data
are sufficient to establish the fact, that the Pauline
doctrine at large was common to all Christians at that early period, and
therefore the faith delivered by Christ. And this is all I want; nor
this for my own assurance, but as arming me with irrefragable arguments
against those psilanthropists who as falsely, as arrogantly, call
themselves Unitarians, on the one hand; and against the infidel fiction,
that Christianity owes its present shape to the genius and rabbinical
cabala
of Paul on the other: while at the same time it weakens
the more important half of the objection to, or doubt concerning, the
authenticity of St. Peter's Epistles. To this too I attach a high
controversial value (for the beauty and excellence of the Epistles
themselves are not affected by the question); and I receive them as
authentic, for they have all the circumstantial evidence that I have any
right to expect. But I feel how much more genial my conviction would
become, should I discover, or have pointed out to me, any positive
internal evidence equivalent to that which determines the date of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, or even to that which leaves no doubt on my mind
that the writer was an Alexandrian Jew. This, my dear Lamb, is one of
the advantages which the previous evidence supplied by the reason and
the conscience secures for us. We learn what in its nature
passes all
understanding
, and what belongs to the understanding, and on which,
therefore, the understanding may and ought to act freely and fearlessly:
while those who will admit nothing above the understanding
(Greek:phrónaema sarkòs),
which in its nature has no legitimate object
but history and outward
phœnomena
, stand in slavish dread like a
child at its house of cards, lest a single card removed may endanger the
whole foundationless edifice. 1819.
Ib.
s. xcii. p. 365.
Now here dear Jeremy Taylor begins to be himself again; for with all his
astonishing complexity, yet versatile agility, of powers, he was too
good and of too catholic a spirit to be a good polemic. Hence he so
continually is now breaking, now varying, the thread of the argument:
and hence he is so again and again forgetting that he is reasoning
against an antagonist, and falls into conversation with him as a
friend, — I might almost say, into the literary chit-chat and un with
holding frankness of a rich genius whose sands are seed-pearl. Of his
controversies, those against Popery are the most powerful, because there
he had subtleties and obscure reading to contend against; and his wit,
acuteness, and omnifarious learning found stuff to work on. Those on
Original Sin are the most eloquent. But in all alike it is the
digressions, overgrowths, parenthetic
obiter et in transitu
sentences, and, above all, his anthropological reflections and
experiences — (for example, the inimitable account of a religious
dispute, from the first collision to the spark, and from the spark to
the world in flames, in his
Dissuasive from Popery
), — these are the
costly gems which glitter, loosely set, on the chain armour of his
polemic Pegasus, that expands his wings chiefly to fly off from the
field of battle, the stroke of whose hoof the very rock cannot resist,
but beneath the stroke of which the opening rock sends forth a
Hippocrene. The work in which all his powers are confluent, in which
deep, yet gentle, the full stream of his genius winds onward, and still
forming peninsulas in its winding course — distinct parts that are only
not each a perfect whole — or in less figurative style — (yet what
language that does not partake of poetic eloquence can convey the
characteristics of a poet and an orator?) — the work which I read with
most admiration, but likewise with most apprehension and regret, is the
Liberty of Prophesying
.
If indeed, like some Thessalian drug, or the strong herb of Anticyra,
— — that helps and harms,
Which life and death have sealed with counter charms —
it could be administered by special prescription, it might do good
service as a narcotic for zealotry, or a solvent for bigotry.
The substance of the preceding tract may be comprised as follows:
- During the period immediately following our Lord's Ascension, or the
so called Apostolic age, all the gifts of the Spirit, and of course the
gift of prayer, as graces bestowed, not merely or principally for the
benefit of the Apostles and their contemporaries, but likewise and
eminently for the advantage of all after-ages, and as means of
establishing the foundations of Christianity, differed in kind, degree,
mode, and object, from those ordinary graces promised to all true
believers of all times; and possessed a character of extraordinary
partaking of the nature of miracles, to which no believer under the
present and regular dispensations of the Spirit can make pretence
without folly and presumption.
- Yet it is certain that even the first miraculous gifts and graces
bestowed on the Apostles themselves supervened on, but did not
supersede, their natural faculties and acquired knowledge, nor enable
them to dispense with the ordinary means and instruments of cultivating
the one, and applying the other, by study, reading, past experience, and
whatever else Providence has appointed for all men as the conditions and
efficients of moral and intellectual progression. The capabilities of
deliberating, selecting, and aptly disposing of our thoughts and works
are God's good gifts to man, which the superadded graces of the Spirit,
vouchsafed to Christians, work on and with, call forth and perfect.
Therefore deliberation, selection, and method become duties, inasmuch as
they are the bases and recipients of the Spirit, even as the polished
crystal is of the light. But if the Prophets and Apostles did not (as
Taylor demonstrates that they did not) find in miraculous aids any such
infusions of light as precluded or rendered superfluous the exertion of
their natural faculties and personal attainments, then a fortiori
not the possessors or legatees of the ordinary graces bequeathed by
Christ to his Church as the usufructuary property of all its members;
and he who wilfully lays aside all premeditation, selection, and
ordonnance, that he may enter unprepared on the highest and most awful
function of the soul, — that of public prayer, — is guilty of no less
indecency and irreverence than if, having to present a petition as the
representative of a community before the throne, he purposely put off
his seemly garments in order to enter into the presence of the monarch
naked or in rags: and expects no less an absurdity than to become a
passive automaton, in which the Holy Spirit is to play the
ventriloquist.
- If, then, each congregation is to receive a prepared form of prayer
from its head or minister, why not rather from the collective wisdom of
the Church represented in the assembled heads and spiritual Fathers?
- This is admitted by implication by the Westminster Assembly. But they
are not contented with the existing form, and therefore substitute for
it a Directory as the fruits of their meditations and counsels. The
whole question, then, is now reduced to the comparative merits and
fitness of the Directory and the book of Common Prayer; and how complete
the victory of the latter, how glaring the defects, how many the
deficiencies, of the former, Jeremy Taylor evinces unanswerably.
Such is the substance of this Tract. What the author proposed to prove
he has satisfactorily proved.
The faults of the work are:
- The intermixture of weak and strong arguments, and the frequent
interruption of the stream of his logic by doubtful, trifling, and
impolitic interruptions; arguments resting in premisses denied by the
antagonists, and yet taken for granted; in short, appendages that
cumber, accessions that subtract, and confirmations that weaken: —
- That he commences with a proper division of the subject into two
distinct branches, that is, extempore prayer as opposed to set forms,
and, The Directory, as prescribing a form opposed to the existing
Liturgy; but that in the sequel he blends and confuses and intermingles
one with the other, and presses most and most frequently on the first
point, which a vast majority of the party he is opposing had disowned
and reprobated no less than himself, and which, though easiest to
confute, scarcely required confutation.
Index p. 2
Epistle Dedicatory, p. cccciii.
And first I answer, that whatsoever is against the foundation of faith
is out of the limits of my question, and does not pretend to
compliance or toleration.
But as all truths hang together, what error is there which may not be
proved to be against the foundation of faith? An inquisitor might make
the same code of toleration, and in the next moment light the faggots
around a man who had denied the infallibility of Pope and Council.
Ib.
p. ccccxxix.
Indeed if by a heresy we mean that which is against an article of
creed, and breaks part of the covenant made between God and man by the
mediation of Jesus Christ, I grant it to be a very grievous crime, a
calling God's veracity into question, &c.
How can he be said to question God's veracity, whose belief is that God
never declared it, — who perhaps disbelieves it, because he thinks it
opposite to God's honor? For example: — Original sin, in the literal
sense of the article, was held by both Papists and Protestants (with
exception of the Socinians) as the fundamental article of Christianity;
and yet our Jeremy Taylor himself attacked and reprobated it. Why?
because he thought it dishonored God. Why may not another man believe
the same of the Incarnation, and affirm that it is equal to a circle
assuming the essence of a square, and yet remaining a circle? But so it
is; we spoil our cause, because we dare not plead it
in toto
; and
a half truth serves for a proof of the opposite falsehood. Jeremy Taylor
dared not carry his argument into all its consequences.
index p. 2
S. i. p. 443.
Of the nature of faith, and that its duty is completed in believing
the articles of the Apostle's creed.
This section is for the most part as beautifully written as it was
charitably conceived; yet how vain the attempt! Jeremy Taylor ought to
have denied that Christian faith is at all intellectual primarily, but
only probably; as,
cœcteris paribus
, it is probable that a man
with a pure heart will believe an intelligent Creator. But the faith
resides in the predisposing purity of heart, that is, in the obedience
of the will to the uncorrupted conscience. For take Taylor's instances;
and I ask whether the words or the sense be meant? Surely the latter.
Well then, I understand, and so did the dear Bishop, by these texts the
doctrine of a Redeemer, who by his agonies of death actually altered the
relations of the spirits of all men to their Maker, redeemed them from
sin and death eternal, and brought life and immortality into the world.
But the Socinian uses the same texts; and means only that a good and
gifted teacher of pure morality died a martyr to his opinions, and by
his resurrection proved the possibility of all men rising from the dead.
He did nothing; — he only taught and afforded evidence. Can two more
diverse opinions be conceived? God here; mere man there. Here a redeemer
from guilt and corruption, and a satisfaction for offended holiness;
there a mere declarer that God imputed no guilt wherever, with or
without Christ, the person had repented of it. What could Jeremy Taylor
say for the necessity of his sense (which is mine) but what might be
said for the necessity of the Nicene Creed? And then as to Rom. x. 9,
how can the text mean any thing, unless we know what St. Paul implied in
the words
the Lord Jesus
. From other parts of his writings we
know that he meant by the word
Lord
his divinity or at least
essential superhumanity. But the Socinian will not allow this; or,
allowing it, denies St. Paul's authority in matters of speculative
faith. As well then might I say, it is sufficient for you to believe and
repeat the words
forte miles reddens
; and though one of you mean
by it "Perhaps I may be balloted for the militia," and the other
understands it to mean, that "Reading is forty miles from London," you
are still co-symbolists and believers! While a third person may say, I
believe, but do not comprehend, the words; that is, I believe that the
person who first used them meant something that is true, — what I do not
know; that is, I believe his veracity.
O! had this work been published when Charles I, Archbishop Laud, whose
chaplain Taylor was, and the other Star Chamber inquisitors, were
sentencing Prynne, Bastwick, Leighton, and others, to punishments that
have left a brand-mark on the Church of England, the sophistry might
have been forgiven for the sake of the motive, which would then have
been unquestionable. Or if Jeremy Taylor had not in effect retracted
after the Restoration; — if he had not, as soon as the Church had gained
its power, most basely disclaimed and disavowed the principle of
toleration, and apologized for the publication by declaring it to have
been a
ruse de guerre
, currying pardon for his past liberalism by
charging, and most probably slandering, himself with the guilt of
falsehood, treachery, and hypocrisy, his character as a man would at
least have been stainless. Alas, alas, most dearly do I love Jeremy
Taylor; most religiously do I venerate his memory! But this is too foul
a blotch of leprosy to be forgiven. He who pardons such an act in such a
man partakes of its guilt.
Ib.
s. vii. p. 346-7.
In the pursuance of this great truth, the Apostles, or the holy men,
their contemporaries and disciples, composed a creed to be a rule of
faith to all Christians; as appears in Irenæus, Tertullian, St.
Cyprian, St. Austin, Ruffinus, and divers others; which creed, unless
it had contained all the entire object of faith, and the foundation of
religion, &c.
Jeremy Taylor does not appear to have been a critical scholar. His
reading had been oceanic; but he read rather to bring out the growths of
his own fertile and teeming mind than to inform himself respecting the
products of those of other men. Hence his reliance on the broad
assertions of the Fathers; yet it is strange that he should have been
ignorant that the Apostles' Creed was growing piecemeal for several
centuries.
Ib.
p. 447.
All catechumens in the Latin Church coming to baptism were
interrogated concerning their faith, and gave satisfaction on the
recitation of this Creed.
I very much doubt this, and rather believe that our present Apostles'
Creed was no more than the first instruction of the catechumens prior to
baptism; and (as I conclude from Eusebius) that at baptism they
professed a more mysterious faith; — the one being the milk, the other
the strong meat. Where is the proof that Tertullian was speaking of this
Creed? Eusebius speaks in as high terms of the
Symbolum Fidei
,
and, defending himself against charges of heresy, says, "Did I not at my
baptism, in the
Symbolum Fidei
, declare my belief in Christ as
God and the co-eternal Word?" The true Creed it was impiety to write
down; but such was never the case with the present or initiating Creed.
Strange, too, that Jeremy Taylor, who has in this very work written so
divinely of tradition, should assume as a certainty that this Creed was
in a proper sense Apostolic. Is then the Creed of greater authority than
the inspired Scriptures? And can words in the Creed be more express than
those of St. Paul to the Colossians, speaking of Christ as the creative
mind of his Father, before all worlds,
begotten before all things
created?
Ib.
s. x. p. 449.
This paragraph is indeed a complexion, as Taylor might call it, of
sophisms. Thus; — unbelief from want of information or capacity, though
with the disposition of faith, is confounded with disbelief. The
question is not, whether it may not be safe for a man to believe simply
that Christ is his Saviour, but whether it be safe for a man to
disbelieve the article in any sense which supposes an essential
supra-humanity in Christ, — any sense that would not have been equally
applicable to John, had God chosen to raise him instead of his cousin?
Ib.
s. xi. p. 450.
Neither are we obliged to make these Articles more particular and
minute than the Creed. For since the Apostles, and indeed our blessed
Lord himself, promised heaven to them who believed him to be the
Christ that was to come into the world, and that he who believes in
him should be partaker of the resurrection and life eternal, he will
be as good as his word. Yet because this article was very general, and
a complexion rather than a single proposition, the Apostles and others
our Fathers in Christ did make it more explicit: and though they have
said no more than what lay entire and ready formed in the bosom of the
great Article, yet they made their extracts to great purpose and
absolute sufficiency; and therefore there needs no more deductions or
remoter consequences from the first great Article than the Creed of
the Apostles.
Most true; but still the question returns, what was meant by the phrase
the
Christ? Contraries cannot both be true.
The Christ
could not be both mere man and incarnate God. One or the other must
believe falsely on this great key-stone of all the intellectual faith in
Christianity. For so it is; alter it, and everything alters; as is
proved in Trinitarianism and Socinianism. No two religions can be more
different; — I know of no two equally so.
Ib.
s. xii. p. 451.
The Church hath power to intend our faith, but not to extend it; to
make our belief more evident, but not more large and comprehensive.
This and the preceding pages are scarcely honest. For Jeremy Taylor
begins with admitting that the Creed might have been composed by others.
He has no proof of that most absurd fable of the twelve Apostles
clubbing to make it; yet here all he says assumes its inspiration as a
certain fact.
Ib.
p. 454.
But for the present there is no insecurity in ending there where the
Apostles ended, in building where they built, in resting where they
left us, unless the same infallibility which they had had still
continued, which I think I shall hereafter make evident it did not.
What a tangle of contradictions Taylor thrusts himself into by the
attempt to support a true system, a full third of which he was afraid to
mention, and another third was by the same fear induced to deny — at
least to take for granted the contrary: for example, the absolute
plenary inspiration and infallibility of the Apostles and Evangelists;
and yet that their whole function, as far as the consciences of their
followers were concerned, was to repeat the two or three sentences, that
Jesus was Christ
(so says one of the Evangelists),
the Christ
of God
(so says another),
the Christ the Son of the living
God
(so says a third), that he rose from the dead, and for the
remission of sins, to as many as believed and professed that he was the
Christ or the Lord, and died and rose for the remission of sins. Surely
no miraculous communication of God's infallibility was necessary for
this. But if this infallibility was stamped on all they said and wrote,
is it credible that any part should not be equally binding? I declare I
can make nothing out of this section, but that it is necessary for men
to believe the Apostles' Creed; but what they believe by it is of no
consequence. For instance; what if I chose to understand by the word
'dead' a state of trance or suspended animation; — language furnishing
plenty of analogies — dead in a swoon — dead drunk — and so on; — should I
still be a Christian? 'Born of the Virgin Mary.' What if, as Priestley
and others, I interpreted it as if we should say, 'the former Miss
Vincent was his mother.' I need not say that I disagree with Taylor's
premisses only because they are not broad enough, and with his aim and
principal conclusion only because it does not go far enough. I would
have the law grounded wholly in the present life, religion only on the
life to come. Religion is debased by temporal motives, and law rendered
the drudge of prejudice and passion by pretending to spiritual aims. But
putting this aside, and judging of this work solely as a chain of
reasoning, I seem to find one leading error in it; namely, that Taylor
takes the condition of a first admission into the Church of Christ for
the fullness of faith which was to be gradually there acquired. The
simple acknowledgment, that they accepted Christ as their Lord and King
was the first lisping of the infant believer at which the doors were
opened, and he began the process of growth in the faith.
Ib.
s. ii. p. 457.
The great heresy that troubled them was the doctrine of the necessity
of keeping the law of Moses, the necessity of circumcision, against
which doctrine they were therefore zealous, because it was a direct
overthrow to the very end and excellency of Christ's coming.
The Jewish converts were still bound to the rite of circumcision, not
indeed as under the Law, or by the covenant of works, but as the
descendants of Abraham, and by that especial covenant which St. Paul
rightly contends was a covenant of grace and faith. But the heresy
consisted wholly in the attempt to impose this obligation on the Gentile
converts, in the infatuation of some of the Galatians, who, having no
pretension to be descendants of Abraham, could, as the Apostle urges,
only adopt the rite as binding themselves under the law of works, and
thereby apostatizing from the covenant of faith by free grace. And this
was the decision of the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem.
Acts
xv.
Rhenferd, in his Treatise on the Ebionites and other pretended heretics
in Palestine, so grossly and so ignorantly calumniated by Epiphanius,
has written excellently well on this subject. Jeremy Taylor is mistaken
throughout.
Ib.
s. iv. p. 459.
And so it was in this great question of circumcision.
It is really wonderful that a man like Bishop Taylor could have read the
New Testament, and have entertained a doubt as to the decided opinion of
all the Apostles, that every born Jew was bound to be circumcised.
Opinion? The very doubt never suggested itself. When something like this
opinion was slanderously attributed to Paul, observe the almost
ostentatious practical contradiction of the calumny which was adopted by
him at the request and by the advice of the other Apostles.
(
Acts
, xxi. 21-26.) The rite of circumcision, I say, was binding
on all the descendants of Abraham through Isaac for all time even to the
end of the world; but the whole law of Moses was binding on the Jewish
Christians till the heaven and the earth — that is, the Jewish priesthood
and the state — had passed away in the destruction of the temple and
city; and the Apostles observed every tittle of the Law.
Ib.
s. vi. p. 460.
The heresy of the Nicolaitans.
Heresy is not a proper term for a plainly anti-Christian sect.
Nicolaitans is the literal Greek translation of Balaamites; destroyers
of the people.
Rev
. ii. 14, 15.
Ib.
s. viii. p. 461.
For heresy is not an error of the understanding, but an error of the
will.
Most excellent. To this Taylor should have adhered, and to its converse.
Faith is not an accuracy of logic, but a rectitude of heart.
Ib.
p. 462.
It was the heresy of the Gnostics, that it was no matter how men
lived, so they did but believe aright.
I regard the extinction of all the writings of the Gnostics among the
heaviest losses of Ecclesiastical literature. We have only the account
of their inveterate enemies. Individual madmen there have been in all
ages, but I do not believe that any sect of Gnostics ever held this
opinion in the sense here supposed.
Ib.
And, indeed, if we remember that St. Paul reckons heresy amongst the
works of the flesh, and ranks it with all manner of practical
impieties, we shall easily perceive that if a man mingles not a vice
with his opinion, — if he be innocent in his life, though deceived in
his doctrine, — his error is his misery not his crime; it makes him an
argument of weakness and an object of pity, but not a person sealed up
to ruin and reprobation.
O admirable! How could Taylor, after this, preach and publish his Sermon
in defence of persecution, at least against toleration!
Ib.
s. xxii. p. 479.
Ebion, Manes.
such man as Ebion ever, as I can see, existed
; and Manes is
rather a doubtful
ens
.
Ib.
s. xxxi. p. 487.
But I shall observe this, that although the Nicene Fathers in that
case, at that time, and in that conjuncture of circumstances, did
well, &c.
What Bull and Waterland have urged in defence of the Nicene Fathers is
(like every thing else from such men) most worthy of all attention. They
contend that no other term but
Greek: homoousía
could secure the
Christian faith against both the two contrary errors, Tritheism with
subversion of the unity of the Godhead on the one hand, and
creature-worship on the other.
, to use Waterland's mode of argument
, either Eusebius of Nicomedia with the four other dissenters at Nice
were right or wrong in their assertion, that Christ could not be of the
Greek: ousía
of the self-originated First by derivation, as a son from
a father: — if they were right, they either must have discovered some
third distinct and intelligible form of origination in addition to
begotten
and
created
, or they had not and could not. Now the latter
was notoriously the fact. Therefore to deny the
Greek: homoousía
was
implicitly to deny the generation of the second Person, and thus to
assert his creation. But if he was a creature, he could not be adorable
without idolatry. Nor did the chain of inevitable consequences stop
here. His characteristic functions of Redeemer, Mediator, King, and
final Judge, must all cease to be attributable to Christ; and the
conclusion is, that between the Homoousian scheme and mere
Psilanthropism there is no intelligible
medium
. If this, then, be
not a fundamental article of faith, what can be?
To this reasoning I really can discern no fair reply within the sphere
of conceptual logic, if it can be made evident that the term
Greek: homooúsios
is really capable of achieving the end here set forth. One
objection to the term is, that it was not translatable into the language
of the Western Church. Consubstantial is not the translation:
substantia
answers to
Greek: hypóstasis
, not to
Greek: ousía
; and
hence, when
Greek: hypóstasis
was used by the Nicene Fathers in
distinction from
Greek: ousía
, the Latin Church was obliged to render
it by some other word, and thus introduced that most unhappy and
improper term
persona
. Would you know my own inward judgment on
this question, it is this: first, that this pregnant idea, the root and
form of all ideas, is not within the sphere of conceptual logic, — that
is, of the understanding, — and is therefore of necessity inexpressible;
for no idea can be adequately represented in words: — secondly, that I
agree with Bull and Waterland against Bishop Taylor, that there was need
of a public and solemn decision on this point: — but, lastly, that I am
more than doubtful respecting the fitness or expediency of the term
Greek: homooúsios
, and hold that the decision ought to have been
negative. For at first all parties agreed in the positive point, namely,
that Christ was the Son of God, and that the Son of God was truly God,
"or very God of very God." All that was necessary to be added was, that
the only begotten Son of God was not created nor begotten in time. More
than this might be possible, and subject of insight; but it was not
determinable by words, and was therefore to be left among the rewards of
the Spirit to the pure in heart in inward vision and silent
contemplation.
Ib.
s. xl. p. 495.
All that is necessary to give a full and satisfactory import to this
excellent paragraph, and to secure it from all inconvenient
consequences, is to understand the distinction between the objective and
general revelation, by which the whole Church is walled around and kept
together (
principium totalitatis et cohæsionis
), and the
subjective revelation, the light from the life (
John
i. 4.), by
which the individual believers, each according to the grace given, grow
in faith. For the former, the Apostles' Creed, in its present form, is
more than enough; for the latter, it might be truly said in the words of
the fourth Gospel, that all the books which the world could contain
would not suffice to set forth explicitly that mystery in which all
treasures of knowledge are hidden,
reconduntur
.
From the Apostles' Creed, nevertheless, if regarded in the former point
of view, several clauses must be struck out, not as false, but as not
necessary. "I believe that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified under
Pontius Pilate, rose from the dead on the third day; and I receive him
as the Christ, the Son of the living God, who died for the remission of
the sins of as many as believe in the Father through him, in whom we
have the promise of life everlasting." This is the sufficient creed.
More than this belongs to the Catechism, and then to the study of the
Scriptures.
Ib.
s. vi. p. 506.
So did the ancient Papias understand Christ's millenary reign upon
earth, and so depressed the hopes of Christianity and their desires to
the longing and expectation of temporal pleasures and satisfactions.
And he was followed by Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Tertullian, Lactantius,
and indeed, the whole Church generally, till St. Austin and St.
Jerome's time, who, first of any whose works are extant, did reprove
the error.
Bishop Taylor is, I think, mistaken in two points; first, that the
Catholic Millenaries looked forward to carnal pleasures in the kingdom
of Christ; — for even the Jewish Rabbis of any note represented the