JEREMY TAYLOR  (1613 - 1667)

BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR

Like Andrewes’ Preces Privatae, Taylor’s Holy Living and Holy Dying have endeared him to modern times. Anybody who takes Anglican and Catholic Spirituality seriously knows all these works well. 

In Holy Living he portrayed the beauty of the divine within each soul as a cabinet “of the mysterious Trinity”. What a beautiful reflection to introduce this Caroline divine.

God is especially present in the hearts of his people, by His Holy Spirit: and indeed the hearts of holy men are temples in the truth of things, and, in type and shadow, they are heaven itself. For God reigns in the hearts of his servants: there is his kingdom. The power of grace hath subdued all his enemies: there is his power. They serve him night and day, and give him thanks and praise, that is his glory. This is the religion and worship of God in the temple. The temple itself is the heart of man; Christ is the high-priest, who from thence sends up the incense of prayers, and joins them to his own intercession, and presents all together to his Father; and the Holy Ghost by his dwelling there, hath also consecrated it into a temple; and God dwells in our hearts by faith, and Christ by his Spirit, and the Spirit by his purities; so that we are also cabinets of the mysterious Trinity; and what is this short of heaven itself, but as infancy is short of manhood, and letters of words? The same state of life it is, but not the same age. It is heaven in a looking-glass, dark, but yet true, representing the beauties of the soul, and the graces of God, and the images of his eternal glory, by the reality of a special presence. 

As Taylor was born in Cambridge his education was at Cambridge university. Like Cosin he attended Caius and Gonville College where he received his B.A. in 1631 and M.A. in 1634. The year before he was ordained even though he was under age. After been awarded his M.A. he was appointed praelector in rhetoric by the master of Caius. It wouls seem that Taylor made an impression on Laud very early in life and took him under his wing. That resulted in being admitted as a Fellow of All Souls College, even though the warden, Gilbert Sheldon objected (something he was still doing against Taylor after the Restoration) but as Chancellor Laud overrode him. Shortly afterwards he became a chaplain to the Archbishop and a chaplain-in-ordinary to Charles I.

In 1638 the bishop of London, Juxon gave him the preferment of Uppingham in Rutland where records attest to his caring pastoral ministry. An organ was installed, while sacred vessels, altar clothes and vestments were blessed and dedicated. The paten and pulpit still survive in this parish. From this pulpit Taylor preached sermons that later were polished into The Great Exemplar, a series of discourses, meditations and prayers that flowed from a personal piety of reflections on the incarnational life of our Lord.  

This appointment was not long before the end of the personal rule of Charles I and the recall of Parliament. When the Civil War broke out Taylor accompanied the king to Nottingham and then to Oxford where the Court was living. Here he received an honorary D.D. by royal proclamation. Although he was not sequestered from his parish until 1644 it is probable once war broke out Uppingham parishioners did not see Taylor often. After Charles’s defeat at Naseby in 1645 Taylor was imprisoned at Cardigan Castle. He seemed to be released not long afterwards and he found shelter and refuge at Golden Grove in Wales, the home of the Earl and Lady Carbery for whom he became their chaplain. In order to make a living he set up a school where he worked with two other “refugees”, William Nicholson and William Wyatt. It was here he would write many of his books.

He grieved for the demise of the English Church, a church he loved by the instrument of Parliament.

The supplanters and underminers are gone out, and are digging down the foundations, and having destroyed all public form of ecclesiastical government, discountenanced our liturgy, taken off the hinges of unity, disgraced the articles of religion, polluted public assemblies, taken all cognizance of schism, by mingling all sects, and giving countenance to all that, against which all power ought to stand upon their guard: -  there is nothing now left, but we take care that we are Christians.   

... 

But never did the excellency of Episcopal government appear so demonstratively and conspicuously as now. Under their conduct and order we had a church so united, so orderly, so governed, a religion so settled, ... devotions so regular and constant, sacraments so adorned and minis¬tered; churches so beauteous and religious; circumstances of religion so grave and prudent, so useful and apt for edifica¬tion. ... But now, instead of this excellency of condition and constitution of religion, the people are fallen under the harrows and saws of impertinent and ignorant preachers, who think all religion is a sermon. and all sermons should be libels against truth and old governors.  

 As a result people:

Forget government; and some never think of heaven; and that they do, think to go thither in such paths which all the ages of the church did give men warning of, lest they should, that way, go to the devil. In this situation:

There is nothing now left, but that we take care that men be Christians ... we must, by all means, secure the foundations ... for let us secure that our young men be good Christians: … they cannot leave our communion, till they have good reason to reprove our doctrine. 

Laud had been executed before the war ended, Charles would meet the same fate in 1649 and in the autumn of the next year Lady Carbery also died in childbirth. She too was a devoted Anglican and obviously she and Taylor were soul mates. To read the panegyric he delivered at her funeral blends time and eternity, her life and the new life, death and the journey is so beautiful, sensitive and spiritual. It reveals two lovely souls – the departed and the living preacher.

I know not by what instrument it happened; but when death drew near, before it made any show upon her body, or revealed itself by a natural signification, it was conveyed to her spirit; she had a strange secret persuasion that that the bringing this child should be her last scene of life: and we have known, that the soul when she is about to disrobe herself of her upper garment, sometimes speaks rarely,...; sometimes it is Prophetical; sometimes God by a superinduced persuasion wrought by instruments, or accidents of his own, serves the ends of his own providence and the salvation of the soul: But so it was, that the thought of death dwelt long with her, and grew from the first steps of fancy and fear, to a consent, from thence to a strange credulity, and expectation of it; and without the violence of sickness she died, as if she had done it voluntarily, and by design, and for fear her expectation should have been deceived, or that she should seem to have had an unreasonable fear, or apprehension; or rather..., she died, as if she had been glad of the opportunity.

And in this I cannot but adore the providence and admire the wisdom and infinite mercies of God. For having a tender and a soft, a delicate and fine constitution and breeding, she was tender to pain, apprehensive of it, as a child’s shoulder is of a load and burden. … in her often discourses on death, she would renew willingly and frequently, she would tell, that she feared not death, but she feared the sharp pains of death. … But God that knew her fears and her jealousy concerning itself, fitted her with a death so easy, so harmless, so painless, that it did not put her patience to a severe trial. … she had done so much of her duty towards it, He that began would also finish her redemption, by an act of rare providence, and a singular mercy. Blessed be the goodness of God, who does so careful actions of mercy for the ease and security of his servants. 

If that was not enough pain for Taylor his wife, Phoebe, died a few months later. Holy Living he had intended to dedicate to Lady Carbery. Holy Dying was published shortly after his wife’s death. In this work this divine prodded to a deeper depth of feeling that must only have come from the depth of his beloved wife, even though he never mentions her. He did not have to. In his Sermon on the Marriage Ring preached while Phoebe was still alive revealed his love for her. “She that is loved is safe, and that loves is joyful. Love is an union of all things excellent; it contains in it proportion and satisfaction, and rest and confidence.”    

In 1655 his Golden Grove was published in 1655, another compilation of devotional writings reflecting the Christian Year. However it had a somewhat inflammatory preface in which he refers to Cromwell as “The Son of Zippor … sent to curse the people of the Lord that had long prospered under the conduct of Moses and Aaron.”  Consequently he was imprisoned once again in Chepstow Castle 

In the mid- fifties he must had been in London as Evelyn has several entries in his diary hearing Taylor preach, using him as his confessor and baptising. In his diary entry for 7th March, 1658 Evelyn tells us that he went to London where he heard Dr. Taylor preach on Ch. 13. vv. 23 – 4 from St. Luke’s Gospel followed by the Eucharist. 

This is at a time when it was illegal to use the Prayer Book services. Thus he was ministering to private Anglican congregations and was arrested a third time after publishing Collection of Offices. He was released mainly through the efforts of Evelyn, one of the most devout laymen of the English Church. There is no doubt he was a tower of strength to many faithful Anglicans as a spiritual director and inspiration in their time of need and comfort against the tyranny of the Cromwellian regime against the English Church and its faithful adherents.

After his release from prison he left England for Ireland when for the second time in his life he was given a safe port for shelter. This time it was Portmore, the home of the Conways. Cromwell’s death occurred shortly after this.

Yet the day did come when sunshine brightened the horizons once again for the faithful Anglicans after that horrible time under Cromwell. Charles II was restored to his rightful crown and with him the English Church. Taylor was in London when Charles returned to London triumphantly on 29th May, 1660 for the publication of Ductor Dubitantium.

For Taylor this time was one of with mixed blessings. Promotions were given to all who had been faithful through those hard years but Sheldon who soon followed the aging Juxon as Archbishop of Cantaur, still harboured some grudge against Taylor and he remained in Ireland as bishop of Down and Connor. The people of this diocese were fortunate indeed to have such a spiritual Father. Yet it was not only this diocese but Ireland itself that felt his presence, including Trinity College, Dublin where he was appointed Vice-Chancellor. Having said that, he encountered much opposition from the Presbyterians in his own diocese.

When Archbishop Bramhall died in June 1663 Taylor preached his panegyric in which he showed the same sensitivity as he had when Lady Carbery died but there is also the lament of the sufferings of Bramhall and others during those last twenty years. He spoke of his “heroic passion for the Church, and upon all that he was called upon to suffer, for he was driven into exile and poverty by that wild storm by which Strafford and Canterbury fell.” 

He would die as a consequence of his pastoral ministry by visiting those suffering from the fever. In death it would show that he died almost a pauper as he had given most of his money to the poor. Taylor certainly lived the teaching of the Christ.

“Bury me at Dromore” were Taylor’s last words. Although not its bishop he had restored its cathedral and at his own expense rebuilt the chancel. And so it was.

Many faithful and devout Anglicans suffered great deprivation and persecution during the Civil War and the Interregnum. None suffered more than Jeremy Taylor did as a faithful priest of the English Church. As he wrote in Holy Living:

I am fallen into the hands of publicans and sequestrators, and they have taken all from me; what now? Let me look about me. They have left me the sun and moon, a loving wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me; and I can still discourse, and, unless I list, they have not taken away my merry countenance and my cheerful spirit, and a good conscience; they have still left me the providence of God, and all the promises of the Gospel, and my religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity to them, too; and still I sleep and digest, I eat and drink, I read and meditate. I can walk in my neighbour’s pleasant fields, and see the varities of natural beauties, and delight in all that in which God delights, that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the whole creation, and in God Himself. And he that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loves all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon his little handful of thorns. 

When one reads on what sensible commonsense and advice he has for not only his own predicament but for every person in distress.

Enjoy the present, whatsoever it be, and be not solicitous for the  future; for if you take your foot from the present standing, and thrust it forward towards tomorrow's event, you are in a restless condition:  it is like refusing to quench your present thirst by fearing you shall  want drink the next day. If it be well to-day, it is madness to make  the present miserable by fearing it may be ill to-morrow … let your trouble tarry  till its own day comes. But if it chance to be ill to-day, do not  increase it by the care of to-morrow. He, therefore, that enjoys the present if it be good, enjoys as much as is possible; and if only that day's trouble leans upon him, it is singular and finite. Sufficient to the day (said Christ) is the evil thereof': sufficient but not intolerable. But if we look abroad, and bring into one day's thoughts    the evil of many, certain and uncertain, what will be, and what will never be, our load will be as intolerable as it is unreasonable. 

Still he showed the strong faith and inner strength that enabled him to live joyfully and pastorally in his writings. It is these that enable his piety and moral/aesthetical theology to live on in our modern world and to help us as they did for thousands in those terrible times in the mid- sixteenth century.

In his panegyric for his friend, George Rust spoke of him as:

For he was a person of most sweet and obliging humour, of great candour and ingenuity: and there was so much of salt and fineness of wit and prettinress of address in his familiar discourses, as made his conversation have all the pleasantness of a comedy, and all the usefulness of a sermon. his soul was made up of harmony; and he never spake, but he charmed his hearer, not only with the clearness of his reason, but all his words, and his very tone and cadences, were strangely musical. 

THE DEVOTIONAL WRITINGS OF JEREMY TAYLOR

Much of Taylor's writings were devotional to encourage Christians to live piously and in loving God and their neighbours. They were written also to encourage Christians to live the ascetic life as had been lived by Christians from the earliest times but also to imitate the life of Christ.

Perhaps his outstanding contribution was to publish The Exemplar, the first book in English on the life of Christ and for Christians to imitate that life. Published in that doleful year that witnessed the execution of Charles I it is a book of great beauty and spiritual insight in its series of discourses, reflections or meditations and prayers. In the preface Taylor states that the reason for this work on the Saviour’s life is to encourage Christians to imitate Him.

For the holy Jesus by His doctrine did instruct the understanding of men, made their appetites more obedient, their reason better principled and argumentative with les deception, their will apter for nobler choices, their governments more prudent, their present felicities greater, their hopes more excellent and that duration which was intended to them by their creator He made manifest to be a state of glory." "The laws of God, revealed by Christ are sufficient to make all societies of men happy; and over all good men God reigns by his ministers by the preaching of the word.  

The first section of the book begins obviously with the Annunciation. Taylor’s description of the holy maid is one of loveliness. “Her employment was holy and pious. Her person young, her years florid and springing, her body chaste , her mind humble, and a rare repository of divine graces. She was full of grace and excellencies; and God poured upon her a full measure of honour, in making her the mother of the Messias.”

In taking the Annunication scene, Taylor wants us pause and reflect on just how Mary must have felt that that moment when the Angel greeted her with the greeting “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women.” He writes:

We cannot but imagine the great mixture of innocent disturbances and holy passions, that in the first address of the angel did rather discompose her settledness and interrupt the silence of her spirits, than dispossess her dominion which she ever kept over those subjects which had never been taught to rebel beyond the mere possibilities of natural imperfection.

The angel too is described so delicately too by Taylor. There is only one way to savour the flavour of this but to read it as given to us from that beautiful spirit of Taylor.

Section I

The History of the Conception of Jesus

1.WHEN the fulness of time was come, after the frequent repeti¬tion of promises, the expectation of the Jewish nation, the longings and tedious waitings of all holy persons, the departure of the "scep¬tre from Judah, and the lawgiver from between his feet;" when the number of Daniel's years was accomplished, and the Egyptian and Syrian kingdoms had their period ; God, having great compassion towards mankind, remembering His promises, and our great necessi¬ties, sent His Son into the world, to take upon Him our nature, and all that guilt of sin which stuck close to our nature, and all that punishment which was consequent to our sin : which came to pass after this manner;

2. In the days of Herod the king, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a holy maid called Mary, espoused to Joseph, and found her in a capacity and excellent disposition to receive the greatest honour that ever was done to the daughters of men. Her employ ment was holy and pions, her person young, her years florid and springing, her body chaste, her mind humble, and a rare repository of divine graces. She was full of grace and excellencies; and God poured upon her a full measure of honour, in making her the mother of the Messias for the " angel came to her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women."

3. We cannot but imagine the great mixture of innocent disturbances and holy passions, that in the first address of the angel did rather discompose her settledness and interrupt the silence of her spirits, than dispossess her dominion which she ever kept over those subjects which never had been taught to rebel beyond the mere possibilities of natural imperfection. But if the angel appeared in the shape of a man, it was an unusual arrest to the blessed Virgin, who was accustomed to retirements and solitariness, and had not known an experience of admitting a comely person, but a stranger, to her closet and privacies. But if the heavenly messenger did retain a diviner form, more symbolical to angelical nature and more proportionable to his glorious message, although her daily employment was a conversation with angels, who in their daily ministering to the saints did behold her chaste conversation, coupled with fear, yet they used not any affrighting glories in the offices of their daily attendances, but were seen only by spiritual discernings. However, so it happened, that "when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be."

4. But the angel, who came with designs of honour and comfort to her, not willing that the inequality and glory of the messenger should, like too glorious a light to a weaker eye, rather confound the faculty than enlighten the organ, did, before her thoughts could find a tongue, invite her to a more familiar confidence than possibly a tender virgin, though of the greatest serenity and composure, could have put on in the presence of such a beauty and such a holiness : and "the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with God ; and behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call His name Jesus."

5. The holy Virgin knew herself a person very unlikely to be a mother; for although the desires of becoming a mother to the Messias were great in every of the daughters of Jacob, and about that time the expectation of His revelation was high and pregnant, and therefore she was espoused to an honest and a just person of her kindred and family, and so might not despair to become a mother; yet she was a person of a rare sanctity, and so mortified a spirit, that for all this desponsation of her, according to the desire of her parents and the custom of the nation, she had not set one step toward the consummation of her marriage, so much as in thought; and possibly had set herself back from it by a vow of chastity and holy celibate : for " Mary said unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man ?"

6.But the angel, who was a person of that nature which knows no conjunctions but those of love and duty, knew that the piety of her soul and the religion of her chaste purposes was a great imitator of angelical purity, and therefore perceived where the philosophy of

her question did consist; and being taught of God, declared that the manner should be as miraculous as the message itself was glorious. For the angel told her, that this should not be done by any way, which our sin and the shame of Adam had unhallowed, by turning nature into a blush, and forcing her to a retirement from a public attesting the means of her own preservation; but the whole matter was from God, and so should the manner be : for "the angel said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee : therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."

7. When the blessed Virgin was so ascertained that she should be a mother' and a maid, and that two glories, like the two lumina¬ries of heaven, should meet in her, that she might in such a way become the mother of her Lord that she might with better advan¬tages be His servant; then all her hopes and all her desires received such satisfaction, and filled all the corners of her heart so much, as indeed it was fain to make room for its reception. But she, to whom the greatest things of religion and the transportations of devotion were made familiar by the assiduity and piety of her daily practices, however she was full of joy, yet she was carried like a full vessel, with¬out the violent tossings of a tempestuous passion or the wrecks of a stormy imagination : and, as the power of the Holy Ghost did descend upon her like rain into a fleece of wool, without any obstre¬porous noises or violences to nature, but only the extraordinariness of an exaltation ; so her spirit received it with the gentleness and tranquillity fitted for the entertainment of the spirit of love, and a quietness symbolical to the holy guest of her spotless womb, the Lamb of God; for she meekly replied, " Behold the handmaid of the Lord ; be it unto me according unto thy word : and the angel departed from her," having done his message. And at the same time the Holy Spirit of God did make her to conceive in her womb the immaculate Son of God, the Saviour of the world.

Ad SECTION I.

Consideration upon the annunciation of the blessed Virgin Mary, and the conception of the holy Jesus.

1. THAT which shines brightest presents itself first to the eye; and the devout soul, in the chain of excellent and precious things which are represented in the counsel, design, and first beginnings of the work of our redemption, both not leisure to attend the twinkling of the lesser stars, till it hath stood and admired the glory and emi¬nencies of the divine love manifested in the incarnation of the Word eternal. God had no necessity in order to the conservation or the heightening His own felicity, but out of mere and perfect charity and the bowels of compassion sent into the world His only Son, for remedy to human miseries, to ennoble our nature by an union with divinity, to sanctify it with His justice, to enrich it with His grace, to instruct it with His doctrine, to fortify it with His example, to rescue it from servitude, to assert it into the liberty of the sons of God, and at last to make it partaker of a beatifical resurrection.

2. God, who in the infinite treasures of His wisdom and provi¬dence could have found out many other ways for our redemption than the incarnation of His eternal Son, was pleased to choose this, not only that the remedy by man might have proportion to the causes of our ruin, whose introduction and intromission was by the prevarication of man; but also that we might with freer dispensation receive the influences of a Saviour with whom we communicate in nature. Although Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, were of greater name and current, yet they were not so salutary as the waters of Jordan to cure Naaman's leprosy. And if God had made the remedy of human nature to have come all the way clothed in pro¬digy, and every instant of its execution had been as terrible, affright¬ing, and as full of majesty, as the apparitions upon mount Sinai; yet it had not been so useful and complying to human necessities as was the descent of God to the susception of human nature, whereby (as in all medicaments) the cure is best wrought by those instruments which have the fewest dissonances to our temper, and are the nearest to our constitution. For thus the Saviour of the world became human, alluring, full of invitation and the sweetnesses of love, exemplary, bumble, and medicinal.

3. And if we consider the reasonableness of the thing, what can be given more excellent for the redemption of man than the blood of the Son of God ? And what can more ennoble our nature, than that by the means of His holy humanity it was taken up into the cabinet of the mysterious Trinity? What better advocate could we have for us, than He that is appointed to be our judge? And what greater hopes of reconciliation can be imagined, than that God, in whose power it is to give an absolute pardon, hath taken a new nature, entertained an office, and undergone a life of poverty, with a purpose to procure our pardon ? For now, though, as the righteous judge, He will judge the nations righteously; yet, by the susception of our nature, and its appendent crimes, He is become a party; and, having obliged Himself as man, as He is God He will satisfy, by putting the value of an infinite merit to the actions and sufferings of Aga humanity. And if He had not been God, He could not have given us remedy; if He had not been man, we should have wanted the excellency of example.

4. And till now, human nature was less than that of angels; but, by the incarnation of the Word, was to be exalted above the cherubims : yet the archangel Gabriel, being dispatched in embassy to represent the joy and exaltation of his inferior, instantly trims his wings with love and obedience, and hastens with this narrative to the holy Virgin. And if we should reduce our prayers to action, and do God's will on earth, as the angels in heaven do it, we should promptly execute every part of the divine will, though it were to be instrumental to the exaltation of a brother above ourselves; knowing no end but conformity to the divine will, and making simplicity of intention to be the fringes and exterior borders of our garments.

5.When the eternal God meant to stoop so low as to be fixed to our centre, He chose for His mother a holy person and a maid, but yet affianced to a just man, that He might not only be secure in the innocency, but also provided for in the reputation of His holy mother : teaching us, that we must not only satisfy ourselves in the purity of our purposes and hearty innocence, but that we must provide also things honest in the sight of all men, being free from the suspicion and semblances of evil ; so making provision for private innocence and public honesty : it being necessary, in order to charity and edification of our brethren, that we hold forth no impure flames or smoking firebrands, but pure and trimmed lamps, in the eyes of all the world.

6. And yet her marriage was more mysterious; for as, besides the miracle, it was an eternal honour and advancement to the glory of virginity, that He chose a virgin for His mother, so it was in that manner attempered, that the Virgin was betrothed, lest honourable marriage might be disreputed and seem inglorious by a positive rejection from any participation of the honour. Divers of the old doctors, from the authority of Ignatius, add another reason, saying, that the blessed Jesus was therefore born of a woman betrothed and under the pretence of marriage, that the devil, who knew the Messias was to be born of a virgin, might not expect Him there, but so be ignorant of the person till God had served many ends of providence upon Him.

7. The angel, in his address, needed not to go in inquisition after a wandering fire, but knew she was a star fixed in her own orb : he found her at home; and lest that also might be too large a

circuit, she was yet confined to a more intimate retirement; she was in her oratory, private and devout. There are some curiosities so bold and determinate, as to tell the very matter of her prayers, and that she was praying for the salvation of all the world, and the revelation of the Messias, desiring she might be so happy as to kiss the feet of her who should have the glory to be His mother. We have no security of the particular; but there is no piety so diffident as to require a sign to create a belief that her employment at the instant was holy and religious; but in that disposition she received a grace which the greatest queens would have purchased with the quitting of their diadems, and hath consigned an excellent document to all women, that they accustom themselves often to those retirements where none but God and His angels can have admittance. For the holy Jesus can come to them too, and dwell with them, hallowing their souls, and consigning their bodies to a participation of all His glories ; but recollecting of all our scattered thoughts and exterior extravagances, and a receding from the inconveniences of a too free conversation, is the best circumstance to dispose us to a heavenly visitation.

8.The holy Virgin, when she saw an angel and heard a testimony from heaven of her grace and piety, was troubled within herself at the salutation and the manner of it : for she had learned, that the affluence of divine comforts and prosperous successes should not exempt us from fear, but make it the more prudent and wary, lest it entangle us in a vanity of spirit ; God having ordered that our spirits should be affected with dispositions in some degrees contrary to exterior events, that we be fearful in the affluence of prosperous things, and joyful in adversity; as knowing that this may produce benefit and advantage; and the changes that are consequent to the other are sometimes full of mischiefs, but always of danger. But her silence and fear were her guardians; that, to prevent excrescences of joy; this, of vainer complacency.

9. And it is not altogether inconsiderable to observe, that the holy Virgin came to a great perfection and state of piety by a few, and those modest and even, exercises and external actions. St. Paul travelled over the world, preached to the gentiles, disputed against the Jews, confounded heretics, writ excellently learned letters, suffered dangers, injuries, affronts, and persecutions to the height of wonder, and by these violences of life, action, and patience, obtained the crown of an excellent religion and devotion. But the holy Virgin, although she was engaged sometimes in an active life, and in the exercise of an ordinary and small economy and government or ministries of a family, yet she arrived to her perfections by the means of a quiet and silent piety, the internal actions of love, devotion, and contemplation; and instructs us, that not only those who have opportunity and powers of a magnificent religion, or a pompous charity, or miraculous conversion of souls, or assiduous and effectual preachings, or exterior demonstrations of corporal mercy, shall have the greatest crowns, and the addition of degrees and accidental rewards; but the ;lent affections, the splendours of an internal devotion, the unions of love, humility, and obedience, the daily offices of prayer and praises sung to God, the acts of faith and fear, of patience and meekness, of hope and reverence, repentance and cha¬rity, and those graces which walk in a veil and silence, make great ascents to God, and as sure progress to favour and a crown, as the more ostentous and laborious exercises of a more solemn religion. No man needs to complain of want of power or opportunities for religious perfections : a devout woman in her closet, praying with much zeal and affections for the conversion of souls, is in the same order to a "shining like the stars in glory," as he who by excellent discourses puts it into a more forward disposition to be actually performed. And possibly her prayers obtained energy and force to my sermon, and made the ground fruitful, and the seed spring up to life eternal. Many times God is present in the still voice and private retirements of a quiet religion, and the constant spiritualities of an ordinary life, when the loud and impetuous winds, and the shining fires of more laborious and expensive actions, are profitable to others only, like a tree of balsam, distilling precious liquor for others, not for its own use.

THE PRAYER.

0 eternal and almighty God, who didst send Thy holy angel in embassy to the blessed Virgin mother of our Lord, to manifest the actuating Thine eternal purpose of the redemption of mankind by the incarnation of Thine eternal Son; put me, by the assistances of Thy divine grace, into such holy dispositions, that I may never impede the event and effect of those mercies which in the coun¬sels of Thy predestination Thou didst design for me. Give me a promptness to obey Thee to the degree and semblance of angelical alacrity; give me holy purity and piety, prudence and modesty, like those excellencies which Thou didst create in the ever-blessed Virgin, the mother of God : grant that my employment be always holy, unmixed with worldly affections, and, as much as my condi¬tion of life will bear, retired from secular interests and disturbances; that I may converse with angels, entertain the holy Jesus, conceive Him in my soul, nourish Him with the expresses of most innocent and holy affections, and bring Him forth and publish Him in a life of piety and obedience, that He may dwell in me for ever, and I may for ever dwell with Him, in the house of eternal pleasures and glories, world without end. Amen. 

( The rest of this meditation can be easily accessed online.A

Another devotional work of Taylor was The Golden Grove. One of the features of this book is a collection of festival hymns for the Christian Year. It began with the one for Advent:

When, Lord, O when shall we

Our dear salvation see?

Arise, arise,

Our fainting eyes

Have long’d all night and ‘twas a long one too

Man never yet could say

He saw more than one day,

One day of Eden’s seven;

The guilty hours there blasted with the breath

Of sin and death,

Have ever since worn a nocturnal hue.

But Thou hast given us hopes that we

At length another day shall see,

Wherein each vile neglected place,

Gilt with the aspect of Thy face,

Shall be like that, the porch and gate of heaven. 

As also with A Manual of Daily Prayers and Litanies compiled during the Interregnum for those who had little contact with the Church, Golden Grove also had a summary of what is to believe, practises and desired in the manner of the ancient church. There was a collection of litanies “for all things and persons” and a set of prayers for each day of the week based against the seven deadly sins as well as short prayers for use at morning and evening.

It also contains rules for living each day  piously beginning in the morning. "Rise as soon as your health and occasions shall permit; but it is good to be as regular as you can, and as early." On awakening give some thanksgiving and praise to God. On dressing offer ejaculatory prayers "fitted to the several actions of dressing" and when semi-attired "kneel and say the Lord's prayer". When dressing is complete, "retire to your closet" for your devotions which should be divided into seven acts of piety: an act of adoration, thanksgiving, oblation, confession,  petition,   intercession and meditation, or serious, deliberate, useful reading of the holy Scriptures.  After praying, "consider what you are to do that day, what matter of business is like to employ you or tempt you; and take particular resolutions against that." If their are children and /or servants in the household "take care" they "say their prayers before they begin their work."  So that they can “go about the affairs of your house and proper employment, ever avoiding idleness." "Before dinner ... let some parts" of "the public prayers of the Church" be said amongst the household. 

Before retiring each night meditate on the following: Sundays, "the glories of the creation, the works of God, and all His benefits to mankind, and to you in particular." Mondays - Thursdays on the four last things things - death, judgment, heaven and hell. Fridays - recollection of the sins of the past week and meditating "devoutly some penitential litanies." Saturdays - "meditate on the passion of our Blessed Saviour and all the mysteries of our redemption." Upon going to bed "commit yourself into the hands of your faithful creator" When holy days occur "let the matter of your meditations be according to the mystery of the day."  Furthermore "Set aside one day for fasting once a week,"  "Receive the blessed Sacrament as often as you can" at least monthly and “Confess your sins often."  While "Every day propound to yourself a rosary or a chaplet of good works, to present to God at night."  

Holy Living and Holy Dying are probably the most popular devotional writings of Taylor today. In the former there are various rules and exercises that will serve to a holy life. Amongst some of the suggestions for this  is to practise the presence of God, the careful use of time, purity of intentions, sober living, practising the rules of faith and Christian justice. After receiving the Holy Sacrament, Taylor instructs the communicant:

After the solemnity is done, let Christ dwell in your hearts by faith and love, and obedience, and conformity to His life and death: as you have taken Christ into you, so put Christ on you, and conform every faculty of your Soul and body to his Holy image and perfection. Remember, that now Christ is all one with you; and therefore when you are to do an action, consider how Christ did or would do the like, and do you imitate His example, and transcribe His copy, and understand all His commandments, and choose all that He propounded, and desire His promises, and fear His threatenings, and marry His loves and hatreds, and contract His friendships; for then you do every day communicate; especially when Christ thus dwells in you, and you in Christ, growing up towards a perfect man in Christ Jesus. 

In his Holy Dying, Taylor made it very explict that if one wanted to "die well and happily" that during "his life-time" one had to "exercise charity" in accordance "to all his capacities." Taylor explained as "religion is the life of the soul" so is "charity ... the life of religion", and "the great channel through which God passes all His mercy upon mankind." Furthermore Taylor taught that "we receive absolution of our sins in proportion to our forgiving our brethren." It is certain, Taylor declared "that God  cannot ... reject a charitable man in His greatest needs and in his most passionate prayers;" After all "God Himself is love, and every degree of charity that dwells in us is the participation of the divine nature."  

Taylor’s first scholarly work, Episcopacy Asserted, was published in the year that the Long Parliament abolished episcopacy. It was a brave soul to write such a work in a climate so hostile to the English Church and King, but Taylor passionately believed in the divine origin of episcopacy and to the injury and imprisonment of bishops and priests. All this is reflected in his dedication

I Am engaged in the defence of a great truth, and I would willingly find a shroud to cover myself from danger and calumny; and although the cause both is and ought to be defended by kings, yet my person must not go thither to sanctuary unless it be to pay my devotion, and I have now no other left for my defence; I am robbed of that which once did bless me, and indeed still does (but in another manner), and I hope will do more; but those distillations of celestial dews are conveyed in channels not pervious to an eye of sense, and now-a-days we seldom look with other, be the object never so beauteous or alluring. 

In 1646 he had attacked the Directory and defended the Prayer Book in Discourse on Prayer ex-tempore that was expanded and re-issued in 1649 published An Apology for Authorised and Set Forms of Liturgy. Its preface was scathing against those who rejected fifteen hundred years of liturgical practices. Tradition cannot be ignored as the biblical practice is vey simple and undeveloped.

Of all his writings, the one that caused most stir, well in Anglican hierarchy, was Unum Necessarium. In the preface of this work Taylor stated his belief on original sin was different from the Ninth Article that states “the natural propensity to evil, and the perpetual lusting of the flesh against the spirit, deserves the anger of God and damnation.” This “I so earnestly dispute,” states Taylor. He argued:

It is one thing to say a thing 'in its own nature deserves damnation', and another to say 'it is damnable to all those person in whom it is subjected.' The thing itself, that is, our corrupted nature, ... does leave us in the state of separation from God, by being unable to bear us to heaven: imperfect of nature can never carry us to the perfections of glory; and this I conceive to be all that our church intends: for that in the state of nature we can only fall short of heaven and be condemned to a poena damni, is the severest thing that any sober person owns; and this I say, 'that nature alone cannot bring us to God': without the regeneration of the Spirit, and the grace of God, we can never go to heaven: but because this nature was not spoiled by infants, but by persons of reason, and we are all admitted to a new covenant of mercy and grace, made with Adam presently after his fall, that is, even before we were born, as much as we were to participation of sin before we were born, no man can perish actually for that, because he is reconciled by this. He who says every sin is damnable, and deserves the anger of God, says true; but yet some persons who sin of mere infirmity are accounted by God in the rank of innocent persons. ... Original imperfection is such a thing as is even in the regenerate; and it is 'of the nature of sin', that is, it is the effect of one sin, and the cause of many; but yet it is not damning, because as it is subjected in unconsenting persons, it loses its own natural venom, and relation to guiltiness, that is, it may of itself in its abstracted nature be a sin, and deserve God's anger, viz, in some persons, in all of them who consent to it: but that which will always be in persons who shall never be damned, that is in infants and regenerate, shall never damn them ... in using differing manners of expression. ...I impute all our evils to the imperfections of our nature and the malice of our choice, which does most of all demonstrate not only the necessity of grace, but also of infant baptism. 

Taylor was especially concerned about damnation for infants who die before baptism. He maintained maintains that all infants are innocent and therefore should not be inflicted with the "punishment of Adam's sin". He argued:

To condemn infants to hell for the fault of another, is to deal worse with them than God did to the very devils, ... it cannot be supposed that God should damn infants or innocents without a cause, ... And if God cannot be supposed to damn infants or innocents without a cause, and therefore He so ordered it that a cause should both be waiting, but He infallibly and irresistibly made them guilty of Adam's sins; is not this to resolve to make them miserable, and then with scorn to triumph in their sad condition? For if they could not deserve to perish without a fall of their own, how could they deserve to have such a fault put upon them. 

Of course the twenty-first century has proved Taylor right about limbo and a place for unbaptised infants. For Taylor those who are the damned are not the innocent infants but those who have the "age of discretion" and are "malicious sinners". It is they "who sin against the Holy Spirit, whose influences they throw away, whose counsels they despise, whose comforts they refuse, whose doctrine they scorn, and from thence fall."  

So did "original sin" make men only prone to sin, and not a complete depraved being? For Taylor its most damning result was that it severed man from His Creator whom he was supposed to love and enjoy for ever. In developing his argument, Taylor used the term first used by St. Ignatius, "the old impiety". This expression meant "man being left in this state of pure naturals, could not by his own strength arrive to a supernatural end. ... For eternal life being an end above our natural proportion, cannot be acquired by any natural means."  Hence "from Adam we derive an original ignorance, a proneness to sin, a natural malice, ... a loss of our will's liberty, and nothing is left but a liberty to sin." This liberty "is expounded to be a necessity to sin, and the effect of all is, we are born heirs of damnation." Moreover "our natural imperfection became natural corruption, and that is original sin."   Consequently "we [are] born thus naked of the divine grace, thus naturally weak, thus encumbered with a body of sin, that is a body apt to tempt to forbidden instances, and thus assaulted by the frauds and violences of the devil, all which are helped on by the evil guises of the world."  

 By defining "original sin" as a "proneness to sin" meant Taylor could not accept the teaching of St. Augustine that "original sin" as being "an inherent evil". Nor did he see it as "a sin properly, but metonymically". By this he meant "it is the effect of one sin, and the cause of many." It was certainly "a stain, but no sin", and it "does not destroy our liberty which we had naturally", and neither does it introduce "a natural necessity of sinning."  He maintained that:

Original sin is not our sin properly, not inherent in us, but is only imputed to us, so as to bring evil effects upon us: for that which is inherent in us, is a consequent only of Adam's sin, but of itself no sin; for there being but two things affirmed to be the constituent parts of original sin, the want of original righteousness, and concupiscence, neither of these can be a sin in us, but a punishment and a consequent of Adam's sin they may be. 

He was emphatic "that for Adam's sin alone no man but himself is or can justly be condemned to the bitter pains of eternal life."  When challenged whether he did accept the fact of "original sin", Taylor made it clear he did. Undoubtedly, he declared it is "affirmed by all antiquity, upon many grounds of scripture, that Adam sinned, and his was personally his, but derivately ours; that is, it did great hurt to us, to our bodies directly, to our souls indirectly and accidentally."  There was no question that "Adam turned his back upon the sun, and dwelt in the dark and the shadow: he sinned, and fell into God's displeasure, and was made naked of all his supernatural endownments, and was ashamed and sentenced to death, and deprived of the means of long life, and of the sacrament and instrument of immortality, I mean the true of life." However for Taylor the main thing was that "when God was angry with Adam, the man fell from the state of grace; for God withdrew His grace, and we returned to the state of mere nature, of our prime creation." Hence "by Adam's fall [we] received evil enough to undo us, and ruin us all; but yet the evil did so descend upon us,... God's service was made much harder, but not impossible; mankind was miserable, but not desperate, we contracted an actual mortality, but we were redeemable from the power of death; sin was easy and ready at the door, but it was resistable; our will was abused, but yet not destroyed; our understanding was cozened, but yet still capable of the best instructions; and though the devil has wounded us, yet God sent His son, who like to the good Samaritan poured oil and wine into our wounds, and we were cured." 

The core of Taylor’s teaching was based on the Pauline theology of the natural versus the spiritual:  “‘The first Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit’" Thus "the first man is of the earth, earthly; the second man is the Lord from Heaven." From the first "we derive an earthly life, ... an inherit nothing but temporal life and corruption; ... from the Second we obtain a heavenly [life]." Consequently "the sin of Adam brought hurt to the body directly, [and] indirectly it brought hurt to the soul." By our natural weakness inherited from Adam's sin, "man cannot do or perform the law of God" without grace from the second Adam. 

Taylor in his teaching of death as a consequence of sin, began with a quote from one of the earliest Christian theologians Justin Martyr, "‘Adam by his sin made all his posterity liable to sin, and subjected them to death.’", Taylor continued it is Adam's sin [which] infected us with death, and this infection we derive in our birth, that is, we are born mortal. Adam's sins was imputed to us unto a natural death; in him we are sinners, as in him we die. But this sin is not real and inherent, but imputed only to such a degree." By referring to St. Cyprian, Taylor cited an example of what he meant by appealing once again to an infant. "An infant has not sinned, save only that being carnally born of Adam, in his first birth he has contracted the contagion of the old death." Taylor argued that death is the consequence of sin, not "a punishment" nor "an evil inflicted for sin". Taylor insisted there was "nothing else "in scripture expressed to be the effect of Adam's sin; and beyond this without authority we must not go." 

Yet sin is a very serious wrong as it is not part of God’s plan for us. Taylor stressed that God not only disapproves of sin, but sees it as essentially as an enemy to His creation. That is why God sent His Son into the world. 

He has used such rare acts of the Spirit for the extermination of it, since He sent His only Son to destroy it; and He is perpetually destroying it and will at last make it that it will be no more at all, but in the house of cursing, the horrible regions of damnation. 

Apart from “original sin” there were sins committed by man through his own volition known as "actual" sins that fell into four categories: habitual, occupational, venial and mortal. For Taylor all sin was sin as they all affected man's relationship with God and that of his fellow man as well as the health of his own soul.  Taylor illustrated this when he insisted that both great and small were all "under the same danger" as "all sins are single in their acting; and a sinful habit differs from a sinful act, but as many differ from one, or as a year from an hour; a vicious habit is but one sin, continued and repeated." He stressed "as sin grows from little to great, so it passes from act to habit;  ...  and when two or three crimes are mixed in one action, then the sin is loud and clamorous; and if these still grow more numerous and not interrupted by a speedy repentance then it becomes a habit," which is "voluntary ... and chiefly, and distinctly sinful."  Taylor showed how easy it was to live in habitual sin which he defined as "that state of evil by which we are enemies to God and slaves of Satan, by which we are strangers from the covenant of grace, and consigned to the portion of devils." "The habit" can only be "eradicated, nowhere but in the will, except it be by subordination, and in the way of ministeries." Consequently "it follows, ... that every vicious habit is the prolongation of a sin, a continuing to love that which to love but once is death." Taylor insisted that no habit, unless good, can be regarded as innocent.  

As man sins so habitually Taylor advocated that for living in a state of grace, "every man is bound to repent of his sin as soon as he has committed it" Taylor emphasized that if habitual sin is not repented at once, it can have serious moral implications because it leads to a "delight in the sin." This increases "the ease with which we delight in its sinfulness again until" if is very difficult to "leave it [even] if you would". Taylor suggested that St. Augustine illustrated this point very well when he declared, "I was afraid lest God should hear me when I prayed against my lust; as I feared death, so dreadful it was to me to change my custom." 

Thus Unum Necessarium was repentance. In its preface Taylor declared: 

The duty of repentance is of so great and universal concernment, a cathoicon to the evils of the soul of every man, that if there be any particular in which it is worthy the labours of the whole ecclesial calling to be instant in season and out of season, it is in this duty.  

Although Christ’s message from the Gospel is one of repentance from former sinful ways, human beings often find "sins pleasant and prosperous, gay and in the fashion." Because of this humans put off the moment for repentance when “he can sin no more”. Taylor reminds us, that "repentance is not like the summer fruits, for to be taken a little and in their own time; it is like bread, the provisions and support of our lives, the entertainment of every day, but it is the bread of affliction to some and the bread of carefulness to all.  Because of this as Taylor insisted that "men are so hardly brought to repent, or to believe that repentance has in it so many parts", let alone that it "requires so much labour, and exacts such caution." 

However as Taylor emphasised every time we sin a relationship is broken, and it is only "the virtue of repentance which preserves the state of grace."  Ideally this means "every man is bound to repent of his sin as soon as ever he has committed it", and if he does not "he adds more sin both against God and against his own soul by delaying this duty." Indeed "he sins anew if he does not [repent]." Worse still "if he sins on; not only because he sins, oftener, but because if he contracts a custom or habit of sin, he super adds a state of evil to himself, distinct from the guilt of all those single actions which made the habit." Therefore "our repentance must be so early and so effective of a change that it must root out the habits of sin, and introduce the habit of virtue." 

For Taylor "not to repent instantly, is a great loss of our time, and it may for ought we know become the loss of all our hopes." It simply "must not be deferred at all, much less to our death-bed." Thus a "good man ... [when] smitten in a weak part or in an ill hour", and commits sins whether "great or little", must repent of it speedily. "He who does so, is a good man still." "Every single sin which we remember must be repented of by an act of repentance that must particularly touch that sin." After all who knows whether the next day might be the last here on earth. He who is well, may die too-morrow."  

For any true repentance to take place contrition is needed beforehand as it includes “an act of the divine love, and a purpose to confess, and a resolution to amend." Taylor also stressed that "Contrition is not only sorrow, but a love of God too. ... Without contrition our sins cannot be pardoned." Furthermore "it is not contrition, unless the love of God be in it." 

True contrition and repentance means plucking "up sin by roots, take way its principle, strangle its nurse, and destroy everything that can foment it." 

Like so many of the Caroline Divines, Taylor had a horror of death-bed repentances as often it was too late for genuine contrition. This was Taylor’s advice. All that the dying man can do is to:

Examine his conscience most curiously, according as his time will permit, and his other abilities; because he ought to be sure that his intentions are so real to God and to religion, that he has already within him a resolution so strong, a repentance so holy, a sorrow so deep, a hope so pure, a charity so sublime, that no temptations, no time, no health, no interest could in any circumstance of things ever tempt him from God and prevail.

Let him make a general confession of the sins of his whole life, with all the circumstances of aggravation; let him be mightily humbled, and hugely ashamed, and much in the accusation of himself, and bitterly lament his folly and misery; let him glorify God and justify Him, confessing that if he perishes it is but just; if he does not, it is a glorious, an infinite mercy; a mercy not yet revealed, a mercy to be looked for in the day of wonders, the day of judgment. Let him accept his sickness and his death humbly at the hands of God, and meekly pray that God would accept that for punishment, and so consign his pardon for the rest through the blood of Jesus. Let him cry mightily unto God, incessantly begging for pardon, and then hope as much as he can, even so much as may exalt the excellency of the divine mercy; but not too confidently, lest he presume above what is written.

Let the dying penitent make what amends he can possibly in the matter of real injuries and injustices that he is guilty of, though it be to the ruin of his estate; and that will go a great way in deprecation. Let him ask forgiveness, and offer forgiveness, make peace, transmit charity and provisions and piety to his relatives.

If the dying recover then he must do acts of charity and live a holy life from then onwards. “If these things be thus done, it is all that can be done at that time, and as well as it can be then done; what the event of it will be God only  knows, and we all shall know at the day of judgment."  

When writing about repentance of sins it is obvious that Taylor had in mind the sacrament of confession as a normal means of being absolved from sin. It was imperative that those who had difficulty in "expressing sorrow for their sins should seek "the ministry of a spiritual man." As Taylor pointed out "Confession of sins to a minister of religion ... is one of the most charitable works in the world to ourselves." 

And let things be at the worst they can, yet he who confesses his sins to God shall find mercy at the hands of God; and He has established a holy ministry in His church to absolve all penitents; and if I go to one of them, and tell the sad story of my infirmity, the good mean will presently warrant my pardon, and absolve me. 

The penitent "who confesses his sins, must do it with all sincerity and simplicity of spirit, not to serve ends, or to make religion the minister of design;" it must also be done "to destroy our sin, to shame and punish ourselves, to obtain pardon, and institution; always telling our sad story just as it was in its acting, excepting where the manner of it and its nature or circumstances require a veil; and then the sin must not be concealed, nor yet so represented as to keep the first immodesty alive in him who acted it, or to become a new temptation in him who hears it. ... All our confessions must be accusation of ourselves, and not of others." 

Taylor explained confession was not simply a matter of "an enumeration of particulars, but [also] a condemnation of the sin."  He continued:

That confession of sins as it is simply taken for enumeration of the actions and kinds of sin, can signify nothing as to God, ... for `confessing your sins', means, acknowledge that you have done amiss, that you were in the wrong way, that you were a miserable person, wandering out of the paths of God, and the methods of heaven and happiness, that you ought not to have done so, that you have sinned against God, and broken His holy laws, and therefore are liable and exposed to all that wrath of God which He will inflict upon you, or which He threatened confession of sins is a justification of God, and a sentencing of ourselves. ... So that confession of sins is like confession of faith, nothing but a signification of our conviction; it is a publication of our dislike of sin, and a submission to the law of God, and a deprecation of the consequent evils. 

Therefore "confession of sins [is] not that we enumerate the particulars, and tell the matter of fact to Him who remembers them better than we can, but it is a condemning of the sin itself, an acknowledging that we have done foolishly, a bringing it forth to be crucified and killed."  

Taylor had this advice for the penitent. He/she should: 

often meditate on the four last things, death and the day of judgment; the portion of the godly, and the sad intolerable portion of accursed souls; the sad evils that God has inflicted sometimes even upon penitent persons; the volatile nature of pleasure, and the shame of being a fool in the eyes of God and good men; the unworthy usages of ourselves, and evil returns to God for His great kindnesses.  

THE SACRAMENT OF CONFESSION

REPENTANCE

Full of mercy, full of love,

Look upon us from above!

Thou who taugh'st the blind man's night

To entertain a double light,

Thine, and the day's (and that Thine too;)

The lame away his crutches threw;

The parched crust of leprosy

Return'd unto its infancy;

The dumb amazed was to hear

His own unchain'd tongue strike his ear;

Thy powerful mercy did even chase

The devil from his usurp'd place,

Where Thou Thyself should'st dwell, not he.

Oh, let Thy love our pattern be;

Let Thy mercy teach one brother

To forgive and love one another,

That copying Thy mercy here,

Thy goodness may hereafter rear

Our souls unto Thy glory, when

Our dust shall cease to be with men.

- Taylor's Poem on Charity

Jeremy Taylor is an inspiration to all Catholic Christians of one who loved the Church and her Sacraments and Prayers. He was one of the leading moral theologians of his time and his devotional works have inspired many souls to live the Christian life in love of God and others as Taylor did.

A prayer for the whole Catholic Church

O holy Jesus, King of the Saints, and Prince of the Catholic Church, preserve Thy Spouse whom Thou hast purchased with Thy hand, and redeemed and cleansed with Thy blood; the whole Catholic Church from one end of the earth to the other; she is founded upon a rock, but planted in the sea. O preserve her safe from schism, heresy, and sacrilege. Unite all her members with the bands of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and an external communion, when it shall seem good in Thine eyes. Let the daily sacrifice of prayer and Sacramental thanksgiving never cease, but be for ever presented to Thee, and for ever united to the intercession of her dearest Lord, and for ever prevail for the obtaining for every of its members grace and blessing, pardon and salvation. Amen.

Marianne Dorman

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