Jeremy Taylor · 2 of 155

A Sketch of the Life and Times of Bishop Taylor. · Part 2

In 1662, the artifice was pushed still further, and an edition appeared with J.T. D.D., his known initials, on its title page. But the dexterity of fabricators in those days was more daring, and even more disingenuous, than in our own. The knavery of pirating names was common, and Taylor only underwent the penalty of having made a reputation which was a passport to popular applause.

Taylor’s tenderness of heart was sadly tried in the loss of children. Distressing us this must be to any man, it must have been doubly so to one who could write thus glowingly on the domestic affections. In his treatise entitled the “Marriage Ring,” he thus speaks, in the quaint yet poetic language of his time.

“Nothing can sweeten felicity but love. No man can tell, but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man’s heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges. Their childishness, their stammering, their little anger, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society. But he who loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods over a nest of sorrows, and blessing itself cannot make him happy. So that all the commandments of God, enjoining a man to love his wife, are nothing but so many necessities and capacities of joy. She that is loved is safe, and he that loves is joyful. Love is an union of all things excellent. It contains in it proportion and satisfaction, and rest and confidence, and I wish that this were so much proceeded in, that the heathens themselves could not go beyond us in this virtue, and its proper and appendant happiness. Tiberius Gracchus chose to die for the safety of his wife, and yet methinks to a Christian to do so should be no hard thing, for many servants will die for their masters, and many gentlemen for their friend, but the examples are not so many of those that are ready to die for their nearest relations. And yet some there have been. — Baptiste Fregosa tells of a Neapolitan, that gave himself as slave to the Moors that he might follow his wife, and this is a greater thing than to die.”

During this period, he kept up his correspondence with Evelyn, and between those two amiable yet grave men, the topics were naturally of a grave and lofty nature. It appears that Evelyn desired to have some difficulties resolved, relative to the state of the soul after death. Taylor answers him with a curious mixture of metaphysics and morality, the worthless learning of the schoolmen, alternately clouding and clearing away before the vigour of an intelligent mind:— “But, sir, that which you check at, is the immortality of the soul; that is, its being, in the interval before the day of judgment, which you conceive is not agreeable to the Apostles Creed, or current of Scriptures, assigning as you suppose the felicity of Christians to the resurrection. Before I speak to the thing, I must note this, that the parts which you oppose to each other may both be true, for the soul may be immortal, and yet not beatified till the resurrection. For to be, and not to be happy or miserable, are not necessary consequences to each other. For the soul may be alive, and yet not feel; as it may be alive, and not understand. So is our soul when we are fast asleep, and so Nebuchadnezzar’s soul when he had his lycanthropy. The Socinians that say the soul sleeps, do not suppose that she is mortal, but that for want of her instrument she cannot do any act of life. The soul returns to God, and that in no sense is death, and I think the death of the soul cannot be defined, and there is no death to spirits but annihilation.”

He then adverts to the felicity of Christians after the day of judgment; and, in illustration of the soul’s existence, quotes the fable of Licetus, “his lamps, whose flame had stood still fifteen hundred years in Tully’s wife’s vault.” He proceeds to say, that “as the element of fire, and the celestial globes of fire, eat nothing, but live on themselves, so can the soul when it is divested of its relative (the body.)” Such was the philosophy of his day, borrowed from the Greeks, and laughed at by the moderns.

But when he relies on his own understanding his remarks become of more value. In answer to the allowable question — why St. Paul, preaching Jesus and the resurrection, said nothing of the intermediate existence of the souls; he answers, that the resurrection of the body included and supposed that. And, secondly, “that if it had not, yet what need had he to preach that to them, which in Athens was believed by almost all their schools; for, besides that the immortality of the soul was believed by the philosophers of Egypt, India, and Chaldea, it was acknowledged by all the leading philosophers of Greece.” To this, however, he adds the remarkably insecure argument, in which, as he expresses it, “St. Paul, speaking of his rapture into heaven, purposely and by design twice says, “whether in body or out of the body I know not;” by which Taylor observes, “he plainly says, that it was no ways unlikely, that his rapture was out of the body, and therefore it is very agreeable to the nature of the soul, to operate in separation from the body.”

It is striking, to find a man of his sagacity, falling into the common error of commentators on this remarkable passage; and not less striking to find him followed in it by Bishop Heber; who remarks, that “from that text alone, the probability is, that the apostle himself took the separate existence of the soul for granted, and believed it extremely possible for a man to be and think, and even to acquire new ideas, without the existence of the body.”

Reluctant as we may be, to reject an argument which supports the great and consoling truth of the “intermediate state,” it must be acknowledged, that this interpretation is altogether unsustained by the text. Nothing can be clearer, that that St. Paul is not speaking of himself, but of another. He distinctly states, that he will glory, not in the visions and revelations made to himself, but in those made to an individual, in whose Divine visitations he might rejoice with safety and propriety. While, as to himself, if he were to glory in anything, it should be in his infirmities; which is obviously equivalent to not glorying at all.

Having thus fully established the distinction he proceeds to speak of this highly-favoured individual, as one whom he knew fourteen years before, though whether he were now dead or living, he could not say; or as the text expresses it, “whether in the body I cannot tell, or whether out of the body I cannot tell; God knoweth. The phrase “out of the body,” being the common Scripture phrase for death; and as such used by St. Paul himself, when he desires to be “absent from the body, and present with the Lord.” Under the usual interpretation the whole passage is a mass of perplexity.

Yet in the midst of those important studies, this estimable man was not to escape the prying and persecuting spirit of the time. His printer, Royston, had prefixed to his “Collections of Offices” an engraving of our Lord in prayer. The representations, which printers had been so long in the habit of prefixing to their volumes, were regarded as idolatrous by the new-born conscience of the age. The scruple had even gone to the extent of an act for punishing those formidable transgressions by fine and imprisonment. Taylor was not a man likely to provoke authority, for the mere indulgence of opposition; and it could scarcely be supposed that he felt inclined to pay more homage to Popery than to government. But those were the days for which zealots had cavilled and rebels had fought; and the triumph of both had alike issued in the direct overthrow of their principles. It is enough to say of this period and its law, that Taylor was committed to a prison for a third time.

His place of confinement was the Tower; whether as implying an offence more nearly touching on high-treason, or from the crowded state of the other prisons in this era of successful freedom! How long he might have been destined by the mercy of his accusers to remain there, is not now to be known; for the same friendship which had never failed him, again interposed. Evelyn exerted himself to represent his innocence to the ruling powers. Cromwell, who persecuted only from policy, while others persecuted from zeal, was probably not disinclined to let such a prisoner go free: Evelyn’s entreaty, that his learned and pious friend might be allowed to explain his conduct, was accordingly listed to; and, after an incarceration of two months, he regained his liberty.

But the experiment of clemency under the protectorate was not to be safety hazarded again; and Taylor’s friends now consulted how to withdraw him altogether from the vigilant eyes that watched his career in England. While he remained in London he would have boldly continued to officiate, and administer the sacraments, in the private meetings of his people. But Episcopacy had been extinguished, and the angry strength of government was bent on crushing the remnants of the church. Edward, Earl of Conway, the proprietor of large estates near Lisburn in Ireland, now proposed to Evelyn that his friend should remove there to take a lectureship then at the earl’s disposal.

Taylor was strongly disinclined to leave England, even though his steps there were in the lion’s den. After thanking Evelyn for his unwearied kindness, he told his thoughts freely of this unpalatable change. “I like not,” says his letter, “the condition of being a lecturer under the disposal of another. Sir, the stipend is so inconsiderable, that it will not pay the charge of removing myself and family. It is wholly arbitrary, for the triers may overthrow it, or the vicar may forbid it, or the subscribers may die, or grow weary, or be absent. I beseech you, sir, pay my thanks to your friend who had so much kindness for me as to intend my benefit.” He seems here to have had a correct idea of the “voluntary principle;” but his reluctance was overcome, probably by the remonstrances of his friends, who knew more of his danger, and feared more for him than he feared for himself. He accordingly set out, furnished with letters to the leading persons of Ireland, the lord chancellor, the chief baron, the general in command, and even with a letter from Cromwell himself, under his signet. In Ireland he divided his residence between Lisburn and the neighbourhood of Portmore, a princely mansion built by Inigo Jones, and belonging to the Conway family. Here he found at once seclusion and safety. The surrounding country is romantic: the great lake of Lough Neah washed the park of Portmore; and in its sylvan and lonely islets, he is said to have frequently indulged his love of nature and solitude. Here, too, he proceeded with renewed vigour in the great work, which he had founded as the pillar of his fame, and it was to the shelter of Portmore that the age owed the completion of the “Ductor Dubitantium.” Yet his shelter was not altogether secure, for even there he was denounced by an informer, to the Irish privy council, as a dangerous character; the chief pungency of the crime being, that he had used the sign of the cross in private baptism. For such treasons men were thrown into dungeons in the days of our ancestors! Taylor was ordered up to Dublin, in the depth of winter. The result of his journey was a severe illness, which however probably saved him from the greater severity of persecution.

But his trials were at last to approach their end. To publish his great work, and to renew his intercourse with his friends, he travelled onwards to London. The times were anxious, the great usurper was dead, the army had resumed its old power of disposing of the state, and all eyes were turned on its general. Monk, tardy and cold, yet artificial and dexterous, still kept the nation in suspense. At this critical period, some of the bolder loyalists came forward, and drew up a declaration of confidence in the general. Taylor, who regarded both life and death only as the means of zealously serving the truth, was among the first to sign this momentous paper. The confidence thus given to Monk was the signal for the restoration of the monarchy.

If Charles was yet to disappoint the national hopes, no sovereign was ever welcomed with more sincere rejoicing. All men were weary of the past. The misery of revolution had been fully felt: the unspeakable wretchedness of living at the caprice of a popular assembly, had penetrated into every cottage; even the sullen tyranny of the protectorate had been felt as a relief from the restless vexations of popular rule; and so deep was the disgust earned by republicanism, that the nation, in a moment of confidence, as rash as their disgust was sincere, threw themselves, and their liberties together, at the foot of the young king.

In the general re-establishment of the church, Taylor could not be disregarded without palpable injustice. His piety, learning, and sufferings had been equally conspicuous. He was well known to many powerful men round the throne. Whether his having married the natural sister of the king contributed to his advancement, is not ascertained; though if Charles desired to remove her from his immediate presence, it might have contributed to his location at a distance from court. On the 6th of August, 1660, Taylor was appointed to the bishopric of Down and Conner in Ireland; and soon after elected vice-chancellor of the university of Dublin.

He had at length found a situation worthy of his activity and of his feelings. His first attention was directed to the affairs of the university. His knowledge of mankind told him that education was the great instrument of civil order and religious truth; and his well-won experience had proved that universities alone can dispense education without hazard to the state, and sustain the stream of national religion without sullying its purity. He found the revenues of the university dilapidated, and the lands in many instances given away. So great were the disorders introduced under the Commonwealth, that none of the existing scholars or fellows had legal titles, all having been introduced by irregular election, or forced on the electors by the government. Taylor took upon himself the labour of revising the statutes of Bishop Bedel, and establishing others required by the new circumstances of the university.

In this sense, he may be regarded as a second founder of that noble Institution, which, under Providence, has been the great source and sustainer of Protestantism and freedom in the sister country — not destitute of those displays which make national fame; sending out, from time to time, those magnificent minds, her Burkes and Grattans, which belong not to provinces, but empires, and come periodically to reinforce the intellect of mankind; but, in all periods, by the vigour and exactness of her learning, and the manliness and purity of her principles, transmitting knowledge, loyalty, and religion, into the bosom of the land: — a great luminary, on which, for centuries, has depended all the moral sunshine of Ireland; sending out, from time to time, flashes and emanations, of a lustre that breaks through all her clouds; and even in her gloomiest hours, shooting its influence through the soil, kindling every latent seed that is yet to vegetate into national virtue, and preparing the more perfect day.

“Aggredere, o magnos, aderit jam tempus, honores; Cara Deum soboles!”

The Bishop’s merits were to be still further honoured. During the Commonwealth, Ireland had been almost wholly denuded of its Episcopalian clergy. By the exertions of the Duke of Ormond they now began to be restored. On the 27th of January, 1661, two archbishops and ten bishops were consecrated in the cathedral of St. Patrick, in Dublin, by Bramhall, the primate. And in the next month the Bishop of Down was called to the Irish privy council, and shortly afterwards appointed to the administration of the small adjoining diocese of Dromore. But if sudden authority has often been a dangerous trial to unsettled virtue, it only exhibited more largely the dignity and mercy of his mind. The Irish massacre of 1641, had thrown vast tracts of country into the hands of government. The civil war had next perverted might into rapine, and the Commonwealth had finally consolidated rapine into law. In Ireland all the elements of order had been confounded. It was now the difficult task of the legitimate government to bring society into form once more. The question of the confiscated estates might have offered a snare to an orator ambitious of influence, or to a man of influence eager for possession. But Taylor’s language on this subject was worthy of his principles. With equal force and simplicity, he thus addressed his fellow legislators: —

“You cannot obey God, unless you do justice, for this also is better than sacrifice, said Solomon. For Christ, who is the sun of righteousness, is a sun and shield to them that do righteously.

“You are to give sentence in the causes of half a nation; and he had needs be a wise and good man who divides the inheritance among brethren, that he may not be abused by contrary pretences, nor biassed by the interest of friends, nor transported with the unjust thoughts even of a just revenge, nor allured by the opportunities of spoil, nor blinded by gold, which puts out the eyes of wise men, nor cozened by pretended zeal. For justice ought to be the simplest thing in the world, and to be measured by nothing but truth, and by laws, and by the decrees of princes.”

The passage which follows is worthy of being recorded among the first maxims of national justice in troubled times.

“But whatever you do, let not the pretence of a different religion make you think it lawful to oppress any man in his just rights; for not opinions, but laws, and doing as we would be done to, are the measures of justice. And though justice does alike to all men, Jew and Christian, Lutheran and Calvinist; yet, to do right to them that are of another opinion, is the way to win them. But if you, for conscience sake, do them wrong, they will hate both you and your religion.”

He concludes with a fine enunciation of his noble principle: — “You must be as just as the law, and you must be as merciful as your religion. And you have no way to tie those together, but to follow the pattern in the mount — do as God does, who in judgment remembers mercy.”

This pious and learned man was now approaching his close. It is among the mysterious dispensations of Providence, that some of the purest-minded of men have been the most subjected to personal afflictions. Yet while this world is to be regarded only as a school of the human spirit, and the Deity holds in his hand boundless compensation for all suffering, it is only the work of reason, to be convinced that the deeper affliction has been laid on for purposes essential to the richer reward.

At an early period of life, Taylor had lost all his sons but two. And now, when affluence and rank seemed sent to brighten the remainder of his anxious and ardent days, those two died, both by premature deaths, — His elder son, a captain of horse in the king’s service, in a duel with a brother officer, who also fell; and his second son, of a consumption, in the house of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, to whom he was private secretary. Grief for the former of those losses, hung heavily upon the father’s heart; and though the death of his second son occurred in England, but on the day before the commencement of his own final illness in Ireland, the knowledge of his disease, and of its almost inevitable consummation, may have added bitterness to the blow. On the 3rd of August 1667, the Bishop was seized with a fever, which, acting on an enfeebled frame and a depressed mind, made such progress, that within ten days he breathed his last, in the 55th year of his age, and tenth of his episcopacy; — thenceforth to live among the glorious concourse, whom change can touch no more.

“Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita mancbat, Quique pii vates, Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo.”

His wife survived him for many years. He left three daughters, the eldest of whom died unmarried, the second married Dr. Marsh, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, and the third married a Mr. Harrison, a man of fortune, and member of parliament for the borough of Lisburn.

Taylor’s personal appearance is said to have been highly favourable; his figure, above the middle size, strong and well formed, his eye large and dark, his nose aquiline, his countenance open, and we may fairly presume, intelligent; and his hair, in early life, in the fashion of his age, redundant, and flowing in curls. If he had not been a cleric, he would have made a handsome cavalier. But the only original portrait known to be in existence, is that in All-soul’s College, taken when those youthful graces had disappeared; and where his resigned yet melancholy look shows that he had gone through many afflictions.

Of the more important topic, his last hours, too little is known. The manner in which such a man receives the final summons, the clearness of his views when the passions are no more, the strength of his faith when the world sinks from the eye, are inquires which all would make, who desire to have their convictions enforced, or their hopes animated; who would be enlightened by the wisdom of the intelligent, or invigorated by the fortitude of the holy. But, of those hours no detail seems to have been preserved; and we must be content with such conjecture as we can form from his life. Yet, who can doubt that the death of this man of virtue was consistent with his career? that he whose existence was a long display of Christian courage, was calm in the presence of the last enemy? that he who had faced the dungeon, and would have faced the scaffold, without a fear, must have shown, on his pillow, in what peace a Christian can die?

The conditions of the church, during the life of Bishop Taylor, forms one of the most remarkable features of its history. The persecution under Mary had driven many of the clergy to seek refuge in foreign countries. Calvin’s learning, zeal, and eloquence had made him the great surviving leader of the Reformation, in the eyes of a large portion of the continental church. Some of the clergy, on their return, had brought with them his doctrines. Calvin, equally stern and sincere, had evidently thought that he approached the nearer to the truth of the gospel, the further he receded from the principles of Rome. Especially disgusted with the haughtiness of the Romish hierarchy, he had at length conceived that independence of the civil government was essential to the purity of the church. The tempest was now gathering which was to fall upon the Establishment.

Presbyterianism, founded in Geneva in 1541, first appeared in England in 1572. The remembrance of the Papal domination and the terror of its return, made the new doctrines popular. The Protestant exiles, returning from the Continent, reinforced the zeal of their countrymen. A new impulse was to be added from the North. Scotland, on the death of Elizabeth, in 1503, had given a king to England. The disputes between the monarch and the people had already involved the Scottish Episcopacy in odium. Presbyterianism, recruited from the multitude, was too powerful for Episcopacy, deserted by the throne; and after a century of various struggles, it was declared the Established Church of Scotland. The junction of the civil governments brought with it the religious controversy; and the flame, exhausted in the confines of the North, blazed into new violence among the vast, various, and inflammable materials of the public mind of England.

The British constitution, slowly gathered out of the wrecks of Saxon privilege, had been, for a century, gradually forming into freedom. But the structure was still harsh, irregular, and threatening. Modeled by the hands of powerful subjects, more anxious for the increase of personal power, than for the extension of public right; it bore the characters of the baronial architecture — bold, but rude; magnificent, but frowning — the palace combined with the dungeon. Other and nobler times, were at once the fortress into the temple; and, throwing open its gates alike to all, summon the multitude to bow down before altars, where true liberty stood robed in the broadest rays of true religion.

The power of the crown, in the earlier period of that memorable century, had, by habit, assumed something of the power of a Divinity; and its first restraints were regarded by the sovereign less an innovation than sacrilege. But England was marked for a high destiny, incompatible with a return to arbitrary rule. She was to be the head of Protestantism to Europe; and for this purpose she was to be the great example of a free government to mankind. The form of her church was still of clay, but the proportions were noble; and life, from the most illustrious of all sources, was already shooting through its frame. If, like our great ancestor, it was soon to fall upon evil days, and be disinherited of its original birth-right, it was appointed to a triumphant recovery; that recovery itself, we will believe, only an emblem of days of larger dominion, and more unclouded splendour.

The prosperity of England under Elizabeth, the overthrow of the Spanish invasion, the new growth of commerce, and the native manliness of the public heart, all animated by the evidence of the public strength, had prepared her for the future ascent to all the heights of civil freedom. If her elevation was still to be slow, stormy, and exposed to vicissitude, it was still to proceed. The accession of James, well-meaning but harsh, a pedant in statesmanship, and a monk in religion, wasting the royal treasure on foreign policies, and creating controversies at home, at once relaxed the royal influence, and stimulated religious inquiry. The accession of Charles only hastened the catastrophe. His spirit, at once chivalric and gentle - fatal to him in both aspects, by giving him the loftiest conception of his rights, and suggesting the feeblest means of sustaining them — marked him as the victim of a time of change. The death of that unhappy sovereign is still written in the darkest page of national guilt. It should also be written in the most disastrous page of national misfortune. Regicide, as the dissolution of the highest bond of society, seems to be visited in all lands by the especial wrath of heaven. No event in the national annals ever gave so instant a check to the advance of freedom, — The stream that flowed from the scaffold of the king, instantly made its path impassable.

Even from the hour when hostility was first turned from the crown to the wearer of the crown, and it was resolved to baptize the Republic in royal blood, calamity fell broad and heavy upon the land. Liberty, misunderstood by some, and abused by others, and religion, equally misunderstood and equally abused, were forced into a profane alliance against the people. The Establishment, the most ancient and noble rampart of the monarchy, was first to be seized. Too powerful to be stormed, it was undermined; and the result was true to the calculation. With it went down the monarchy. The heads of both perished on the same scaffold Laud only preceeded Charles to the grave.

But the fall of the Church left a chasm in the state which was not to be filled. Civil faction attempted it, and failed. Religious faction attempted it, and failed. The liberty, property, and blood of the people were thrown in, but the gulf was still widening. The Commonwealth was flung in, the Protectorship followed: at length the nation returned to its earlier wisdom; replaced the Establishment on its old foundations; and stopped the progress of public ruin.

The history of this interregnum is only the history of rival factions, various in their features, but filled with the same spirit, taking different means to power but all alike hazardous to public security; and, whether they stole their fires from above or from below, whether enthusiasts or intriguers, each risking alike the conflagration of the roof under which they professed to administer to the good of the people.

The Establishment had perished; but it was only to leave room for the struggle of the sects. Independentism was the new competitor. It had arisen from the schism of the Brownists, who flourished in the preceding century. After existing for a period in Holland, it was brought into England in 1616, by Henry Jacobs, a Puritan. Its principle was, spiritual association with mutual independence of its churches. At the commencement of the great rebellion, some of the Independent ministers returning from the Continent, and taking their seats in the assembly of divines, had begun to form congregations. Against this measure Presbyterianism, then in possession of power, strongly remonstrated. The Independents as strongly complained, that the Presbyterians, standing in the place of the ancient Establishment, had, with its power, adopted more than its persecution, that it denied a middle way between rigid uniformity and utter confusion; and that though, in its own case, declaiming against the use of the civil sword, it had unhesitatingly used force to settle the consciences of others.