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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 – 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 farinoe. 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 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.