Jeremy Taylor (Mid-week Message)

 

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Jeremy Taylor

August 13, 2014

“O God, whose days are without end, and whose mercies cannot be numbered:  Make us, we pray, deeply aware of the shortness and uncertainty of life; and let your Holy Spirit lead us in holiness and righteousness all our days; that, when we shall have served you in our generation, we may be gathered to our ancestors, having the testimony of a good conscience; in the communion of the Catholic Church; in the confidence of a certain faith; in the comfort of a reasonable, religious, and holy hope; in favor with you our God; and in perfect charity with the world.  All which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.” (BCP, pp. 489, 504)

This is one of two collects in our Prayer Book written by Jeremy Taylor, whose feast day is today, August 13.  Taylor was one of the Anglican priests caught up in the turmoil of the English Civil war and its immediate aftermath (1649-1660).  Arrested by Parliamentary (Puritan) Forces and imprisoned during the war, and expelled from Church ministry during the Puritan Commonwealth and Protectorate (military junta), Taylor became a bishop when the Monarchy, Prayer Book, and Episcopacy were restored at the coronation of Charles II in 1660.   A leading “Caroline Divine” (spiritual writer under King Charles, Carolus in Latin), Taylor argued for a “reasonable” (rational), “religious” (bound by spiritual rules), and “holy” (dedicated to God) faith, against what he saw as the extreme emotionalism and restrictive Biblicism of the Puritans on the one side and the cold formalism, ritualism, and hierarchy of Roman Catholicism on the other.  He saw both Puritans and ‘Papists’ as tyrannical in their own ways. 

His most famous and enduring work is The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living (1650) and The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651), usually printed together and called simply Holy Living and Holy Dying. He wrote the work while he was in internal exile during the Puritan Commonwealth. In it, he says that there are three general foundations of holiness in life (“instruments of holiness”):  intentional use of time, purity of intention, and awareness of the presence of God.  Being in the moment and fully intentional, exercising love unfeigned, and practicing contemplation are the hallmarks of each of these, respectively.

Here is Taylor’s description of an exercise to make us aware of God’s presence in our hearts, with language adapted to modern usage:

“When you begin any act of prayer, liturgy, or charity, first make an act of adoration, that is, solemnly worship God, and place yourself in God’s presence.  Look upon God with the eye of faith; and let your yearning actually fix on God as your worship’s aim, your hope’s cause, and your blessedness’s fountain. For when you have placed yourself before God, and kneel in the Presence, it is most likely that all the following parts of your devotion will correspond to the wisdom of such an apprehension, and the glory of such a presence. 

Let everything you see represent to your spirit the presence, the excellence, and power of God; and let your conduct with your fellow creatures lead you to the Creator.  If you do this, you shall all the more frequently worship with an actual eye to God’s presence, since you have often seen God reflected in the created things around you.  In the face of the sun you may see God’s beauty; in the fire you may feel God’s warmth; in the water, God’s gentle refreshment.  It is God who lifts up your spirits when you drink spirits.  It is God who is the dew of heaven that makes your field give you bread.  The breasts of God are the bottles that serve you drink in your need.  This philosophy, obvious to everyone’s experience, helps us to be gentle and kind in our spirituality.  Understanding things this way helps check any willful tendency we have toward violence and wrongdoing.”  (Holy Living: Chapter 1, Section 3, part 2)

 Grace and Peace.  –Fr. Tony+