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JEREMY TAYLOR, BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR.

BORN A. D. 1613.-died a. D. 1667.

In the year 1555, it is known that the statutes of earlier reigns, from Richard II., against the Lollards, the earliest protestants of England, were revived by the bigotry of queen Mary, and carried into a fearful and atrocious execution by those merciless and miscreant apostates, Bonner and Gardiner. Among the exalted and worthy prelates and ministers of the church of England, who obtained the martyr's crown in that season of trial, was Rowland Taylor, the chaplain of the illustrious Cranmer, and rector of Hadleigh in Suffolk. This worthy servant of God had the fortune to have a neighbour, the rector of the next parish, a man of pliant conscience, who, like all such, was perhaps ready to veer and turn with the wind of preferment and power, without any very conscious sacrifice of principle. Of this person it is mentioned, that, in the fervour of his zeal to comply with the new court doctrines, he was not content to celebrate the mass in his own parish of Aldham, but resolving to convert also the parishioners of Hadleigh, he seized possession of the church. When Taylor received the information of this outrage, he quickly repaired to the scene. A crowd of the people, who had been attracted by curiosity and other feelings, stood outside: the door was locked, and Taylor had to make his way through a side entrance. On entering the church, he found his neighbour dressed in the attire of the church of Rome, and standing before the communion table ready for that service so irreconcilable with any of the reformed churches, and surrounded by a guard of soldiers. Taylor was unsupported by the presence of any of his own parishioners, who were locked out; but he was a man of firm and warm temper, and not less zealous than the fiery renegade who had intruded into his church. "Thou devil," said he, "who made thee so bold as to enter this church of Christ?" The intruder replied— "Thou traitor, what doest thou here, to let and disturb the queen's proceedings?"—"I am no traitor, but the shepherd whom God hath appointed to feed his flock in this place. I have therefore authority here; and I command thee, thou popish wolf, in the name of God, to avoid coming hence," retorted Taylor. But the rector of Aldham and his party were not to be moved by words; they put Taylor forcibly out of the church, and fastened the door by which he had entered. The people who surrounded the building, when they perceived that violence had been used, had recourse to stones, but could do nothing more than break the church windows. The party within completed their commission, and, being regular soldiers, came away without effective opposition. From this act of resistance, no very serious apprehensions were perhaps at first entertained by Taylor, who probably contemplated deprivation as the extreme consequence to which he might be subjected by persisting in his duty: the law was yet in his favour, as the occurrence happened a little before the revival of the statutes above mentioned; and there was a seeming security in the known

sense of the English people. Such a reliance is, indeed, mostly illusive; it is seldom considered that it requires a considerable time to call national feeling into action, and that great and sudden exertions of arbitrary power are always more likely to amaze and prostrate, than to awaken the slow process of popular concentration. The queen, inflamed by a morbid and fanatic temper, and urged by the bigots of a persecuting creed, acted with decision. The protection of law was easily withdrawn; and when the statutes of the dark ages were revived, Taylor was urged by his friends to escape from a danger which was now easily foreseen; but the brave and devoted man rejected such counsel. He told his friends-"I am now old, and have already lived too long to see these terrible days. Flee you, and act as your consciences lead. I am fully determined to face the bishop, and tell him to his beard that he doth naught." His courage was not long to remain untried. He was brought before the lord-chancellor Gardiner who degraded the office of a bishop, and the seat of British equity, to give weight to the Satanic mission of an inquisitor. When confronted with his judge, Taylor asked him, in a solemn and unmoved tone, how he could venture to appear before the judgment-seat, and answer to the Judge of souls for the oaths he had taken under Henry and Edward. Gardiner answered, that these were Herod's oaths, and to be broken; that he had acted rightly in breaking them, and wished that Taylor would follow the example. The trial was not of long duration; for Taylor admitted the charges that he was married, and held the mass to be idolatrous. He was committed to prison, where the savage Bonner came to deprive him of his priesthood. Here another characteristic scene occurred. It was necessary that Bonner should strike him on the breast with his crosier. When about to perform this ceremonial, his chaplain told the bishop-"My_lord, strike him not, for he will surely strike again." "Yea, by St Peter, will I," was the stout old man's reply. "The cause is Christ's, and I were no good Christian if I refused to fight in my Master's quarrel.” His sentence was the stake; and on the 9th February, 1656, he was brought out to be burned before his parishioners at Hadley. He was put into a pitch barrel, before a large crowd of afflicted spectators, whose outraged feelings were restrained by a cruel soldiery. Before fire was set to the barrel in which this martyr stood, an unknown hand among the soldiers threw a fagot at his head, with such force as to make the blood stream down his face. When he felt the flames, he began to repeat the fifty-first Psalm-" Have mercy on me, O God, after thy great goodness; according to the multitude of thy mercies, do away mine offences. Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my faults; and my sin is ever before me. Against thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight," &c. He was interrupted by a stroke of a halbert in the mouth, and desired to pray in Latin. The anger, or compassion of one of his guards happily abridged his sufferings. While the fire was slowly increasing about his agonized frame, a merciful blow on the head knocked out his brains.

From this venerable martyr of the English church was lineally descended Nathaniel, the father of Jeremy Taylor. The suffering of

his venerable ancestor had entailed poverty on his descendants; as Gardiner, who had probably selected the victim for his estate, had obtained possession of it after his death; and Nathaniel Taylor held a station in life more lowly than might be presumed. He was a barbersurgeon a profession which, though very far below the rank of the surgeon of modern science, was no less above the barber of our time. Bishop Heber infers the respectability of his condition from his having filled the office of churchwarden, mostly held by wealthy and respectable persons. That he was not devoid of learning is ascertained from a letter written afterwards by his son, who mentions him "as reasonably learned, and as having himself solely grounded his children in grammar and mathematicks."

He was, it is supposed, sent at an early age to a grammar school in Cambridge, in which his progress is not traced, and entered the university in his thirteenth year, as a sizar in Caius college. There too, but indistinct and scanty notices remain of the course of reading he may have pursued. It does not appear from his writings, or from the known incidents of his life and conversation, that he made any considerable progress in mathematical science then, as since ardently cultivated in Cambridge. Yet the study of the mathematical science, as it then existed, would have filled but a small cell in the wide and all-contemplative mind of Taylor; and we cannot easily conclude that any part of ancient learning so gratifying to the intellect, and even attractive to the speculative imagination, should not have been followed and mastered by one who entered already grounded in the science. But many high talents were combined in Taylor, and we cannot conceive him long detained by the mere science of quantity and position; for the reader must recollect that the foundations of applied science had not been yet laid. But he was doubtless industrious in the acquisition of the multifarious knowledge which gleams copiously diffused through his style. It is generally related, on the authority of one who was his friend, that he obtained a fellowship in his own college, after taking his bachelor's degree, in 1631. But Heber, who was in possession of fuller and more authoritative accounts, cites Mr Bonney, who denies that there is any proof for such an assertion.

Shortly after taking his master's degree, he was admitted into holy orders; and an incident soon occurred which brought him into notice, and laid the first step of his advancement. He had among his collegeintimates a friend named Risden, who had a little before obtained a lectureship in St Paul's cathedral. Having occasion to absent himself for some time, he applied to Taylor to fill his place until his return. Taylor consented, and soon became the object of that admiration which ever followed his preaching. Besides the power, brilliancy, and varied effect of his style; the grace of his person, and youthful sweetness and dignity of his countenance, heightened the charm of an eloquence unprecedented in the pulpit; and with these, "perhaps," writes Heber, "the singularity of a theological lecturer, not twenty years of age, very soon obtained him friends and admirers." His fame soon reached the palace of Lambeth, and Laud sent for him to preach before him there.

• Heber.

He attended, preached, and was approved. But the archbishop was no less judicious than zealous in his encouragement of learning and piety: he thought it would be of far more advantage, in both respects, that Taylor should remain some time longer in his college. In order that he might more effectually be enabled to serve him, the archbishop thought it desirable to remove him to Oxford, in which he had himself considerable influence, having spent most of his life there, and some authority, being a visitor at the university. Some interval is supposed by Heber to have elapsed between the first interview here mentioned and the latter circumstance, during which Taylor may have prosecuted his studies at Maidley Hall, near Tamworth, according to a tradition still current in that vicinity. On October 20th, 1635, he was admitted in University college, Oxford, to the same rank which he had held in Cambridge; in three days after, a letter from Laud recommended him to succeed a Mr Osborn, who was about to give up his fellowship. This recommendation, however influential it might be with many, was naturally counteracted by that strong and salutary corporate feeling, which renders such bodies jealous of independence and in some degree exclusive. Taylor had scarcely obtained the character of an Oxfordman ten days; and unfortunately the statutes then required three years standing in the candidates. Laud argued that the degree of master conveyed the privileges of the standing which it implied: and the fellows were inclined to assent. The opposition of the warden, Dr Sheldon, defeated the object proposed, and in consequence no election took place at the time-and the nomination thus appears to have lapsed to the archbishop, in his visitorial capacity. In virtue of this power, he appointed Taylor to the vacant fellowship, on the 14th of January, 1636. The history of this incident seems to have been much involved in difficulties, which we think unnecessary to state, as the recent and popular memoir of Taylor by Bishop Heber, which we mainly follow, investigates the question with great fulness and sufficient authority, and, we think, explains the grounds of his decision satisfactorily. The bishop concludes his statement with the remark, that "the conduct of Sheldon, throughout the affair, seems to have been at once spirited and conscientious; but it may have been marked by some degree of personal harshness towards Taylor, since we find that, for some years after, a coolness subsisted between them, till the generous conduct of the warden produced, as will be seen, a sincere and lasting reconciliation."

Taylor was thus placed in a position of all others perhaps the most favourable to the pursuits, as well as to the prospects, of a young student in divinity, who has talents to cultivate and a love of literature as it then subsisted. It was a time when the productive energies of the human intellect had not yet been called, otherwise than slightly and partially into operation-or even the right modes and processes of such a development been more than intimated to the mind of the day. The tendency, therefore, of the highest and brightest intellect was rather to gather and accumulate from the vast spread stores of the learning of antiquity and the middle ages, than to spend its power on such vague efforts at invention, as mere speculative investigations were only sure to produce. Hence the vast and seemingly inexhaustible treasures of

erudition which give to Hooker, &c. &c., the colossal amplitude, which has been so often observed by modern critics. These giants, as they are not unaptly termed, were fully engaged in extricating from the quarry, in rough-hewing and drawing into orderly arrangement, the ponderous materials, on which so many and magnificent structures have been raised. The profuse treasures of Greek and Roman antiquity; the comparatively unknown branches of oriental literature, which still demand the earnest cultivation of universities; the wide field of scholastic learning, from which purer and more compendious methods of reasoning and expression were then beginning to arise, according, perhaps, to the best models of the standard writers among the ancients. These offered a wide and sufficiently engrossing direction. But, in addition, vast revolutions in ecclesiastical and civil concerns were in their maturity of form ready to break out into action, at the call of circumstances. And questions of the most profound importance, and involving the very foundations of church and state, called forth the more available powers of learned men. The discussions which began yearly to acquire increasing interest were not, as now, met on points of seemingly slight detail, but at the fountain head Hence the broad and comprehensive view of a whole question, from the first elements to the minutest ramifications of the argument-so that every discussion was an elementary treatise. This tendency was, it is true, augmented by the time hallowed dialectic of the schools, from which the art of reasoning was yet drawn, and the habits of the intellect formed. Hence the minute and nugatory distinctions and divisions, without substantial difference, which characterize the ablest pens. The comparative scarceness of elementary treatises, and indeed of books, either demanded or invited the digressive method which supposes every thing unknown, and leaves out nothing that may however remotely be involved in the main argument. Such were the main causes, and such the general state of literature, in the period on which we are now engaged. And we have thought it not unseasonable to advert to it here, as we are impressed with a strong sense of its relation to the intellectual frame of Taylor's genius-though we shall again have to notice the same facts, when we shall come to trace the relative character of the learning of this period and our own, and the transition from one to the other.

During his occupation of the fellowship, Taylor is said to have been much admired for his preaching, which Wood designates "casuistical;" but Heber comments on the term, by observing, that "few of his existing sermons can be termed 'casuistical.'" We should presume that Wood employs the term inaccurately, and rather to convey an impression than to describe precisely. A more important fact was the suspicion which started up, at this time, of his being privately inclined to the communion of the church of Rome,-a suspicion which haunted him through life. This groundless notion mainly arose from that absence of bigotry, which ever characterizes the higher order of Christians; sometimes, indeed, to the verge of that opposite extreme, which deserves the name of latitude. There is no subject so dangerous to touch on lightly, as the accusation or defence of those fierce extremes, into which human opinion seems to verge in opposite directions.

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