August 13th is the day set aside by the Church of England to remember with gratitude the life and writings of Jeremy Taylor. Taylor, one of the classic Seventeenth Century Anglican Divines, has been called The Shakespeare of the Pulpit for the beautiful poetic prose of his sermons. He was also a great Spiritual Director and advisor, distilling gret wisdom into books like Holy Living and Holy Dying. Yesterday at St. Edward’s I preached a sermon celebrating those particular gifts and insights of his that i believe the church most needs today.
Here is the link to the sermon, which is preceded by a reading from a passage of Taylor’s work:
Jeremy Taylor and the Insights of Inclusion
And here are the two passages to which I refer in the sermon:
Taylor’s image of the upland Valley:
‘It is in some circumstances and from some persons more secure to conceal visions and those heavenly gifts, which create estimates among men, than to publish them, which may possibly minister to vanity; and those exterior graces may do God’s work, though no observer note them, but the person for whose sake they are sent: like rain falling in uninhabited valleys, where no eye observes the showers; yet the valleys laugh and sing to God in their refreshment without a witness
Taylor compares St. Paul and St. Mary:
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 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 engaged sometimes in an active
life, and in the exercises 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
crown, and the addition of degrees and accidental rewards; but
the silent reflections, 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 charity,
And those graces which walk in a veil and silence, make
great ascents to God, and as sure progress to favours and a
crown, as the more ostentatious and laborious exercises of a
more solemn religion….a devout
woman in her closet, praying with much zeal and affection for
(the conversion of souls, is in the same order to a ‘shining like
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
Both these passages come from The Great Exemplar, Taylor’s beautiful meditative Life of Christ.
Malcolm Guite 