraculous nature" read "supernatural character;" and I can subscribe this pencil note written so many years ago, even at this present time, 2d March, 1824.

S. xxi. p. 91.

'Postquam unusquisque eos quos baptizabat suos putabat esse, non
Christi, et diceretur in populis, Ego sum Pauli, Ego Apollo, Ego autem
Cephæ, in toto orbe decretum est ut unus de presbyteris electus
superponeretur cateris, ut schismatum semina tollerentur.'

The natural inference would, methinks, be the contrary. There would be more persons inclined and more likely to attach an ambition to their belonging to a single eminent leader and head than to a body,--rather to Cæsar, Marius, or Pompey, than to the Senate. But I have ever thought that the best, safest, and at the same time sufficient, argument is, that by the nature of human affairs and the appointments of God's ordinary providence every assembly of functionaries will and must have a president; that the same qualities which recommended the individual to this dignity would naturally recommend him to the chief executive power during the intervals of legislation, and at all times in all points already ruled; that the most solemn acts, Confirmation and Ordination, would as naturally be confined to the head of the executive in the state ecclesiastic, as the sign manual and the like to the king in all limited monarchies; and that in course of time when many presbyteries would exist in the same district, Archbishops and Patriarchs would arise 'pari ratione' as Bishops did in the first instance. Now it is admitted that God's extraordinary appointments never repeal but rather perfect the laws of his ordinary providence: and it is enough that all we find in the New Testament tends to confirm and no where forbids, contradicts, or invalidates the course of government, which the Church, we are certain, did in fact pursue.

Ib. s. xxxvi. p. 171.

But those things which Christianity, as it prescinds from the interest
of the republic, hath introduced, all them, and all the causes
emergent from them, the Bishop is judge of.... Receiving and disposing
the patrimony of the Church, and whatsoever is of the same
consideration according to the fortyfirst canon of the Apostles.
'Præcipimus ut in potestate sua episcopus ecclesice res habeat'. Let
the Bishops have the disposing of the goods of the Church; adding this
reason: 'si enim animte hominum pretiosæ illi sint creditæ, multo
magis eum oportet curam pecuniarum gerere'. He that is intrusted with
our precious souls may much more be intrusted with the offertories of
faithful people.

Let all these belong to the overseer of the Church: to whom else so properly? but what is the nature of the power by which he is to enforce his orders? By secular power? Then the Bishop's power is no derivative from Christ's royalty; for his kingdom is not of the world; but the monies are Cæsar's; and the 'cura pecuniarum' must be vested where the donors direct, the law of the land permitting.

Ib.

Such are the delinquencies of clergymen, who are both clergy and
subjects too; 'clerus Domini', and 'regis subditi': and for their
delinquencies, which are 'in materia justiæ', the secular tribunal
punishes, as being a violation of that right which the state must
defend; but because done by a person who is a member of the sacred
hierarchy, and hath also an obligation of special duty to his Bishop,
therefore the Bishop also may punish him; and when the commonwealth
hath inflicted a penalty, the Bishop also may impose a censure, for
every sin of a clergyman is two.

But why of a clergyman only? Is not every sheep of his flock a part of the Bishop's charge, and of course the possible object of his censure? The clergy, you say, take the oath of obedience. Aye! but this is the point in dispute.

Ib. p. 172.

So that ever since then episcopal jurisdiction hath a double part, an
external and an internal: this is derived from Christ, that from the
king, which because it is concurrent in all acts of jurisdiction,
therefore it is that the king is supreme of the jurisdiction, namely,
that part of it which is the external compulsory.

If Christ delegated no external compulsory power to the Bishops, how came it the duty of princes to God to do so? It has been so since---yes! since the first grand apostasy from Christ to Constantine.

Ib. s. xlviii. p. 248.

Bishops 'ut sic' are not secular princes, must not seek for it; but
some secular princes may be Bishops, as in Germany and in other places
to this day they are. For it is as unlawful for a Bishop to have any
land, as to have a country; and a single acre is no more due to the
order than a province; but both these may be conjunct in the same
person, though still, by virtue of Christ's precept, the functions and
capacities must be distinguished.

True; but who with more indignant scorn attacked this very distinction when applied by the Presbyterians to the kingship, when they professed to fight for the King against Charles? And yet they had on their side both the spirit of the English constitution and the language of the law. The King never dies; the King can do no wrong. Elsewhere, too, Taylor could ridicule the Romish prelate, who fought and slew men as a captain at the head of his vassals, and then in the character of a Bishop absolved his other homicidal self. However, whatever St. Peter might understand by Christ's words, St. Peter's three-crowned successors have been quite of Taylor's opinion that they are to be paraphrased thus:--"Simon Peter, as my Apostle, you are to make converts only by humility, voluntary poverty, and the words of truth and meekness; but if by your spiritual influence you can induce the Emperor Tiberius to make you Tetrarch of Galilee or Prefect of Judaea, then [Greek: katakyríeue]--you may lord it as loftily as you will, and deliver as Tetrarch or Prefect those stiff-necked miscreants to the flames for not having been converted by you as an Apostle."

Ib. p. 276.

I end with the golden rule of Vincentius Lirinensis:--'magnopere
curandum est ut id teneamus, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus
creditum est.'

Alas! this golden rule comes full and round from the mouth; nor do I deny that it is pure gold: but like too many other golden rules, in order to make it cover the facts which the orthodox asserter of episcopacy at least, and the chaplain of Archbishop Laud and King Charles the Martyr must have held himself bound to bring under it, it must be made to display another property of the sovereign metal, its malleableness to wit; and must be beaten out so thin, that the weight of truth in the portion appertaining to each several article in the orthodox systems of theology will be so small, that it may better be called gilt than gold; and if worth having at all, it will be for its show, not for its substance. For instance, the 'aranea theologica' may draw out the whole web of the Westminster Catechism from the simple creed of the beloved Disciple,--'whoever believeth with his heart, and professeth with his mouth, that Jesus is Lord and Christ,'--shall be saved. If implicit faith only be required, doubtless certain doctrines, from which all other articles of faith imposed by the Lutheran, Scotch, or English Churches, may be deduced, have been believed 'ubique, semper, et ab omnibus.' But if explicit and conscious belief be intended, I would rather that the Bishop than I should defend the golden rule against Semler.

APOLOGY FOR AUTHORIZED AND SET FORMS OF LITURGY.

Preface, s. vi. p. 286.

Not like women or children when they are affrighted with fire in their
clothes. We shaked off the coal indeed, but not our garments, lest we
should have exposed our Churches to that nakedness which the excellent
men of our sister Churches complained to be among themselves.

O, what convenient things metaphors and similes are, so charmingly indeterminate! On the general reader the literal sense operates: he shivers in sympathy with the poor shift-less matron, the Church of Geneva. To the objector the answer is ready--it was speaking metaphorically, and only meant that she had no shift on the outside of her gown, that she made a shift without an over-all. Compare this sixth section with the manful, senseful, irrebuttable fourth section--a folio volume in a single paragraph! But Jeremy Taylor would have been too great for man, had he not occasionally fallen below himself.

Ib. s. x. p. 288.

And since all that cast off the Roman yoke thought they had title
enough to be called Reformed, it was hard to have pleased all the
private interests and peevishness of men that called themselves
friends; and therefore that only in which the Church of Rome had
prevaricated against the word of God, or innovated against Apostolical
tradition, all that was pared away.

Aye! here is the 'ovum,' as Sir Everard Home would say, the 'proto'-parent of the whole race of controversies between Protestant and Protestant; and each had Gospel on their side. Whatever is not against the word of God is for it,--thought the founders of the Church of England. Whatever is not in the word of God is a word of man, a will-worship presumptuous and usurping,--thought the founders of the Church of Scotland and Geneva. The one proposed to themselves to be reformers of the Latin Church, that is, to bring it back to the form which it had during the first four centuries; the latter to be the renovators of the Christian religion as it was preached and instituted by the Apostles and immediate followers of Christ thereunto specially inspired. Where the premisses are so different, who can wonder at the difference in the conclusions?

Ib. s. xii. ib.

It began early to discover its inconvenience; for when certain zealous
persons fled to Frankfort to avoid the funeral piles kindled by the
Roman Bishops in Queen Mary's time, as if they had not enemies enough
abroad, they fell foul with one another, and the quarrel was about the
Common Prayer Book.

But who began the quarrel? Knox and his recent biographer lay it to Dr. Cox and the Liturgists.

Ib. s. xiii. p. 289.

Here therefore it became law, was established by an act of Parliament,
was made solemn by an appendant penalty against all that on either
hand did prevaricate a sanction of so long and so prudent
consideration.

Truly evangelical way of solemnizing a party measure, and sapientizing Calvin's 'tolerabiles ineptias' by making them 'ineptias usque ad carcerem et verbera intolerantes!'

Ib. s. xiv. ib.

But the Common Prayer Book had the fate of St. Paul; for when it had
scaped the storms of the Roman See, yet a viper sprung out of Queen
Mary's fires, &c.

As Knox and his friends confined themselves to the inspired word, whether vipers or no, they were not adders at all events.

Ib. xxvi. p. 296.

For, if we deny to the people a liberty of reading the Scriptures, may
they not complain, as Isaac did against the inhabitants of the land,
that the Philistines had spoiled his well and the fountains of living
water? If a free use to all of them and of all Scriptures were
permitted, should not the Church herself have more cause to complain
of the infinite licentiousness and looseness of interpretations, and
of the commencement of ten thousand errors, which would certainly be
consequent to such permission? Reason and religion will chide us in
the first, reason and experience in the latter ... The Church with
great wisdom hath first held this torch out; and though for great
reasons intervening and hindering, it cannot be reduced to practice,
yet the Church hath shewn her desire to avoid the evil that is on both
hands, and she hath shewn the way also, if it could have been insisted
in.

If there were not, at the time this Preface, or this paragraph at least, was written or published, some design on foot or 'sub lingua' of making advances to the continental catholicism for the purpose of conciliating the courts of Austria, France and Spain, in favor of the Cavalier and Royalist party at home and abroad, this must be considered as a useless and worse than useless avowal. The Papacy at the height of its influence never asserted a higher or more anti-Protestant right than this of dividing the Scriptures into permitted and forbidden portions. If there be a functionary of divine institution, synodical or unipersonal, who with the name of the 'Church' has the right, under circumstances of its own determination, to forbid all but such and such parts of the Bible, it must possess potentially, and under other circumstances, a right of withdrawing the whole book from the unlearned, who yet cannot be altogether unlearned; for the very prohibition supposes them able to do what, a few centuries before, the majority of the clergy themselves were not qualified to do, that is, read their Bible throughout. Surely it would have been politic in the writer to have left out this sentence, which his Puritan adversaries could not fail to translate into the Church shewing her teeth though she dared not bite. I bitterly regret these passages; neither our incomparable Liturgy, nor this full, masterly, and unanswerable defence of it, requiring them.

Ib. s. xlv, p. 308.

So that the Church of England, in these manners of dispensing the
power of the keys, does cut off all disputings and impertinent
wranglings, whether the priest's power were judicial or declarative;
for possibly it is both, and it is optative too, and something else
yet; for it is an emanation from all the parts of his ministry, and he
never absolves, but he preaches or prays, or administers a sacrament;
for this power of remission is a transcendent, passing through all the
parts of the priestly offices. For the keys of the kingdom of heaven
are the promises and the threatenings of the Scripture, and the
prayers of the Church, and the Word, and the Sacraments, and all these
are to be dispensed by the priest, and these keys are committed to his
ministry, and by the operation of them all he opens and shuts heaven's
gates ministerially.

No more ingenious way of making nothing of a thing than by making it every thing. Omnify the disputed point into a transcendant, and you may defy the opponent to lay hold of it. He might as well attempt to grasp an 'aura electrica'.

Apology, &c. s. ii. p. 320.

And it may be when I am a little more used to it, I shall not wonder
at a synod, in which not one Bishop sits in the capacity of a Bishop,
though I am most certain this is the first example in England since it
was first christened.

Is this quite fair? Is it not, at least logically considered and at the commencement of an argument, too like a 'petitio principii' or 'presumptio rei litigatae'? The Westminster divines were confessedly not prelates, but many in that assembly were, in all other points, orthodox and affectionate members of the Establishment, who with Bedell, Lightfoot, and Usher, held them to be Bishops in the primitive sense of the term, and who yet had no wish to make any other change in the hierarchy than that of denominating the existing English prelates Archbishops. They thought that what at the bottom was little more than a question of names among Episcopalians, ought not to have occasioned such a dispute; but yet the evil having taken place, they held a change of names not too great a sacrifice, if thus the things themselves could be preserved, and Episcopacy maintained against the Independents and Presbyterians.

Ib. s. v. p. 321.

It is a thing of no present importance, but as a point of history, it is worth a question whether there were any divines in the Westminster Assembly who adopted by anticipation the notions of the Seekers, Quakers and others 'ejusdem farinœ.' Baxter denies it. I understand the controversy to have been, whether the examinations at the admission to the ministry did or not supersede the necessity of any directive models besides those found in the sacred volumes:--if not necessary, whether there was any greater expedience in providing by authority forms of prayer for the minister than forms of sermons. Reading, whether of prayers or sermons, might be discouraged without encouraging unpremeditated praying and preaching. But the whole question as between the prelatists and the Assembly divines has like many others been best solved by the trial. A vast majority among the Dissenters themselves consider the antecedents to the sermon, with exception of their congregational hymns, as the defective part of their public service, and admit the superiority of our Liturgy.

P.S.--It seems to me, I confess, that the controversy could never have risen to the height it did, if all the parties had not thrown too far into the back ground the distinction in nature and object between the three equally necessary species of worship, that is, public, family, and private or solitary, devotion. Though the very far larger proportion of the blame falls on the anti-Liturgists, yet on the other hand, too many of our Church divines--among others that exemplar' of a Churchman and a Christian, the every way excellent George Herbert--were scared by the growing fanaticism of the Geneva malcontents into the neighbourhood of the opposite extreme; and in their dread of enthusiasm, will-worship, insubordination, indecency, carried their preference of the established public forms of prayer almost to superstition by exclusively both using and requiring them even on their own sick-beds. This most assuredly was neither the intention nor the wish of the first compilers. However, if they erred in this, it was an error of filial love excused, and only not sanctioned, by the love of peace and unity, and their keen sense of 'the beauty of holiness' displayed in their mother Church. I mention this the rather, because our Church, having in so incomparable a way provided for our public devotions, and Taylor having himself enriched us with such and so many models of private prayer and devotional exercise--(from which, by the by, it is most desirable that a well arranged collection should be made; a selection is requisite rather from the opulence, than the inequality, of the store;)--we have nothing to wish for but a collection of family and domestic prayers and thanksgivings equally (if that be not too bold a wish) appropriate to the special object, as the Common Prayer Book is for a Christian community, and the collection from Taylor for the Christian in his closet or at his bed side. Here would our author himself again furnish abundant materials for the work. For surely, since the Apostolic age, never did the spirit of supplication move on the deeps of a human soul with a more genial life, or more profoundly impregnate the rich gifts of a happy nature, than in the person of Jeremy Taylor! To render the fruits available for all, we need only a combination of Christian experience with that finer sense of propriety which we may venture to call devotional taste in the individual choosing, or chosen, to select, arrange and methodize; and no less in the dignitaries appointed to revise and sanction the collections.

Perhaps another want is a scheme of Christian psalmody fit for all our congregations, and which should not exceed 150 or 200 psalms and hymns. Surely if the Church does not hesitate in the titles of the Psalms and of the chapters of the Prophets to give the Christian sense and application, there can be no consistent objection to do the same in its spiritual songs. The effect on the morals, feelings, and information of the people at large is not to be calculated. It is this more than any other single cause that has saved the peasantry of Protestant Germany from the contagion of infidelity.

Ib. s. xvii. p. 325.

Thus the Holy Ghost brought to their memory all things which Jesus
spake and did, and, by that means, we come to know all that the Spirit
knew to be necessary for us.

Alas! it is one of the sad effects or results of the enslaving Old Bailey fashion of defending, or, as we may well call it, apologizing for, Christianity,--introduced by Grotius and followed up by the modern 'Alogi', whose wordless, lifeless, spiritless, scheme of belief it alone suits,--that we dare not ask, whether the passage here referred to must necessarily be understood as asserting a miraculous remembrancing, distinctly sensible by the Apostles; whether the gift had any especial reference to the composition of the Gospels; whether the assumption is indispensable to a well grounded and adequate confidence in the veracity of the narrators or the verity of the narration; if not, whether it does not unnecessarily entangle the faith of the acute and learned inquirer in difficulties, which do not affect the credibility of history in its common meaning--rather indeed confirm our reliance on its authority in all the points of agreement, that is, in every point which we are in the least concerned to know,--and expose the simple and unlearned Christian to objections best fitted to perplex, because easiest to be understood, and within the capacity of the shallowest infidel to bring forward and exaggerate; and lastly, whether the Scriptures must not be read in that faith which comes from higher sources than history, that is, if they are read to any good and Christian purpose. God forbid that I should become the advocate of mechanical infusions and possessions, superseding the reason and responsible will. The light 'a priori', in which, according to my conviction, the Scriptures must be read and tried, is no other than the earnest, 'What shall I do to be saved?' with the inward consciousness,--the gleam or flash let into the inner man through the rent or cranny of the prison of sense, however produced by earthquake, or by decay,--as the ground and antecedent of the question; and with a predisposition towards, and an insight into, the 'a priori' probability of the Christian dispensation as the necessary consequents. This is the holy spirit in us praying to the Spirit, without which 'no man can say that Jesus is the Lord:' a text which of itself seems to me sufficient to cover the whole scheme of modern Unitarianism with confusion, when compared with that other,--'I am the Lord (Jehovah): that is my name; and my glory will I not give to another'. But in the Unitarian's sense of 'Lord,' and on his scheme of evidence, it might with equal justice be affirmed, that no man can say that Tiberius was the Emperor but by the Holy Ghost.

Ib. s. xxix. p. 331.

And that this is for this reason called 'a gift and grace,' or issue
of the Spirit, is so evident and notorious, that the speaking of an
ordinary revealed truth, is called in Scripture, 'a speaking by the
spirit', 1 Cor. xii. 8. 'No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by
the Holy Ghost'. For, though the world could not acknowledge Jesus for
the Lord without a revelation, yet now that we are taught this truth
by Scripture, and by the preaching of the Apostles, to which they were
enabled by the Holy Ghost, we need no revelation or enthusiasm to
confess this truth, which we are taught in our creeds and catechisms,
&c.

I do not, nay I dare not, hesitate to denounce this assertion as false in fact and the paralysis of all effective Christianity. A greater violence offered to Scripture words is scarcely conceivable. St. Paul asserts that 'no man can.' Nay, says Taylor, every man that knows his catechism can; but unless some six or seven individuals had said it by the Holy Ghost some seventeen or eighteen hundred years ago, no man could say so.

Ib. s. xxxii. p. 334.

And yet, because the Holy Ghost renewed their memory, improved their
understanding, supplied to some their want of human learning, and so
assisted them that they should not commit an error in fact or opinion,
neither in the narrative nor dogmatical parts, therefore they wrote by
the spirit.

And where is the proof?--and to what purpose, unless a distinct and plain diagnostic were given of the divinities and the humanities which Taylor himself expressly admits in the text of the Scriptures?

And even then what would it avail unless the interpreters and translators, not to speak of the copyists in the first and second centuries, were likewise assisted by inspiration?

As to the larger part of the Prophetic books, and the whole of the Apocalypse, we must receive them as inspired truths, or reject them as simple inventions or enthusiastic delusions.

But in what other book of Scripture does the writer assign his own work to a miraculous dictation or infusion? Surely the contrary is implied in St. Luke's preface. Does the hypothesis rest on one possible construction of a single passage in St. Paul, 2 'Tim'. iii. 16.?

And that construction resting materially on a [Greek: kai (theópneustos, kai _ophélimos)] not found in the oldest MSS., when the context would rather lead us to understand the words as parallel with the other assertion of the Apostle, that all good works are given from God,--that is, 'Every divinely inspired writing is profitable, &c'.

Finally, will not the certainty of the competence and single mindedness of the writers suffice; this too confirmed by the high probability, bordering on certainty, that God's especial grace worked in them; and that an especial providence watched over the preservation of writings, which, we know, both are and have been of such pre-eminent importance to Christianity, and yet by natural means?

But alas! any thing will be pretended, rather than admit the necessity of internal evidence, or than acknowledge, among the external proofs, the convictions and spiritual experiences of believers, though they should be common to all the faithful in all ages of the Church!

But in all superstition there is a heart of unbelief, and, 'vice versa', where an individual's belief is but a superficial acquiescence, credulity is the natural result and accompaniment, if only he be not required to sink into the depths of his being, where the sensual man can no longer draw breath. It is not the profession of Socinian tenets, but the spirit of Socinianism in the Church itself that alarms me. This, this, is the dry rot in the beams and timbers of the Temple!

Ib. s. li. p. 348.

So that let the devotion be ever so great, set forms of prayer will be
expressive enough of any desire, though importunate as extremity
itself.

This, and much of the same import in this treatise, is far more than Taylor, mature in experience and softened by afflictions, would have written. Besides, it is in effect, though not in logic, a deserting of his own strong and unshaken ground of the means and ends of public worship.

Ib. s. s. lxix. lxx. pp. 359-60.

These two sections are too much in the vague mythical style of the Italian and Jesuit divines, and the argument gives to these a greater advantage against our Church than it gains over the Sectarians in its support.

We well know who and how many the compilers of our Liturgy were under Edward VI, and know too well what the weather-cock Parliaments were, both then and under Elizabeth, by which the compilation was made law. The argument therefore should be inverted;--not that the Church (A. B., C. D., F. L., &c.) compiled it; 'ergo', it is unobjectionable; but (and truly we may say it) it is so unobjectionable, so far transcending all we were entitled to expect from a few men in that state of information and such difficulties, that we are justified in concluding that the compilers were under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

But the same order holds good even with regard to the Scriptures. We cannot rightly affirm they were inspired, and therefore they must be believed; but they are worthy of belief, because excellent in so universal a sense to ends commensurate with the whole moral, and therefore the whole actual, world, that as sure as there is a moral Governor of the world, they must have been in some sense or other, and that too an efficient sense, inspired.

Those who deny this, must be prepared to assert, that if they had what appeared to them good historic evidence of a miracle, in the world of the senses, they would receive the hideous immoral doctrines of Mahomet or Brahma, and thus disobey the express commands both of the Old and New Testament. Though an angel should come from heaven and work all miracles, yet preach another doctrine, we are to hold him accursed. 'Gal.' i. 8.

Ib. s. lxxv. p. 356.

When Christ was upon the Mount, he gave it for a pattern, &c.

I cannot thoroughly agree with Taylor in all he says on this point. The Lord's Prayer is an encyclopedia of prayer, and of all moral and religious philosophy under the form of prayer. Besides this, that nothing shall be wanting to its perfection, it is itself singly the best and most divine of prayers. But had this been the main and primary purpose, it must have been thenceforward the only prayer permitted to Christians; and surely some distinct references to it would have been found in the Apostolic writings.

Ib. s. lxxx. p. 358.

Now then I demand, whether the prayer of Manasses be so good a prayer
as the Lord's prayer? Or is the prayer of Judith, or of Tobias, or of
Judas Maccabeus, or of the son of Sirach, is any of these so good?
Certainly no man will say they are; and the reason is, because we are
not sure they are inspired by the Holy Spirit of God.

How inconsistent Taylor often is, the result of the system of economizing truth! The true reason is the inverse. The prayers of Judith and the rest are not worthy to be compared with the Lord's Prayer; therefore neither is the spirit in which they were conceived worthy to be compared with the spirit from which the Lord's Prayer proceeded: and therefore with all fulness of satisfaction we receive the latter, as indeed and in fact our Lord's dictation.

In all men and in all works of great genius the characteristic fault will be found in the characteristic excellence. Thus in Taylor, fulness, overflow, superfluity.

His arguments are a procession of all the nobles and magnates of the land in their grandest, richest, and most splendid 'paraphernalia': but the total impression is weakened by the multitudes of lacqueys and ragged intruders running in and out between the ranks.

As far as the Westminster divines were the antagonists to be answered--and with the exception of these, and those who like Baxter, Calamy, and Bishop Reynolds, contended for a reformation or correction only of the Church Liturgy, there were none worth answering,--the question was, not whether the use of one and the same set of prayers on all days in all churches was innocent, but whether the exclusive imposition of the same was comparatively expedient and conducive to edification?

Let us not too severely arraign the judgment or the intentions of the good men who determined for the negative. If indeed we confined ourselves to the comparison between our Liturgy, and any and all of the proposed substitutes for it, we could not hesitate: but those good men, in addition to their prejudices, had to compare the lives, the conversation, and the religious affections and principles of the prelatic and anti-prelatic parties in general.

And do not we ourselves now do the like? Are we not, and with abundant reason, thankful that Jacobinism is rendered comparatively feeble and its deadly venom neutralized, by the profligacy and open irreligion of the majority of its adherents?

Add the recent cruelties of the Star Chamber under Laud;--(I do not say the intolerance; for that which was common to both parties, must be construed as an error in both, rather than a crime in either);--and do not forget the one great inconvenience to which the prelatic divines were exposed from the very position which it was the peculiar honor of the Church of England to have taken and maintained, namely, the golden mean;--(for in consequence of this their arguments as Churchmen would often have the appearance of contrasting with their grounds of controversy as Protestants,)--and we shall find enough to sanction our charity as brethren, without detracting a tittle from our loyalty as members of the established Church.

As to this Apology, the victory doubtless remains with Taylor on the whole; but to have rendered it full and triumphant, it would have been necessary to do what perhaps could not at that time, and by Jeremy Taylor, have been done with prudence; namely, not only to disprove in part, but likewise in part to explain, the alleged difference of the spiritual fruits in the ministerial labors of the high and low party in the Church,--(for remember that at this period both parties were in the Church, even as the Evangelical, Reformed and Pontifical parties before the establishment of a schism by the actually schismatical Council of Trent,)--and thus to demonstrate that the differences to the disadvantage of the established Church, as far as they were real, were as little attributable to the Liturgy, as the wound in the heel of Achilles to the shield and breast-plate which his immortal mother had provided for him from the forge divine.

Ib. s. lxxxvi. p. 361.

That the Apostles did use the prayer their Lord taught them, I think
needs not much be questioned.