Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down, Connor and Dronmore, 1613–1667. Born, at Cambridge, 15 Aug. 1613. At Cambridge Free School, 1616–26. Sizar, Gonville and Caius Coll., Camb., 18 Aug. 1626; matric., 17 March 1627; B.A., 1631; M.A., 1634; Incorp. Fellow of All Souls Coll., Oxford, 20 Oct. 1635. Ordained chaplain to Archbishop Laud. Chaplain to Charles I., 1638. Rector of Uppingham, 1638–42. Married Phœbe Landisdale, 27 May 1639. Created D.D. from Brasenose Coll. Oxford, 1 Nov. 1642. With the King, as Chaplain, during Civil War. Kept a school in Wales, with W. Nicholson and W. Wyatt, 1646–47. Chaplain to Earl of Carbery, at Golden Grove, Carmarthenshire, 1647–57. Settled in Ireland, as Rector of Lisburn and Portmore, 1658. Bishop of Down and Connor, Jan. 1661. Privy Councillor, Ireland, Feb. 1661. Bishop of Dronmore, June 1661. Vice-Chancellor, Dublin Univ., 1661. Died, at Lisburn, 13 Aug. 1667. Buried in Dronmore Cathedral. Works: “A Sermon preached … in Oxford, upon the Anniversary of the Gunpowder Treason,” 1638; “Of the Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy,” 1642; “A Discourse concerning Prayer Extempore” (anon.), 1646; “A New and Easie Institution of Grammar,” 1647; “Θεολια Ἐκλεκτικη,” 1647; “Treatises” (4 pts.), 1648; “An Apology for … set forms of Liturgie,” 1649; “The Great Exemplar,” 1649; “The Martyrdom of King Charles I.,” 1649; “Sermon at the Funeral of Frances, Countess of Carbery,” 1650; “The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living,” 1650; “The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying,” 1651; “Twenty-eight Sermons,” 1651; “A Short Catechism” (anon.), 1652; “A Discourse of Baptism,” 1652; “The Real Presence,” 1654; “Ἐνιαυτος” (3 pts.), 1653–55; “The Golden Grove” (anon.), 1655; “Unum Necessarium,” 1655; “Deus Justificatus,” 1656; “An Answer to a Letter written by the Bishop of Rochester,” 1656; “A Discourse of Auxiliary Beauty” (anon.), 1656; “A Discourse of … Friendship” (under initials: J.T., D.D.), 1657 (2nd edn., called: “The Measure and Offices of Friendship,” same year); “Συμβολον Ἠθικη-Πολεμικον,” 1657; “The Ephesian Matron” (anon.), 1659; “Ductor Dubitantium,” 1660; “The Worthy Communicant,” 1660; “Sermon preached at the Consecration of two Archbishops, etc.,” 1661; “Rules and Advices to the Clergy of Down and Connor,” 1661; “A Sermon preached at the Opening of Parliament,” 1661; “Via Intelligentiæ,” 1662; “Sermon preached at the Funeral of the Archbishop of Armagh,” 1663; “Ἐβδομας Ἐμβολιμαιος” (6 pts.), 1661–63; “A Dissuasive from Popery,” 1664; (3rd edn. same year); “Second Part” of preceding, 1667. Posthumous: “Συμβολον Θεολογικου,” 1673–74; “Christ’s Yoke an Easy Yoke,” 1675; “Contemplations of the State of Man,” 1684; “A Discourse on the Lord’s Supper,” 1792. He edited: “The Psalter of David,” 1644. Collected Works: in 15 vols., ed. by Bishop Heber, 1822. Life: by H. K. Bonney, 1815.

Personal

  To these advantages of nature, and excellency of his spirit, he added an indefatigable industry, and God gave a plentiful benediction; for there were very few kinds of learning but he was a mystes and a great master in them. He was a rare Humanist, and hugely versed in all the polite parts of Learning, and thoroughly concocted all the antient Moralists, Greek and Roman Poets and Orators, and was not unacquainted with the refined wits of the latter ages, whether French or Italian…. This great prelate had the good humour of a gentleman, the eloquence of an orator, the fancy of a poet, the acuteness of a Schoolman, the profoundness of a Philosopher, the wisdom of a Counsellor, the sagacity of a Prophet, the reason of an angel, and the piety of a Saint: he had devotion enough for a Cloister, learning enough for an University, and wit enough for a College of Virtuosi: and, had his parts and endowments been parcelled out among his poor Clergy that he left behind him, it would, perhaps, have made one of the best diocesses in the world.

  He was esteemed by the generality of persons a compleat artist, accurate logician, exquisite, quick and acute in his reasonings, a person of great fluency in his language and of prodigious readiness in his learning. A noted Presbyterian [Hen. Jeanes, in his Epist. to the Reader before Certain Letters between him and Jer. Taylor, 1660, fol.] also (his antagonist) doth ingeniously confess that Dr. Taylor is a man of admirable wit, great parts, hath a quick and elegant pen, is of abilities in critical learning and of profound skill in antiquity.

  Those who have looked at Taylor’s portraits will have been struck by the beauty and grace of his personal appearance. There is a ripe and somewhat soft freshness of health in his face, “with his hair long and gracefully curling on his cheeks, large dark eyes full of sweetness, an aquiline nose,” and an open earnest expression. He is said not to have been without consciousness of his personal beauty, and to have frequently introduced his portraits in different attitudes in his various writings.

The Liberty of Prophesying, 1647

  The most curious, and, perhaps, the ablest of all his compositions,—his admirable “Liberty of Prophesying;” composed, as he tells his patron, Lord Hatton,… under a host of grievous disadvantages; in adversity and want; without books or leisure; and with no other resources than those which were supplied by a long familiarity with the sacred volume, and a powerful mind, imbued with all the learning of past ages.

  Taylor’s was a great and lovely mind; yet how much and injuriously was it perverted by his being a favourite and follower of Laud, and by his intensely popish feelings of church authority. His “Liberty of Prophesying” is a work of wonderful eloquence and skill; but if we believe the argument, what do we come to? Why to nothing more or less than this, that—so much can be said for every opinion and sect,—so impossible is it to settle anything by reasoning or authority of Scripture,—we must appeal to some positive jurisdiction on earth, ut sit finis controversiarum…. I fear you will think me harsh, when I say that I believe Taylor was, perhaps unconsciously, half a Socinian in heart. Such a strange inconsistency would not be impossible.

  This celebrated work was written, according to Taylor’s dedication, during his retirement in Wales, whither he was driven, as he expresses it, “by this great storm which hath dashed the vessel of the church all in pieces;” and published in 1647. He speaks of himself as without access to books: it is evident, however, from the abundance of his quotations, that he was not much in want of them; and from this, as well as other strong indications, we may reasonably believe that a considerable part of his treatise had been committed to paper long before. The argument of this important book rests on one leading maxim, derived from the Arminian divines, as it was in them from Erasmus and Acontius, that the fundamental truths of Christianity are comprised in narrow compass, not beyond the Apostles’ Creed in its literal meaning; that all the rest is matter of disputation, and too uncertain, for the most part, to warrant our condemning those who differ from us, as if their error must be criminal.

Holy Living and Holy Dying, 1650–51

  His “Holy Living and Dying” is a divine pastoral. He writes to the faithful followers of Christ, as the shepherd pipes to his flock. He introduces touching and heartfelt appeals to familiar life; condescends to men of low estate; and his pious page blushes with modesty and beauty. His style is prismatic. It unfolds the colours of the rainbow; it floats like the bubble through the air; it is like innumerable dew-drops that glitter on the face of morning, and tremble as they glitter. He does not dig his way underground, but slides upon ice, borne on the winged car of fancy. The dancing light he throws upon objects is like an Aurora Borealis, playing betwixt heaven and earth.

  His masterpiece. A series of sermons in simple paragraphs, eloquent and persuasive, exhorting to an upright and holy life. It has been a popular book even to the present time. All of Taylor’s writings are marred by the style prevalent in his time, but accentuated and exaggerated by him; Latinized, but careless, florid, gorgeous, rapid, opulent of words.

  Even Jeremy Taylor suffers from the imperfections of contemporary taste. His unction is too long-drawn, his graces too elaborate and gorgeous, and modern readers turn from the sermons which his own age thought so consummate in their beauty to those more colloquial treatises of Christian exposition and exhortation of which the “Holy Living” and the “Holy Dying” are the types.

Unum Necessarium, 1655

  In another, the “Unum Necessarium,” or Discourse on Repentance, his looseness of statement and want of care in driving several horses at once, involved him in a charge of Pelagianism, or something like it, which he wrote much to disprove, but which has so far lasted as to justify modern theologians in regarding his ideas on this and other theological points as, to say the least, confused.

Ductor Dubitantium, 1660

  A brilliancy of imagination appears in all his writings; but his “Ductor Dubitantium” is a signal proof of his judgment.

  The best work of the sort, perhaps, that ever was published, and the most elaborate and exquisite of all his own writings.

  Of this largest and most laborious of Bishop Taylor’s works it has been said, without exaggeration, that it is the production of retentive memory and laborious research, of learning various and profound, and of reasoning close and dispassionate.

  The most extensive and learned work on casuistry which has appeared in the English language is the “Ductor Dubitantium” of Jeremy Taylor, published in 1660. This, as its title shows, treats of subjective morality, or the guidance of the conscience. But this cannot be much discussed without establishing some principles of objective right and wrong, some standard by which the conscience is to be ruled…. The heterogeneous combination of things so different in nature and authority, as if they were all expressions of the law of God, does not augur well for the distinctness of Taylor’s moral philosophy, and would be disadvantageously compared with the “Ecclesiastical Polity” of Hooker. Nor are we deceived in the anticipations we might draw. With many of Taylor’s excellences, his vast fertility and his frequent acuteness, the “Ductor Dubitantium” exhibits his characteristic defects: the waste of quotations is even greater than in his other writings, and his own exuberance of mind degenerates into an intolerable prolixity. His solution of moral difficulties is often unsatisfactory: after an accumulation of arguments and authorities, we have the disappointment to perceive that the knot is neither untied nor cut; there seems a want of close investigation of principles, a frequent confusion and obscurity, which Taylor’s two chief faults—excessive display of erudition, and redundancy of language—conspire to produce. Paley is no doubt often superficial, and sometimes mistaken; yet in clearness, in conciseness, in freedom from impertinent reference to authority, he is far superior to Taylor.

  Illustrating, better almost than any other book in the language, a remarkable point in the history of speculation—the transition from moral theology to moral philosophy, from the textbooks of the confessional to the works of writers on morals, regarded as a matter of ordinary speculation.

  The style of the book is prolix and hazy, overloaded with quotations and references, and only rarely enriched by illustration or eloquence, for which, indeed, the subject gives little scope.

Sermons

  Borrowed Dr. Taylor’s “Sermons,” and is a most excellent booke and worth my buying.

  His excellent discourses, which are enough of themselves to furnish a library, and will be famous to all succeeding generations for the exactness of wit, profoundness of judgment, richness of fancy, clearness of expression, copiousness of invention, and general usefulness to all the purposes of a Christian.

  Taylor and Barrow are incomparably the greatest preachers and divines of their age. But my predilection is for Taylor. He has all the abundance and solidity of the other, with a ray of lightening of his own, which, if he did not derive it from Demosthenes and Tully, has, at least, as generous and noble an original. It is true they are both incompti, or rather exuberant. But it is for such little writers as the Preacher of Lincoln’s Inn [himself] to hide their barrenness by the finicalness of culture.

  As essays for the closet, and as intended for those into whose hands they usually fall, few compositions can be named so eminently distinguished by fancy, by judgment, by learning, and by powers of reasoning; few, where the mind is so irresistibly allured,… or where so much luxuriance of imagination, and so much mellowness of style, are made the vehicles of divinity so sound, and holiness so practical.

  It seems very certain that he was pre-eminently a poet amongst preachers. This apology and allowance must be made for him, that no other pulpit name is associated with so rich and rare a poetic exuberance. The epithet of the modern, or the English Chrysostom seems scarcely a fitting one; Chrysostom was essentially an orator. We do not think of Jeremy Taylor as an orator. We have already said, we cannot conceive those sermons preached to vast audiences; he who cannot preach to vast audiences is no orator; he may be a most delightful preacher with the audience fit and few, and the charm of cryptic thought and feeling; and this is the attraction and the pleasure of the devotions and contemplations of Jeremy Taylor.

  It is generally admitted that the literary genius of Taylor is seen at its best in his sermons. A passage in a sermon by South (30 April 1668) is evidently aimed at the pulpit style of Taylor, whose “starched similitudes” he caricatures. But while Taylor’s imagination travels far and wide, takes daring flights, and again treads homely ground, he employs his gift in real elucidation of his point; and by the vividness of his own conceptions redeems from commonplace the preacher’s most obvious themes. Apart from the play of fancy, the singular neatness of his workmanship gives beauty to his writing. The appalling length of his periods is very much a matter of punctuation. His style is not involved; few writers have been better artists in clear and striking sentences. It is true that he is wanting in some of the higher qualities of eloquence. He arrests and delights rather than moves his reader, for he is not himself carried away. In the midst of splendours he never rises into passion, and bounds his meaning with even cautious care. In his piety there is little fervour, but all his writings give the deep impression of a chastened and consecrated spirit of devotion.

General

  We see the Reverend Doctor’s Treatises standing, as it were, in the front of this order of authors, and as the foremost of those Good Books used by the politest and most refined Devotees of either sex. They maintain the principal place in the study of almost every elegant and high Divine. They stand in folios and other volumes, adorned with variety of pictures, gildings, and other decorations, on the advanced shelves or glass cupboards of the ladies’ closets. They are in use at all seasons, and for all places; as well for church service as closet-preparation; and, in short, may vie with any devotional books in British Christendom.

  In learning he was scarcely inferior to any theologian whatever; and in richness of imagination he is superior to all. On the subject of original sin, and of the justification of man before God, his sentiments differed from those of the established church of which he was a member; but on other points of Christian verity his views were generally correct. He is one of those few authors “the dust of whose works is gold;” and as long as the English language is understood, his volumes will constitute some of its choicest treasures. Through the whole of his numerous writings the flame of genius and of devotion burns with unabated and unexampled strength.

  Doctor Jeremy Taylor, late Lord Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland, and Administrator of the See of Dromore; such are the titles which his sounding title pages give him, and I love the man, and I love his paraphernalia, and I like to name him with all his attributions and additions. If you are yet but lightly acquainted with his real manner, take up and read the whole first chapter of the “Holy Dying;” in particular turn to the first paragraph of the 2 sect. of that chapter for a simile of a rose, or the more truly many similes within simile; for such were the riches of his fancy, that when a beauteous image offered, before he could stay to expand it into all its capacities, throngs of new coming images came up, and jostled out the first, or blended in disorder with it, which imitates the order of every rapid mind. But read all of the first chapter by my advice…. Or for another specimen … turn to the story of the Ephesian Matron in the second section of the 5th chapter … read it yourself and show it to Plumstead with my Love, and … ask him if Willy himself has ever told a story with more circumstances of Fancy and Humor. The paragraph begins, “But that which is to be faulted,” and the story not long after follows. Make these references while P. is with you, that you may stir him him up to the Love of Jeremy Taylor, and make a convertite of him. Coleridge was the man who first solemnly exhorted me to “study” the works of Dr. Jeremy Taylor, and I have had reason to bless the hour in which he did it.

  From this venerable and learned writer’s Polemical Discourses, the Theological Student must derive the soundest instruction and most important advantages. It may not perhaps be generally known, but its nevertheless true, that partly from the 44th section or discourse of Dr. Taylor, and partly from Stillingfleet’s Irenicum, Mr. Locke borrowed the plan of his Letters on Toleration.

  There is in any one of the prose folios of Jeremy Taylor more fine fancy and original imagery—more brilliant conceptions and glowing expressions—more new figures, and new applications of old figures—more, in short, of the body and the soul of poetry, than in all the odes and the epics that have since been produced in Europe.

  It would be worth your while to read Taylor’s “Letter on Original Sin,” and what follows. I compare it to an old statue of Janus, with one of the faces, that which looks towards his opponents, the controversial phiz in highest preservation,—the force of a mighty one, all power, all life,—the face of a God rushing on to battle, and, in the same moment, enjoying at once both contest and triumph; the other, that which should have been the countenance that looks toward his followers, that with which he substitutes his own opinion, all weather eaten, dim, useless, a Ghost in marble, such as you may have seen represented in many of Piranesi’s astounding engravings from Rome and the Campus Martius. Jer. Taylor’s discursive intellect dazzle-darkened his intuition. The principle of becoming all things to all men, if by any means he might save any, with him as with Burke, thickened the protecting epidermis of the tact-nerve of truth into something like a callus. But take him all in all, such a miraculous combination of erudition, broad, deep, and omnigenous; of logic subtle as well as acute, and as robust as agile; of psychological insight, so fine yet so secure! of public prudence and practical sageness that one ray of creative Faith would have lit up and transfigured into wisdom, and of genuine imagination, with its streaming face unifying all at one moment like that of the setting sun when, through an interspace of blue sky no larger than itself, it emerges from the cloud to sink behind the mountain, but a face seen only at starts, when some breeze from the higher air scatters, for a moment, the cloud of butterfly fancies, which flutter around him like a morning-garment of ten thousand colours—(now how shall I get out of this sentence? the tail is too big to be taken up into the coiler’s mouth)—well, as I was saying, I believe such a complete man hardly shall we meet again.

  Jeremy Taylor was a writer as different from Sir Thomas Browne as it was possible for one writer to be from another. He was a dignitary of the church, and except in matters of casuistry and controverted points, could not be supposed to enter upon speculative doubts, or give a loose to a sort of dogmatical scepticism. He had less thought, less “stuff of the conscience,” less “to give us pause,” in his impetuous oratory, but he had equal fancy—not the same vastness and profundity, but more richness and beauty, more warmth and tenderness. He is as rapid, as flowing and endless, as the other is stately, abrupt, and concentrated. The eloquence of the one is like a river, that of the other is more like an aqueduct. The one is as sanguine as the other is saturnine in the temper of his mind. Jeremy Taylor took obvious and admitted truths for granted, and illustrated them with an inexhaustible display of new and enchanting imagery. Sir Thomas Browne talks in sum-totals: Jeremy Taylor enumerates all the particulars of a subject. He gives every aspect it will bear, and never “cloys with sameness.” His characteristic is enthusiastic and delightful amplification. Sir Thomas Browne gives the beginning and end of things, that you may judge of their place and magnitude: Jeremy Taylor describes their qualities and texture, and enters into all the items of the debtor and creditor account between life and death, grace and nature, faith and good works. He puts his heart into his fancy. He does not pretend to annihilate the passions and pursuits of mankind in the pride of philosophic indifference, but treats them as serious and momentous things, warring with conscience and the soul’s health, or furnishing the means of grace and hopes of glory. In his writings, the frail stalk of human life reclines on the bosom of eternity.

  I have already had occasion to point out the versatility of his talents, which, though uniformly exerted on subjects appropriate to his profession, are distinguished, where such weapons are needed, by irony and caustic humour, as well as by those milder and sublimer beauties of style and sentiment which are his more familiar and distinguishing characteristics. Yet to such weapons he has never recourse either wantonly or rashly. Nor do I recollect any instance in which he has employed them in the cause of private, or personal, or even polemical hostility; or any occasion where their fullest severity was not justified and called for by crimes, by cruelty, by interested superstition, or base and sordid hypocrisy. His satire was always kept in check by the depth and fervour of his religious feelings, his charity, and his humility.

  The heavenly-mindedness of Jeremy Taylor threw such a charm over his diction—exhibited such proofs of genius and of piety—that that great man may be considered as the founder of a school, (even of the opposite persuasion), in which enthusiasm was mistaken for inspiration, and where there was an equal glow of piety, but unsupported by such flights of genius and such demonstrations of learning.

  Jeremy Taylor, restless, fervid, aspiring, scattering abroad a prodigality of life, not unfolding but creating, with the energy and the “myriad-mindedness” of Shakspere…. As to Jeremy Taylor, we would as readily undertake to put a belt about the ocean as to characterize him adequately within the space at our command…. The only very obvious defects of Taylor were in the mechanical part of his art, in the mere technique. He writes like one who never revises, nor tries the effect upon his ear of his periods as musical wholes, and in the syntax and connexion of the parts seems to have been habitually careless of slight blemishes.

  With all his genius, learning, and industry, Jeremy Taylor never could be a poet, because he never went beyond himself—beside himself, if you will. He has put the question beyond doubt: he tried verse; but his lines are like petrifications, glittering, and hard, and cold; formed by a slow but certain process in the laboratory of abstract thought; not like flowers, springing spontaneously from a kindly soil, fresh, and fragrant, and blooming in open day. The erudite divine is always in his study.

  What a man he is! He has such a knowledge of the nature of man, and such powers of expressing its properties, that I sometimes feel as if he had had some exact counterpart of my own individual character under his eye, when he lays open the depths of the heart, or traces some sin to its root. The eye of his portrait expresses this keen intuition: and I think I should less like to have stood with a lie on my tongue before him, than before any other I know of.

  When Jeremy Taylor wishes to prove the insensible progress of “a man’s life and reason,” he does not set about it by a syllogism, but a picture. He is not contented with a simple illustration—he raises up an elaborate landscape.

  “The crowded, yet clear and luminous, galaxies of imagery diffused through the works of Bishop Taylor,” are mentioned in glowing terms by Dr. Parr. It must, however, be admitted that his warmth of imagination is sometimes more conspicuous than his sobriety of judgment. His style is distinguished by its vivacity, and is more fluent and unencumbered than that of his most eminent predecessors in English literature. His popularity continues unimpaired.

  Jeremy Taylor stands altogether alone among churchmen. Who has ever manifested any portion of that exquisite intermixture of a yearning love with a heavenly fancy, which enabled him to embody and render palpable the holy charities of his religion in the loveliest and most delicate images? Who has ever so encrusted his subjects with candied words; or has seemed, like him, to take away the sting of death with “rich conceit;” or has, like him, half persuaded his hearers to believe that they heard the voice of pitying angels?

  Bishop Taylor is a writer of the first-rate powers, with a fine imagination, and much devotion, holiness, and humility. Yet he is too ascetic, and has too little of the good tidings of the gospel…. He fell into something of Pelagian errors, and, like Warburton, did not consider the immortality of the soul revealed to the Patriarchs. It is also to be regretted that prayers for the dead have received countenance from some passages in his writings…. A fine, rich imagination, with great devotion, but a tone of divinity below that of the Reformers, and in some material points erroneous.

  Nor are the boldness and the fancy, the endless variety and unexpected sallies of Taylor, to be matched by other divines, any more than they are to be ventured upon by such as duly regard the severe taste which the solemnity of the occasion prescribes.

  The Pelagian Jeremy Taylor.

  His very style—like the murmur of a deep sea, bathed in the sun—so richly coloured by an imagination that was never disunited from the affections, and at the same time so sweetly cadenced, so full of gentle and varied melodies, reflects his character; and not the less so because of a certain want of nervousness and consistency, a certain vagueness and almost feebleness which it occasionally displays.

  At the head of our English divines stands Jeremy Taylor at least as regards eloquence and brilliancy of imagination. He has been by some called the Spenser, by others the Shakespeare, of our theological literature; and he deserves both titles. He is as learned, as sweet, and as alluring as Spenser, and he has sometimes the tragic force and power, now and then a glimpse of the humour, and in some degree the fertile imagery and copiousness of diction of Shakespeare.

  A writer of genius appears amongst these, a prose-poet, gifted with imagination like Spenser and Shakspeare,—Jeremy Taylor, who, from the bent of his mind as well as from circumstances, was destined to present the alliance of the Renaissance with the Reformation, and to carry into the pulpit the ornate style of the court…. There was never a better or more upright man, more zealous in his duties, more tolerant by principle;… Taylor imagines objects, not vaguely and feebly, by some indistinct general conception, but precisely, entire, as they are, with their sensible colour, their proper form, the multitude of true and particular details which distinguish them in their species.

  Taylor is medieval, ascetic, casuistic in his mature type of thought. He is a scholastic in argument, a pietist in feeling, a poet in fancy and expression; he is not a thinker. He seldom moves in an atmosphere of purely rational light; and even when his instincts are liberal and his reasoning highly rational in its results, he brings but a slight force of thought, of luminous and direct comprehension, to bear upon his work.

  A kind of Spenser in a cassock.

  But Taylor’s theology, it must be admitted, is without symmetry; it is not a noble building; a very large portion of his writings reads like the essays and confession of Montaigne, expressed in most dazzling and ambitious language. His most religious writings are what we have called them, Divine contemplations; thought, in the more strict comprehension of the term, we have little or none; imagination and emotion we have in abundance. After a time we find the understanding is not firm beneath us, and we begin to perceive that if we demand from our author argumentative coherence, we shall deal unjustly with him, while we cut ourselves off from the possession of much pleasure. We learn that his gift is to teach us rather as a seer than as a philosopher; to lift us at once to the spiritual rather than debate with us the material reasons of things. When he attempts the latter we become angry with him; always, when he attempts the former, it is as if at his touch the tabernacle of the testimony is opened in heaven.

  It is not true that, except by great complaisance of the reader, Jeremy Taylor’s long sentences are at once understandable. They may, of course, and generally can be understood kata to semainsmenon, as a telegram with half the words left out may at the other end of the scale be understood. But they constantly withstand even a generous parser, even one who is to the fullest extent ready to allow for idiom and individuality. They abuse in particular the conjunction to a most enormous extent—coupling by its means propositions which have no legal connection, which start entirely different trains of thought, and which are only united because carelessness and fashion combined made it unnecessary for the writer to take the little extra trouble necessary for their separation. Taylor will, in the very middle of his finest passages, and with hardly so much as a comma’s break, change oratio obliqua to oratio recta, interrupt the sequence of tenses, make his verbs agree with the nearest noun, irrespective of the connection, and in short, though he was, while in Wales, a schoolmaster for some time, and author of a grammatical treatise, will break Priscian’s head with the calmest unconcern.

  He united learning and fervent eloquence perhaps more than any other English writer.

  He was saturated through and through with learning and with piety; and they gurgled from him together in a great tide of mellifluous language. The ardors and fervors of Elizabethan days seem to have lapped over upon him in that welter of the Commonwealth wars. He has been called the Shakespeare of the pulpit; I should rather say the Spenser—there is such unchecked, and uncheckable, affluence of language and illustration; thought and speech struggling together for precedence, and stretching on and on, in ever so sweet and harmonious jangle of silvery sounds.

  Those who claim for the Church of England one of the highest places amongst Christian bodies for literary eminence, would naturally put forward Jeremy Taylor as one of the leading witnesses in favour of their proposition; and certainly it may be doubted whether any English ecclesiastical writer would be entitled to take precedence of him in a literary point of view, though he has been surpassed again and again by writers on special subjects whose eloquence, versatility, learning, dexterity were greatly inferior to his.

  On the whole the elements of greatest hopefulness for English prose—its earnestness, its dignity, its conscious grace—were perhaps best summed up, in that age, in Jeremy Taylor: and to him more than to any other may be ascribed the handing on of the torch from the preceding to the next generation, and the preserving of its flame clear and undimmed amidst the heated struggles and cloudy controversies of the time.

  As a preacher and devotional writer, Bishop Jeremy Taylor stands in the very first rank among the great divines of the golden period of English theology. His sermons are, of their kind, unrivalled. They differ widely from those of his great contemporaries, Barrow, Sanderson, and South; but they are, in their way, quite equal to any of them. In wealth of illustration, exuberance of fancy, grandeur of diction and style, it would be difficult to find their equals in the English language…. One of his great merits as a devotional writer is the very rare faculty he possessed of composing prayers. His prayers are some of the very few which can bear a moment’s comparison with those in the Book of Common Prayer.

  Few theologians have left more mark on English religion than Jeremy Taylor. His sermons combine many of the merits of Andrewes and of William Law. They are extraordinarily fertile in conceit and in appropriate illustration, they are searching and intimate in their application, and removed from all possibility of dulness by their sparkling and abundant imagination. His controversial writings are less easy, but their style is vigorous. His “Ductor Dubitantium” is almost the only treatise on casuistry written by an English Churchman, and it has all the honesty, and more than the skill, that might be expected. Books such as these belong to the armoury of the theologians, but the prayers of the “Golden Grove” and the admonitions of “Holy Living” and “Holy Dying” belong by right to every man that can appreciate either literature or religion. Certainly no religious works in English possess the same rare combination of merits, and none have more powerfully affected English life. The acute insight and the intimate knowledge of human nature which they show on every page are only equalled by the marvellous imagination which illuminates the style as well as the matter. Of all English prose writers, Jeremy Taylor is the richest.

  Taylor was the most eloquent of men, and the most facile of orators. Laden with thought, his books are read for their sweet and deep devotion (a quality which also belonged to his fellow-writer, Lancelot Andrewes), even more than for their impassioned and convoluted outbreaks of beautiful words.