Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667)

TODAY we commemorate St Anne, mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Traditions surrounding Mary’s birth and parents have come down to us from the so-called Protevangelium of James, which dates from around the middle of the second century AD, and in which we hear for the first time the names Joachim and Anna (Anne).

Rarely referred to in the English Reformers’ “golden era” of the first six centuries of the Church Fathers, it was regarded with a degree of suspicion (e.g. St Augustine, 354-430, Contra Faustum Bk XXIII §9).

Chastened by the flights of fancy in late Mediaeval speculation, few Anglican Divines set much store by these accounts either, save for the names Joachim and Anna.

It is, perhaps, a day for musing on parenthood, in which we must suppose Joachim and Anna were proficient.

In the following passage, Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) speaks of the supreme importance of inculcating Christian principles by gaining a child’s trust.

“FATHERS, provoke not your children to wrath” (Eph 6:4): that is, be tender-bowelled, pitiful, and gentle, complying with all the infirmities of the children, and in their several ages proportioning to them several usages, according to their needs and their capacities.

“Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord:” that is, secure their religion; season their younger years with prudent and pious principles; make them in love with virtue; and make them habitually so, before they come to choose or to discern good from evil, that their choice may be with less difficulty and danger: for while they are under discipline, they suck in all that they are first taught, and believe it infinitely.

Provide for them wise, learned, and virtuous tutors, and good company and discipline, seasonable baptism, catechism, and confirmation. For it is a great folly to heap up much wealth for our children, and not to take care concerning the children for whom we get it; it is as if a man should take more care about his shoe than about his foot.

“Parents must shew piety at home” (Heb 12:9); that is, they must give good example and reverend deportment in the face of their children; and all those instances of charity, which usually endear each other, — sweetness of conversation, affability, frequent admonitions, all significations of love and tenderness, care and watchfulness, — must be expressed towards children, that they may look upon their parents as their friends and patrons, their defence and sanctuary, their treasure and their guide.

The Rule And Exercises Of Holy Living, Chap. III §2.

Christ on the cross (14th century)

THE Litany sets on our lips a series of moving invocations of Christ’s birth and Passion.

BY the mystery of thy holy Incarnation; by thy holy Nativity and Circumcision; by thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation,
Good Lord, deliver us.

By thine Agony and Bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial; by thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension, and by the Coming of the Holy Ghost,
Good Lord, deliver us.

These Obsecrations (Lat. obsecro, lit. “ask on religious grounds”, “entreat”) were objected to by the Calvinist party right from the start, with John Knox (?1513-1572) complaining to Geneva about “a certain conjuring of God” in the Litany within the Prayer Book of 1552.

Yet these same prayers were to be found in Martin Luther’s Litany. The 15th century Golden Litany (here) was on this model, and much earlier St Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) wrote his Prayer XV (extract) as a litany.

O MOST loving and sweetest Lord Jesu, by Thy holy Annunciation, have mercy upon my unhappy soul. [...]
O most Sweet Lord Jesu, by Thy Scourgings, Spittings, Blows, which for us Thou didst receive,
O most Sweet Lord Jesu, by the Crown of Thorns which Thou didst bear upon Thy Head, that Thou mightest take away the thorns of our sins,
O most Sweet Lord Jesu, by Thy Cross, and the Death which on that Cross Thou didst suffer, that Thou mightest redeem us from death, …

The title Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626) gave to a similar prayer in his Devotions (here) explains everything: An Eucharistic Prayer.

BY the things which Thou didst, and bearest,
Thy Oblation and Sacrifice,
Thy emptying Thyself, Thy humbling Thyself,
Thy Incarnation, Thy Conception, Thy Birth,
Thy Circumcision, the first-fruits of Thy Blood,
Thy Baptism, Thy Fasting, Thy Temptation,
Thy Houselessness, Thy Hunger,
Thy Weariness, Thy Thirst,
Thy Sleeplessness, Thy Injuries:
Thy patience, endurance, Thy apprehension as a thief, bonds,
By Gethsemane, Gabbatha, Golgotha,
Thy obedience unto Death, Thy endurance to the Cross:
Let my prayer ascend; Turn not away Thine Ear.

All prayer is essentially Eucharistic, when it does not merely acknowledge but holds up before God a remembrance of the life of Christ to God, just as Christ himself presents it evermore before his Father’s throne.

NOW what Christ does always in a proper and most glorious manner, the ministers of the gospel also do in theirs; commemorating the sacrifice upon the cross, “giving thanks,” and celebrating a perpetual eucharist for it, and “by declaring the death of Christ,” and praying to God in the virtue of it, for all the members of the church, and all persons capable; it is in genere orationis, a sacrifice, and an instrument of propitiation, as all holy prayers are in their several proportions.

Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667). The Divine Institution Of The Office Ministerial, §V.1-2

See Introduction to the Litany, by the Revd William Bright D.D. (1824-1901).

All Saints' Church, Gussage, Dorset. © Trish Steel, Geograph. Used under licence.

THE vows in the Prayer Book’s order for The Solemnization Of Matrimony are routinely rubbished today as favouring the man.

But the original Scripture passage which furnishes us with them (Eph 5:21-33) demonstrates that as Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) said, “what in one is called ‘love,’ in the other is called ‘reverence;’ and what in the wife is ‘obedience,’ the same in the man is ‘duty’”.

Furthermore, the purpose of these vows is only very secondarily to regulate domestic relationships. Their prime purpose is to signify and represent “the spiritual marriage and unity betwixt Christ and his Church”, and so plead down a very particular grace into the union.

The vows take this form, because this is the form of that divine union; these are the vows to proclaim that Christian marriage is not just a social institution, but “holiness to the Lord”.

CHRIST descended from his Father’s bosom, and contracted his divinity with flesh and blood, and married our nature, and we became a church, the spouse of the Bridegroom, which he cleansed with his blood, and gave her his Holy Spirit for a dowry, and heaven for a jointure; begetting children unto God by the Gospel.

This spouse he hath joined to himself by an excellent charity, he feeds her at his own table, and lodges her nigh his own heart, provides for all her necessities, relieves her sorrows, determines her doubts, guides her wanderings, he is become her head, and she as a signet upon his right hand …

Here is the eternal conjunction, the indissoluble knot, the exceeding love of Christ, the obedience of the spouse, the communicating of goods, the uniting of interests, the fruit of marriage, a celestial generation, a new creature; Sacramentum hoc magnum est; “This is the sacramental mystery,” represented by the holy rite of marriage; so that marriage is divine in its institution, sacred in its union, holy in the mystery, sacramental in its signification, honourable in its appellative, religious in its employments; it is advantage to the societies of men, and it is “holiness to the Lord.”

Dico autem in Christo et ecclesia, “It must be in Christ and the church.” If this be not observed, marriage loses its mysteriousness: but because it is to effect much of that which it signifies, it concerns all that enter into those golden fetters to see that Christ and his church be in at every of its periods, and that it be entirely conducted and overruled by religion; for so the Apostle passes from the sacramental rite to the real duty; “Nevertheless,” that is, although the former discourse were wholly to explicate the conjunction of Christ and his church by this similitude, yet it hath in it this real duty, “that the man love his wife, and the wife reverence her husband.”

Sermon XVII: The Marriage Ring: Or, The Mysteriousness And Duties Of Marriage.

See more on Marriage.

St Philip the Deacon and the Ethiopian

OUR New Testament reading this morning (Acts 8:26-39) tells of the Ethiopian who had got hold of a copy of the Jewish Scriptures, but was struggling to understand their thrust.

PHILIP ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.

The Anglican Divines were agreed that to understand how we should interpret Scripture as St Philip the Deacon did, the checks and balances provided by the most ancient traditions of the Church are indispensable.

When it comes to establishing our faith safely on the Apostles’ witness rather than our own fancies, “it is not easy to find a better than the word of God” said Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), “expounded by the prime and best antiquity”.

NOT that we think them or ourselves bound to every private opinion, even of a primitive bishop and martyr; but that we all acknowledge that the whole Church of God kept the faith entire, and transmitted faithfully to the after-ages the whole faith, τύπον διδαχῆς, “the form of doctrine, and sound words, which was at first delivered to the saints,” and was defective in nothing that belonged unto salvation; and we believe that those ages sent millions of saints to the bosom of Christ and sealed the true faith with their lives and with their deaths, and by both gave testimony unto Jesus, and had from him the testimony of his Spirit. …

We do easily acknowledge, that to dispute these questions from the sayings of the fathers, is not the readiest way to make an end of them; but, therefore, we do wholly rely upon Scriptures, as the foundation and final resort of all our persuasions, and from thence can never be confuted; but we also admit the fathers as admirable helps for the understanding of the Scriptures, and as good testimony of the doctrine delivered from their forefathers down to them, of what the Church esteemed the way of salvation: and therefore, if we find any doctrine now taught, which was not placed in their way of salvation, we reject it as being no part of the Christian faith, and which ought not to be imposed upon consciences.

They were “wise unto salvation” and “fully instructed to every good work;” and therefore, the faith, which they professed and derived from Scripture, we profess also; and in the same faith, we hope to be saved even as they.

Dissuasive From Popery, Part i. book i. §i.

See also Fathers Of The Church.

Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667)

THE way in which St Stephen rehearses the history of Israel’s dealings with God in this morning’s second reading (Acts 7:1-34) strongly echoes the Psalmist in Psalm 78.

THEY kept not the covenant of God : and would not walk in his law;
But forgat what he had done : and the wonderful works that he had shewed for them.

But where the Psalmist took the catalogue of God’s gracious dealings as far as David, Stephen’s point was that Jesus was always the intended crown upon God’s merciful plan for his people.

Christ it is who is “the mystery hid from ages and from generations” (Col 1:26), “the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory” (1 Cor 2:7), “the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8; 1 Pet 1:20).

Patient in withholding the execution of his justice upon us, God was all impatience to pardon us – to pardon before we had even sinned, and to choose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4).

GOD pardoned us before we sinned; and when he foresaw our sin, even mine and yours, he sent his son to die for us; our pardon was wrought and effected by Christ’s death, above sixteen hundred years ago; and for the sins of to-morrow, and the infirmities of the next day, Christ is already dead, already risen from the dead, and does now make intercession and atonement.

And this is not only a favour to us who were born in the due time of the gospel, but to all mankind since Adam: for God, who is infinitely patient in his justice, was not at all patient in his mercy; he forbears to strike and punish us, but he would not forbear to provide cure for us and remedy.

For, as if God could not stay from redeeming us, he promised the Redeemer to Adam in the beginning of the world’s sin; and Christ was the lamb slain from the beginning of the world; and the covenant of the gospel, though it was not made with man, yet it was from the beginning performed by God as to his part, as to the ministration of pardon; the seed of the woman was set up against the dragon as soon as ever the tempter had won his first battle: and though God laid his hand, and drew a veil of types and secrecy before the manifestation of his mercies; yet he did the work of redemption, and saved us by the covenant of faith, and the righteousness of believing, and the mercies of repentance, the graces of pardon, and the blood of the slain lamb, even from the fall of Adam to this very day, and will do till Christ’s second coming.

Sermon XXVII: The Miracle Of The Divine Mercy (Part III).

St Clement Of Rome (fl. ca. 96)

THIS morning’s reading (Acts 6) records the birth of the sacred Diaconate.

A small number of men were chosen to practical work among the rapidly expanding new churches, while the overworked Apostles applied themselves to evangelisation and organisation.

Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), at this time chaplain to Archbishop William Laud, emphasised that when the disciples of Jesus had selected the Deacons, they brought them to the Apostles for the laying on of hands, and did not do it themselves (extract here).

So as we can see, ordination was from the start reserved to the highest of the three orders, which came to be called Bishops.

The idea that Christian worship must be done with godly order, and that its various functions must be discharged not by any, but only by those ministers to whom they belong, is extremely ancient.

In fact, it goes back at least to St Clement, who was the Bishop of Rome in the AD 90s, and himself knew some of the Apostles.

THESE things therefore being manifest to us, and since we look into the depths of the divine knowledge, it behoves us to do all things in [their proper] order, which the Lord has commanded us to perform at stated times.

He has enjoined offerings [to be presented] and service to be performed [to Him], and that not thoughtlessly or irregularly, but at the appointed times and hours.

Where and by whom He desires these things to be done, He Himself has fixed by His own supreme will, in order that all things being piously done according to His good pleasure, may be acceptable unto Him.

Those, therefore, who present their offerings at the appointed times, are accepted and blessed; for inasmuch as they follow the laws of the Lord, they sin not.

For his own peculiar services are assigned to the high priest, and their own proper place is prescribed to the priests, and their own special ministrations devolve on the Levites [deacons]. The layman is bound by the laws that pertain to laymen.

Epistle to the Corinthians §40

See more on Ordination.

A Church of England clergyman

ST PETER’S phrases “a royal priesthood” and “a kingdom of priests”, which he uses in tonight’s second reading (1 Pet 1:22-2:10), were absolutely not intended to undermine the Christian ministry by making everyone a priest.

The Revd John Hughes (1682-1710) reminded us in his Dissertation on St John Chrysostom’s De Sacerdotio that these ancient phrases were never regarded as a bar to the priestly castes of the Jewish Temple.

THESE words of St. Peter are taken from a passage in Exodus (Exod 19:6), where God calls the Israelites “a kingdom of priests and an holy nation.”

But if these words in Exodus do not by any means prove that there were no functions so appropriated to the Israelitical priests as that the laity could not usurp them without impiety, neither will these words in St. Peter prove that the Christian people have any right to administer the functions appropriated to the priesthood amongst them.

George Hickes (1642-1715), in his riposte to The Rights Of The Christian Church, understood the phrase to mean a nation constituted under a King and Priestly government.

[T]HE Church, or incorporate body of Christians, is by its constitution a holy, royal, or regal priesthood, as it is called in the Scriptures.

First, because Christ the head of it, is the antitype of Melchisedec, and as such, a sacerdotal sovereign, or regal priest.

And secondly, because this sacerdotal Sovereign has committed the government and administration of His kingdom to ministerial priests, who, as I must often put you in mind, are the vicars, substitutes, legates, representatives, or vicegerents of their royal, sacerdotal, Lord and Master, in His kingly, as well as His priestly office, throughout all the districts and dominions of His spiritual kingdom upon earth.

Thus the Church does not abolish the constitution of Israel, but fulfils it, assuming Israel’s constitution and faithfully discharging her evangelical yet priestly commission towards the Gentiles (Is 61:6).

Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) explained wherein the difference between shadow and reality lies. Ours is a constitution founded on liberty rather than coercion. Our priests are not legal mediators, but evangelical officers.

GOD  reigns over all Christendom, just as he did over the Jews. He hath now so given to them and restored respectively all those reasonable laws, which are in order to all good ends, personal, economical, and political, that if men will suffer christian religion to do its last intention, if men will live according to it, there needs no other coercion of laws or power of the sword.

The laws of God, revealed by Christ, are sufficient to make all societies of men happy; and over all good men God reigns by his ministers, by the preaching of the word.

And this was most evident in the three first ages of the church, in which all christian societies were, for all their proper intercourses, perfectly guided, not by the authority and compulsion but by the sermons, of their spiritual guides.

The Great Exemplar &c.. Preface, §42

Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667)

THE LORD was ready to save me: therefore we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the Lord.

This comes at the close of a prayer of King Hezekiah after recovery from a sickness, which we hear in this morning’s reading (Is 38:9-20).

Hezekiah remembered his cries of desolation, and his plea to be allowed a remission in which to forge a legacy in the world.

MINE age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd’s tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with pining sickness: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me. … The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day: the father to the children shall make known thy truth.

The similarities with this morning’s opening Psalm (Psalm 71) are quite striking.

Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) gave expression to similar thoughts in one of his prayers for the sick.

I KNOW, O Lord, that I am unready and unprepared in my accounts, having thrown away great portions of my time in vanity, and set myself hugely back in the accounts of eternity; and I had need live my life over again, and live it better: but Thy counsels are in the great deep, and Thy footsteps in the water; and I know not what Thou wilt determine of me. If I die, I throw myself into the arms of the holy Jesus, whom I love above all things; and if I perish, I know I have deserved it, but Thou wilt not reject him that loves Thee.

But if I recover, I will live, by Thy grace and help, to do the work of God, and passionately pursue my interest of heaven, and serve Thee in the labour of love, with the charities of a holy zeal, and the diligence of a firm and humble obedience. Lord, I will dwell in Thy temple, and in Thy service: religion shall be my employment, and alms shall be my recreation, and patience shall be my rest, and to do Thy will shall be my meat and drink; and to live shall be Christ, and then to die shall be gain.

“O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength before I go hence and be no more seen.”
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Amen.

The Church of St Nicholas, Steventon, in Hampshire. This was Jane Austen's church. © David Marten, Geograph. Used under Licence.

IN this morning’s Old Testament reading (1 Kings 8:22-53), King Solomon stands before the altar in the newly-built and awe-inspiring Temple at Jerusalem, and cries out,

BUT will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded? Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, O LORD my God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer, which thy servant prayeth before thee to day: That thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall be there: that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make toward this place.

Some people feel that if we are liberated from the ceremonial law, no echo of the Temple cult should be found in our churches. But this was not the view even of the Puritan Bishop of Norwich, Joseph Hall (1574-1656).

OH, the costly services of God under the Law! And do we think the same God is now of a quite other diet, than formerly? Is all this mere ceremony? Is there not so much morality in it, as that it is meet the great God who is the Possessor of Heaven and Earth, should be served of the best? that it is not for us to affect too much cheapness and neglective homeliness, in our evangelical devotions?

Holy Decency In The Worship Of God.

Hall is borrowing the terms of Article VII. The ceremonial law may be gone, but the unity of the two Testaments and the enduring moral law alike demand that we serve God with godly order and decency.

Properly done, the Prayer Book services are richly ceremonial (see Holy Communion). Yet we are not bound by the ceremonial law. We have many temples, not one. We decorate our churches as we please. We offer a sacrifice of praise of thanksgiving, no lambs or oxen. Our vestments are those of a Roman gentleman, not a Hebrew priest. And God is still there. He still writes his name, still makes his heaven, in the lowliest parish church.

GODS memoriall is there. An Altar of earth shalt thou make mee .. in all places where ‘I record my name’ I will come and blesse thee. In the places where he appoints himselfe to be worshipped, there he records his name, and there he promises his presence, and that will bring a blessing, where I record my name ‘I will come’ and blesse thee. All these are but various expressions of that which the prophet David speakes in plaine termes, The Lord is in his Holy Temple, the Lords seat is in Heaven.

Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667). On The Reverence Due To The Altar.

See also Altars, and Eastward Facing.

Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667)

JEREMY Taylor (1613-1667) was Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore in Northern Ireland in 1660.

Ordained to the priesthood and elected a Fellow of Gonville and Caius (pronounced “keys”) College in Cambridge in 1633, he came to the attention of the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, whose patronage brought Taylor to All Souls’ College in Oxford two years later.

Appointed Rector of Uppingham in 1638, Taylor then became a chaplain to the Royalist forces in 1642. A brief spell in prison under the Commonwealth over, he went first to Wales and then eventually to Ireland, as a lecturer. Two years on, he was raised to the Episcopate.

Jeremy Taylor’s most celebrated works are Holy Living and Holy Dying (here in one volume), written in Wales when he was Chaplain to Lord Carbery; they form gentle companions to keeping our faith and guiding the Christian soul through life’s many troubles and joys.

O ETERNAL GOD, who dwellest not in Temples made with hands, the Heaven of Heavens is not able to contain thee; and yet thou art pleased to manifest thy presence amongst the sons of men with special issues of thy favour and benediction; make my body and soul to be a temple pure and holy; apt for the entertainments of the holy JESUS; and for the habitation of the holy Spirit.

LORD be pleased with thy rod of paternal discipline to cast out all impure lusts, all worldly affections, all covetous desires from this thy Temple, that it may be a place of prayer and meditation, of holy appetites and chaste thoughts, of pure intentions, and zealous desires of pleasing thee, that I may become also a Sacrifice as well as a Temple, eaten up with the zeal of thy glory, and consumed with the fire of love, that not one thought may be entertained by me but such as may be like perfume, breathing from the altar of incense; and not a word may passe from me, but may have the accent of heaven upon it, and sound pleasantly in thy ears.

Dearest GOD, fill every faculty of my soul with impresses, dispositions, capacities and aptnesses of religion, and do thou hallow my soul, that I may be possessed with zeal and religious affections, loving thee above all things in the world, worshiping thee with the humblest adorations and frequent addresses, continually feeding upon the apprehension of thy divine sweetness, and consideration of thy infinite excellencies, and observations of thy righteous commandments, and the seal of a holy Conscience as an antepast of eternity, and consignation to the joys of Heaven, through JESUS CHRIST our Lord. Amen.

The Great Exemplar. Section XI: Of The Religion Of Holy Places.

See also Charles Wesley, O Thou Who Camest From Above.