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 lyrasee previous image, 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?'
By Thomas Plume. Folio, 1676. — Ed.
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.
See
M. T. Ciceronis de Republica quæ supersunt. Zell.
Stuttgardt
. 1827. — Ed.
See
supra
. — Ed.
Folio. 1693. — Ed.
See
The Church and State
. — Ed.
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.
Index p. 2
General Dedication of the Polemical Discourses1
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.
for the
true scheme of punctuation,
Greek: h_os emoige dokei
see previous image
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
.
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,
- 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:
- 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?
- 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?
Index p. 2
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.
Quœre-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.
Index p. 2
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.