Jeremy Taylor was born under James VI and I, was the son of a barber in Cambridge, and was baptized on 15 August, 1613. Unless he was christened two years after his birth, it is not plain how he could have been in his fifteenth year when (August, 1626) he was admitted to Caius College as a sizar (at Oxford, "servitor"); Jeremy's eloquence attracted the notice of Archbishop Laud, who had him made a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford (1636). At Oxford, a Cavalier University, Jeremy studied casuistry, the topic of his large book "Ductor Dubitantium," a Guide to the Doubting. In 1638, Jeremy obtained the cure of souls at Uppingham, and in the same year preached, in the University pulpit, a Guy Fawkes Day sermon. In 1639 he married. In 1640, Laud was impeached of treason; in 1642, as chaplain, Jeremy served under the standard of King Charles. Parliament abolished Bishops; Jeremy defended Episcopacy ("Of the Sacred Order of Episcopacy"). In February, 1645, he was captured in a Royalist defeat, but was protected by Lord Carbery, and became his private chaplain at Golden Grove in Carmarthenshire, where he was safe from the persecution of the friends of freedom of conscience that called themselves "the godly". At Golden Grove, though far from what had been his library, he wrote "An Apology for Liturgy" (abolished by Parliament in 1645). In 1647 appeared his "Liberty of Prophesying," a plea for toleration. Such pleas always came from the religious party which was being persecuted, though, even when persecuted, the Covenanters always denounced "the vomit of toleration," their aim being, in power or out of power, to force all mankind to be presbyterian covenanters. The frenzy of armed religious fanatics made Taylor, like Falkland, as described by Clarendon, "ingeminate peace! peace!" But he himself was to be in prisons often, under the persecution of the Commonwealth, and when he unhappily became, under the Restoration, Bishop of Dromore in a covenanting part of Ireland, he replaced the Presbyterian ministers by Anglican clergymen.
Taylor's plea for toleration was an offence to all parties. These years of the King's disasters and death must have been bitterness to Taylor.
He now composed his work "The Great Exemplar," a Life of Christ, filled with persuasions to godliness, with reflections far fetched but charmingly phrased, and he did not disdain legends destitute of scriptural authority. "In the country of Thebais, whither they first arrived, the child Jesus being by design or providence carried into a temple, all the statues of the Idol gods fell down, like Dagon at the presence of the Ark, and suffered their timely and just dissolution and dishonour." The book makes no attempt at criticism, and is of an immense length: in those days "a great book" was not deemed "a great evil".
He also wrote his manual of devotion, "Holy Living" (1650), followed in 1651 by the more charming "Holy Dying". Sermons for each week in the year, sermons preached at Golden Grove, appeared in 1653. In 1655, "Unum Necessarium," a treatise on repentance, was thought less than orthodox, and gave displeasure to the retired bishop to whom it was, without his permission, dedicated. Jeremy had his doubts as to whether Man, after the Fall, was so abjectly and utterly corrupt a creature as other divines held him to be. From 1655 onwards he suffered much, losing his refuge at Golden Grove, reduced to extreme poverty, and now and again imprisoned. In 1657 he lost two young sons. He wrote a work on Friendship for a very friendly lady, Katherine Philips, a poetess, called "The Matchless Orinda"; in this he quoted the ancients freely. Later, unfortunately, he was employed in Ireland as chaplain to Lord Conway at Portmore, and was much disturbed by the Presbyterian preachers. Then came the Restoration (29 May, 1660), and by 6 August, Taylor was sent to the Irish bishopric of Down and Connor, and Dromore, where he was so troubled by the Presbyterians that he asked the Duke of Ormonde to let him withdraw to "a parsonage in Munster"; or to reorganize Trinity College, Dublin. But, after ejecting a number of the Presbyterian ministers, he died in September, 1667, worn out, it may be, by the civil and religious ferocities of his time.
Taylor's writings are by no means all of them very copiously decorated with ornaments of style, and musical with organ tones of language. Even when highly decorated, and when the music of his periods is prolonged, his sentences are lucid. "So have I seen" (thus he introduces his similes), "a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, at first it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head and broke its stalk; and at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces." It is not Herrick's and Ronsard's lesson of the roses; with Taylor it is a persuasion to piety, nor is any preacher more sweetly persuasive. But Jeremy, though he wrote a work to persuade the Irish Catholics of the errors of Rome, did not alter their doctrines, and, as to them that are "the godly party," "the good people of God," he speaks his mind thus: "They may disturb kingdoms, and break the peace of a well-ordered Church, and rise up against their fathers, and be cruel to their brethren, and stir up the people to sedition; and all this with a cold stomach and a hot liver, with a hard heart and a tender conscience, with humble carriage and a proud spirit."
Preaching to "the little but excellent University of Dublin," Taylor laid before them every way by which men, since the Reformation, had sought religious peace and had failed to find it. The last way was toleration, "a way of peace rather than of truth". "If we cannot have both, for heaven's sake give us peace," was the view of some good men, but, as each sect thought that it possessed truth, each, as it had the opportunity, tried to make peace by forcing the others into conformity. The godly "are not content that you permit them; for they will not permit you, but rule over your faith, and say that their way is not only true, but necessary". Taylor gave his own counsel thus, "the way to judge of religion is by doing our duty; and theology is rather a Divine life than a Divine knowledge.... Let your adversaries have no evil thing to say of you, and then you will best silence them...." Leighton tried this method in Scotland, Taylor in Ireland, but who can number "all the horrid things they said" about these prelates in both countries!
Other Anglican divines can scarcely be treated within our space, of these Robert South (born at Hackney, 1634, and educated at Westminster and Christ Church) lived till 1716. He was in controversies often, and a rather tart critic of both Fuller and Jeremy Taylor; he had much force and not a little wit. Chillingworth, Hales, and others, are to us little more than shadows of great names, with Isaac Barrow, equally great in Greek and mathematics, and a preacher whom Charles II could hear with pleasure. Richard Baxter (1615-1691), whose conscience after the Restoration caused him to throw in his lot with the Nonconformists, by his "Saints' Everlasting Rest" (1650) won and deserved popularity; he shared with Glanvill and Henry More the love of a good ghost story, and has left on record an excellent death-wraith. Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688) and Henry More (1614-1687), in verse and prose a mystic and a Platonist or Neo-platonist, are still dear to a fit though limited audience.
Thomas Fuller.
Thomas Fuller, born (1608) like Dryden, later, at the village of Aldwinkle, is a writer of the same group as Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne: that is, his manner is quaint and his matter is full of learning from all quarters. Though a Royalist and in orders, during the Civil War, he was not an extremist; and his humour and love of a jest qualified him for the post of a chaplain in a Cavalier army.
No great harm befell him when the Royal cause was ruined, but he died (1661) too soon after the Restoration to be rewarded or disappointed. His "Holy and Profane States" (1642) is a set of sketches of historic characters; most readable, especially in the first edition, with the curious engravings. Despite the vivacity of Fuller's most popular work, he is but little read, in face of the hearty commendations of Charles Lamb, a critic who imparted his own merits to all his favourites. Fuller never could resist a joke, a humorous parallel or allusion; and in works on serious subjects, "The Worthies of England," and "Church History," his severe contemporaries detected more than "a little judicious levity". Fuller loved antiquarian details and historical study, but history to history as Amurath to Amurath succeeds, and Fuller is read, when he is read, for his quaintnesses and for the humour that runs away with him.