Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) was an English cleric in the Church of England who achieved fame as an author during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. He is sometimes known as the "Shakespeare of Divines" for his poetic style of expression, and he is frequently cited as one of the greatest prose writers in the English language.

Taylor was under the patronage of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. He went on to become chaplain in ordinary to King Charles I as a result of Laud's sponsorship. This made him politically suspect when Laud was tried by Parliament and executed in January 1644/5 during the English Civil War. After the parliamentary victory over the King, he was briefly imprisoned several times.

Eventually, he was allowed to live quietly in Wales, where he became the private chaplain of the Earl of Carbery. After the Restoration, he was made Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland. He also became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin.

He is remembered in the liturgical calendars of the Church of England and other Anglican churches.

Early life

Taylor was born in Cambridge, the son of a barber, Nathaniel. He was baptised, as a child, on 15 August 1613 at Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge. His father was educated and taught him grammar and mathematics. He was then educated at the Perse School, Cambridge, before going to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he gained a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1630/1631 and a Master of Arts degree in 1634.

The best evidence of his diligence as a student is the enormous learning of which he showed so easy a command in later years. In 1633, although still below the canonical age, he took holy orders, and accepted the invitation of Thomas Risden, a former fellow student, to supply his place for a short time as lecturer at St Paul's Cathedral.

Career under Laud

Archbishop William Laud sent for Taylor to preach in his presence at Lambeth, and took the young man under his wing. Taylor did not vacate his fellowship at Cambridge before 1636, but he spent, apparently, much of his time in London, for Laud desired that his considerable talents should receive better opportunities for study and improvement than the obligations of constant preaching would permit. In November 1635 he had been nominated by Laud to a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, where, says Antony Wood, love and admiration still waited on him. He seems, however, to have spent little time there. He became chaplain to his patron the archbishop, and chaplain in ordinary to Charles I.

At Oxford, William Chillingworth was then busy with his magnum opus, The Religion of Protestants, and it is possible that through his discussions with Chillingworth Taylor may have been turned towards the liberal movement of his age. After two years in Oxford, he was presented, in March 1638, by William Juxon, Bishop of London, to the rectory of Uppingham in Rutland. There he settled down to the work of a country priest.

In the next year he married Phoebe Langsdale, by whom he had six children: William (d.1642), George (?), Richard (the last two died c.1656/7), Charles, Phoebe and Mary. She owned a good estate, though probably impoverished by Parliamentarian exactions, at Mandinam, in Carmarthenshire. Several years following their marriage, they moved to Ireland. From time to time Taylor appears in London in the company of his friend John Evelyn, in whose Diary and correspondence his name repeatedly occurs. He was imprisoned three times: in 1645 for an injudicious preface to his Golden Grove; again in Chepstow Castle, from May to October 1655, on what charge does not appear; and a third time in the Tower in 1657, because of the indiscretion of his publisher, Richard Royston, who had decorated his Collection of Offices with a print representing Christ in the attitude of prayer.

Writings

The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living provided a manual of Christian practice, which has retained its place with devout readers. The scope of the work is described on the title page. It deals with the means and instruments of obtaining every virtue, and the remedies against every vice, and considerations serving to the resisting all temptations, together with prayers containing the whole Duty of a Christian. Holy Dying was perhaps even more popular. A very charming piece of work of a lighter kind was inspired by a question from his friend, Katherine Philipps ("the matchless Orinda"), asking How far is a dear and perfect friendship authorised by the principles of Christianity? In answer to this, he dedicated to Mrs Phillipps his Discourse of the Nature, Offices and Measures of Friendship (1657). His Ductor Dubitantium, or the Rule of Conscience … (1660) was intended to be the standard manual of casuistry and ethics for the Christian people. His works were translated into Welsh by Nathanael Jones.

Bishop in Ireland at the Restoration

He probably left Wales in 1657, and his immediate connection with Golden Grove seems to have ceased two years earlier. In 1658, through the kind offices of his friend John Evelyn, Taylor was offered a lectureship in Lisburn, County Antrim, by Edward Conway, 2nd Viscount Conway. At first, he declined a post in which the duty was to be shared with a Presbyterian – or, as he expressed it, "where a Presbyterian and myself [shall be] like Castor and Pollux, the one up the other downe" – and to which a meagre salary was attached. He was, however, induced to take it, and found in his patron's property at Portmore, on Lough Neagh, a congenial retreat.

At the Stuart Restoration, instead of being recalled to England, as he probably expected and certainly desired, he was appointed to the see of Down and Connor,

thumb|Dromore Cathedral showing the chancel built over the crypt where Taylor was buried

Taylor died at Lisburn on 13 August 1667. He was buried at Dromore Cathedral where an apsidal chancel was built in 1870 over the crypt where he was laid to rest.

Jeremy Taylor is honoured in the Church of England, the Anglican Church of Canada, Scottish Episcopal Church, Anglican Church of Australia and in the Episcopal Church of the United States on 13 August.

<!--This material is sourced from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but represents an individual assessment by the anonymous author and does not seem to be encyclopedic.

Thought

Taylor's fame has been maintained by the popularity of his sermons and devotional writings rather than by his influence as a theologian or his importance as an ecclesiastic. His mind was neither scientific nor speculative, and he was attracted rather to questions of casuistry than to the problems of pure theology. His wide reading and capacious memory enabled him to carry in his mind the materials of a sound historical theology, but these materials were unsifted by criticism. His immense learning served him rather as a storehouse of illustrations, or as an armoury out of which he could choose the fittest weapon for discomfiting an opponent, than as a quarry furnishing him with material for building up a completely designed and enduring edifice of systematised truth. Indeed, he had very limited faith in the human mind as an instrument of truth. Theology, he says, is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge.

His great plea for toleration is based on the impossibility of erecting theology into a demonstrable science. It is impossible all should be of one mind. And what is impossible to be done is not necessary it should be done. Differences of opinion there must be; but heresy is not an error of the understanding but an error of the will. He would submit all minor questions to the reason of the individual member, but he set certain limits to toleration, excluding whatsoever is against the foundation of faith, or contrary to good life and the laws of obedience, or destructive to human society, and the public and just interests of bodies politic. Peace, he thought, might be made if men would not call all opinions by the name of religion, and superstructures by the name of fundamental articles. Of the propositions of sectarian theologians he said that confidence was the first, and the second, and the third part.

Of a genuine poetic temperament, fervid and mobile in feeling, and of a prolific fancy, he had also the sense and wit that come of varied contact with men. All his gifts were made available for influencing other men by his easy command of a style rarely matched in dignity and colour. With all the majesty and stately elaboration and musical rhythm of Milton's finest prose, Taylor's style is relieved and brightened by an astonishing variety of felicitous illustrations, ranging from the most homely and terse to the most dignified and elaborate. His sermons especially abound in quotations and allusions, which have the air of spontaneously suggesting themselves, but which must sometimes have baffled his hearers. This seeming pedantry is, however, atoned for by the clear practical aim of his sermons, the noble ideal he keeps before his hearers, and the skill with which he handles spiritual experience and urges incentives to virtue.

Literary style and influence

Taylor is best known as a prose stylist; his chief fame is the result of his twin devotional manual, Holy Living and Holy Dying. (The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, 1650 and The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying, 1651). These books were favourites of John Wesley, and admired for their prose style by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt, and Thomas de Quincey. They are marked by solemn but vivid rhetoric, elaborate periodic sentences, and careful attention to the music and rhythms of words:

<blockquote>As our life is very short, so it is very miserable; and therefore it is well that it is short. God, in pity to mankind, lest his burden should be insupportable and his nature an intolerable load, hath reduced our state of misery to an abbreviature; and the greater our misery is, the less while it is like to last; the sorrows of a man's spirit being like ponderous weights, which by the greatness of their burden make a swifter motion, and descend into the grave to rest and ease our wearied limbs; for then only we shall sleep quietly, when those fetters are knocked off, which not only bound our souls in prison, but also ate the flesh until the very bones opened the secret garments of their cartilages, discovering their nakedness and sorrow.

::—From Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying</blockquote>

end of EB1911 omitted material -->

Family

Jeremy Taylor is said to have been a lineal descendant of Rowland Taylor, but the assertion has not been proved. Through his daughter, Mary, who married Archbishop Francis Marsh, he had numerous descendants.

Principal publications

  • A Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying (1646), a famous plea for toleration published decades before John Locke's Letters Concerning Toleration.
  • Apology for Authorised and Set Forms of Liturgy against the Pretence of the Spirit (1649)
  • Great Exemplar … a History of … Jesus Christ (1649), inspired, its author tells us, by his earlier intercourse with the earl of Northampton
  • The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living (1650)
  • The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651)
  • Twenty-seven Sermons Preached at Golden Grove, for the Summer Half-year&nbsp;… (1651)
  • Twenty-five Sermons Preached at Golden Grove, for the Winter Half-year&nbsp;… (1653)
  • Clerus Domini: or, A Discourse of the Divine Institution, Necessity, Sacrednesse, and Separation of the Office Ministerial (1651)
  • The Real Presence and Spirituall of Christ in the Blessed Statement Proved Against the Doctrine of Transubstantiation. (1654)
  • Golden Grove; or a &nbsp;… (1655)
  • Unum Necessarium (1655), on the doctrine of repentance, perceived Pelagianism gave great offence to Presbyterians.
  • Discourse of the Nature, Offices and Measures of Friendship (1657)
  • Ductor Dubitantium, or the Rule of Conscience&nbsp;… (1660)
  • The Worthy Communicant; or a Discourse of the Nature, Effects, and Blessings consequent to the worthy receiving of the Lords Supper&nbsp;… (1660)

Although Taylor is named as the author on the title page of Contemplations of the State of Man in this Life, and in that which is to Come (1684), the work is an abridgement of Vivian Mullineaux's 1672 English translation of Juan Eusebio Nieremberg's work De la diferencia entre lo temporal y lo eterno, y Crisol de Desengaños (On the Difference between the Temporal and the Eternal, and the Crucible of Deceptions, 1640), apparently compiled by Taylor.

Secondary literature and posthumous editions

  • Antoine, Sister Mary Salome. The Rhetoric of Jeremy Taylor's Prose: Ornament of the Sunday Sermons. PhD Dissertation. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1946.
  • Bonney, Henry Kaye. The Life of ... Jeremy Taylor ... Lord Bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore. London: T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1815.
  • Brown, W. J. Jeremy Taylor. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1925.
  • Carroll, Thomas K., ed. Jeremy Taylor: Selected Works. Preface by John Booty. The Classics of Western Spirituality Series. New York City: Paulist Press, 1990.
  • de Ricci Albrecht, Sister Mary Catherine. The Exemplum in the Sermons of Jeremy Taylor. M.A. dissertation. District of Columbia: Catholic University of America, 1947.
  • Duyckinck, George L. The Life of Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore. New York: 1860.
  • Gosse, Edmund. Jeremy Taylor. The English Men of Letters Series. London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1904.
  • Grosart, A.B., ed. The Poems and Verse Translations of Jeremy Taylor. Fuller Worthies’ Library. 1870.
  • Gathorne-Hardy, Robert. A Bibliography of the Writings of Jeremy Taylor to 1700. Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University, 1971.
  • Heber, Reginald, ed. The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor […], with a Life of the Author, and a Critical Examination of His Writings, in Ten Volumes. Revised and corrected by Charles Page Eden. London: Longman, Green, and Longmans, 1848.
  • Herndon, S. Jeremy Taylor's Use of the Bible. PhD. dissertation. New York: New York University, 1949.
  • Hughes, H. Trevor. The Piety of Jeremy Taylor. London: Macmillan, 1960.
  • Huntley, Frank L. Jeremy Taylor and the Great Rebellion: A Study of His Mind and Temper in Controversy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970.
  • Jackson, Robert S. The Meditative Life of Christ: A Study of the Background and Structure of Jeremy Taylor's "The Great Exemplar." PhD. dissertation. Ann Arbor: U of MI, 1959.
  • Peterson, Raymond A. The Theology of Jeremy Taylor: An Investigation of the Temper of Caroline Anglicanism. PhD. dissertation. New York: Union Theological Seminary, 1961.
  • Stranks, Charles James. The Life and Writings of Jeremy Taylor. London: Church Historical Society, 1952.
  • Streatfield, K.M. A Critical Edition of Six Occasional Sermons by Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667). PhD Dissertation. University of Edinburgh, 1988.
  • Wheeldon, John. The Life of Bishop Taylor, and the Pure Spirit of his Writings, Extracted and Exhibited for General Benefit. London: George Bigg, 1793.
  • Williamson, Hugh Ross. Jeremy Taylor. London: Dennis Dobson Ltd., 1952.
  • Worley, G. Jeremy Taylor: A Sketch of His Life & Times, with a Popular Exposition of His Works. London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1904.

See also

  • Caroline Divines
  • Homo unius libri

Notes

References

  • Brief Biography of Jeremy Taylor (Archive of 13 August 2006)
  • Works of Jeremy Taylor online
  • Church of Ireland Prayers
  • Early editions of works by Jeremy Taylor in the McAdoo Collection at the Library of Trinity College Dublin