Taylor Jeremy

Taylor, JEREMY (l613-67), one of the greatest of Anglican divines and preachers, was born at Cambridge. His father, a barber, was descended from the martyr Rowland Taylor. He was educated at the Perse Grammar School and Caius Col1ege, and soon after his ordination attracted the attention of Archbishop Laud, through whom he obtained a fellowship at All Souls', Oxford (1636). He soon afterwards became chaplain to the king, and in 1638 was presented to the rectory of Uppingham. On the sequestration of his living in 1642 he joined the king at Oxford. During the succeeding years he appears to have sometimes accompanied the royal army, but in 1646 he set up a school at Newton Hall, in Carmarthenshire: He here enjoyed the friendship and protection of Richard Vaughan, Earl of Carberry, in whose mansion, Golden Grove, he wrote several of his works. In 1658 his patron obtained him a lectureship at Lisburn, in Ireland. At the Restoration he became Bishop of Down and Connor, and in 1661 of Dromore also. His most important works were The Liberty of Prophesying (1647), The Life of Christ, or tHe Great Exemllar (1650), The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living (1650), and Holy Dying (1651), which have ever held the first place among manuals of devotion, and the Ductor Dubitantium (1660), a handbook or Christian casuistry. Jeremy Taylor's chief charactaristics as a writer are his rich eloquence, the majesty of his style, and his deep sympathy both with human and external nature. His intellect was subtle, but he exercised it rather on practical questions of conduct than on abstruse points of metaphysical theology. In regard to dogmatics he held that it was impossible to lay down any certain rule, except on certain essential points of faith, but that considerable scope should be left to the individual mind. Yet, in spite of the breadth of view in these matters which he shows in The Liberty of Prophesying, he was a strenuous supporter of Laud on the question of ecclesiastical discipline.