PASSAGE IN JEREMY TAYLOR.
It may not be useless or uninteresting to the readers of Bishop Jeremy Taylor to bring under their notice a point in which the editor of the last edition seems to have fallen into an error. In Part II. of the Sermon "On the Invalidity of a Death-bed Repentance" (p. 395.), the Bishop says:
"Only be pleased to observe this one thing: that this place of Ezekiel [i.e. xviii. 21.] is it which is so often mistaken for that common saying, 'At what time soever a sinner repents him of his sins from the bottom of his heart, I will put all his wickedness out of my remembrance, saith the Lord:' yet there are no such words in the whole Bible, nor any nearer to the sense of them, than the words I have now read to you out of the prophet Ezekiel."
Now the editor, as a reference for this "common saying," says in a note—
"* See Jer. xviii. 7, 8.:"
whence I suppose that he thinks that text to be the nearest quotation to it that can be found. But he has altogether overlooked the fact that this "common saying" is, as the Bishop has here quoted it, the exact form in which the first of the sentences at the beginning of Morning Prayer occurs in the Second Book of Edward, and down to the time of the last review, with the exception of the Scotch book. As it did not agree with the translation of the Bible then in use, Bishop Taylor seems to have considered it as a paraphrase. This also is the view which Chillingworth took of it, who makes this reflection on it, in a sermon preached before Charles I.:
"I would to God (says he) the composers of our Liturgy, out of a care of avoiding mistakes, and to take away occasion of cavilling our Liturgy, and out of fear of encouraging carnal men to security in sinning, had been so provident as to set down in terms the first sentence, taken out of the 18th of Ezekiel, and not have put in the place of it an ambiguous, and (though not in itself, but accidentally, by reason of the mistake to which it is subject) I fear very often a pernicious paraphrase: for whereas they make it, 'At what time soever ... saith the Lord;' the plain truth, if you will hear it, is, the Lord doth not say so; these are not the very words of God, but the paraphrase of men."
Thus, I think, it is evident that this "sentence" has nothing to do with the passage of Jeremiah to which the editor refers us; and its being read continually in the church explains the application of the word "common" to it in this place.
While on this subject I would go on to mention that both Chillingworth and Taylor seemed to have erred in calling it a paraphrase, and saying that it does not occur in the Bible; for according to L'Estrange (c. iii. n. F.) the sentence is taken from the Great Bible, or Coverdale's translation. It is, however, remarkable that this fact should not have been known to these divines.
F. A.