[1]. Heber’s Life of Taylor, p. xxvii.
It was followed at no long interval by the ‘Great Exemplar of Sanctity and Holy Life, described in the Life and Death of Jesus Christ.’ This, the first of Taylor’s great works which became extensively popular, is almost entirely practical in its tendency, having been composed, as the author tells us, with the intention of drawing men’s minds from controverted doctrines, to the vital points on which all men are agreed, but which all men forget so easily. It is not an attempt to connect the relations of the four Evangelists into one complete and chronologically consistent account; but a “series of devout meditations on the different events recorded in the New Testament, as well as on the more remarkable traditions which have usually been circulated respecting the Divine Author of our religion, his earthly parent, and his followers,” set off by that majestic style, that store of illustrations derived from the most recondite and miscellaneous learning, and, above all, that fervent and poetical imagination, by which Taylor is distinguished perhaps above all the prose writers in our language. Such qualities, even without a digested plan and connected strain of argument, which, requiring a more continuous and attentive perusal, would not perhaps have made the book more acceptable or useful to the bulk of readers, ensured for it a favourable reception; and the author followed up the impression which he had produced, at no distant period, by two other treatises of a similar practical tendency, which, from their comparative shortness, are better known than any other of Taylor’s works, and probably have been as extensively read as any devotional books in the English language. We speak of the treatises on Holy Living and on Holy Dying.
It has been mentioned that near Mandinam stood Golden Grove, the seat of the Earl of Carbery, a nobleman distinguished by his abilities and zeal in the Royal cause. He proved a constant and sincere friend to Taylor; and the grateful scholar has conferred celebrity upon the name and hospitality of Golden Grove by his ‘Guide to Infant Devotion,’ or manual of daily prayers, which are called by the name of that place, in which they, and many other of the author’s works, were meditated; especially his Eniautos, or course of sermons for all the Sundays in the year.
Considerable obscurity hangs over this portion of Taylor’s life: but it appears that in the years 1654–5 he was twice imprisoned, in consequence of his advocacy of the fallen causes of Episcopacy and Royalty. At some time in 1654 he formed an acquaintance with Evelyn, which proved profitable and honourable to both parties; for the layman, as is evident from his Memoirs and Diary, highly valued and laid to heart the counsels of the man whom he selected as his “ghostly father,” and to whose poverty he liberally ministered in return out of his own abundance.
We learn from Evelyn’s Diary that Taylor was in London in the spring of 1637, and his visits, if not annual, were at least frequent. He made many friends, and among them the Earl of Conway, a nobleman possessed of large estates in the north-east of Ireland, who conceived the desire of securing Taylor’s eminent abilities for the service of his own neighbourhood, and obtained for him a lectureship in the small town of Lisburne. Taylor removed his family to Ireland in the summer of 1658. He dwelt near Portmore, his patron’s splendid seat on the banks of Lough Neagh; and some of the islands in that noble lake, and in a smaller neighbouring piece of water called Lough Beg, are still recorded, by the traditions of the peasantry, to have been his favourite places of study and retirement. To this abode his letters show him to have been much attached.
In the spring of 1660 Taylor visited London, to superintend in its passage through the press the ‘Rule of Conscience, or Ductor Dubitantium.’ This, it appears from the author’s letters, was considerably advanced so early as the year 1655. It was the fruit of much time, much diligence, and much prayer; and that of all his writings concerning the execution of which he seems to have felt most anxiety. In this case, as it often happens, the author seems to have formed an erroneous estimate of the comparative value of his works. Neither on its first appearance, nor in later times, did the ‘Ductor Dubitantium’ become extensively popular. Its object, which even at the first was accounted obsolete, was to supply what the Romish church obtained by the practice of confession, a set of rules by which a scrupulous conscience may be guided in the variety of doubtful points of duty which may occur. The abuses are well known, to which the casuistic subtlety of the Romish doctors gave birth; and it may be doubted whether it were wise to lay one stone towards rebuilding an edifice, which the general diffusion of the Scriptures, a sufficient rule, if rightly studied, to solve all doubts, had rendered unnecessary. The work, in spite of its passages of eloquence and profusion of learning, is too prolix to be a favourite in these latter days, but it is still, says his biographer, (p. ccxciii.) one “which few can read without profit, and none, I think, without entertainment. It resembles in some degree those ancient inlaid cabinets, (such as Evelyn, Boyle, or Wilkins might have bequeathed to their descendants,) whose multifarious contents perplex our choice, and offer to the admiration or curiosity of a more accurate age a vast wilderness of trifles and varieties with no arrangement at all, or an arrangement on obsolete principles, but whose ebony drawers and perfumed recesses contain specimens of every thing that is precious or uncommon, and many things for which a modern museum might be searched in vain.”
Taylor’s accidental presence in London at this period, when the hopes of the Royalists were reviving, was probably serviceable to his future fortunes. He obtained by it the opportunity of joining in the Royalist declaration of April 24; and he was among the first to derive benefit from the restoration of that King and that Church, of whose interests he had ever been a most zealous, able, and consistent supporter. He was nominated Bishop of Down and Connor, August 6, 1660, and consecrated in St. Patrick’s Cathedral January 27, 1661. In the interval he was appointed Vice-chancellor of the University of Dublin, which during past troubles had been greatly dilapidated and disordered, in respect both of its revenues and discipline. He was the principal instrument in remodelling and completing the statutes, and settling the University in its present form.
In the spring of 1661 Taylor was made a member of the Irish Privy Council, and the small diocese of Dromore, adjacent to Down, was assigned to his charge, “on account,” in the words of the writ under the Privy Seal, “of his virtue, wisdom, and industry.” This praise was well deserved by his conduct in that difficult time, when those who had displaced the episcopal clergy were apprehensive of being in their turn obliged to give way, and religious differences were embittered by thoughts of temporal welfare. Taylor had to deal chiefly with the wilder and most enthusiastic party, and his advances towards an intercourse of Christian charity were met with scorn and insult. But his exemplary conduct, and persevering gentleness of demeanour, did much to soften at least the laity of his opponents; for we are told that the nobility and gentry of the three dioceses over which he presided came over, with one exception, to the Bishop’s side.
His varied duties can now have left little time for the labour of the pen; still he published sermons from time to time, and in 1664 completed and published his last great work, a ‘Dissuasive from Popery,’ undertaken by desire of the collective body of Irish bishops. He continued after his elevation to reside principally at Portmore, occasionally at Lisburne. Of his habits, and the incidents of this latter part of his life, we know next to nothing; except that he suffered the severest affliction which could befal a man of his sensibility and piety, in the successive deaths of his three surviving sons, and the misconduct of two of them. One died at Lisburne, in March, 1661; one fell in a duel, his adversary also dying of his wounds; the third became the favourite companion of the profligate Duke of Buckingham, and died of a decline, August 2, 1667. Of the latter event the Bishop can scarcely have heard, for he died on the 13th of the same month, after ten days’ sickness. He was buried at Dromore. Two of his daughters married in Ireland, into the families of Marsh and Harrison; and several Irish families of repute claim to be connected with the blood of this exemplary prelate by the female line.
The materials for Bishop Taylor’s life are very scanty. The earliest sketch of it is to be found in the funeral sermon preached by his friend and successor in the see of Dromore, Dr. Rust, who sums up the virtues of the deceased in a peroration of highly-wrought panegyric, of which the following just eulogy is a part—“He was a person of great humility; and notwithstanding his stupendous parts, and learning, and eminency of place, he had nothing in him of pride and humour, but was courteous and affable, and of easy access, and would lend a ready ear to the complaints, yea, to the impertinence of the meanest persons. His humility was coupled with an extraordinary piety; and I believe he spent the greatest part of his time in heaven.... To all his other virtues he added a large and diffusive charity; and whoever compares his plentiful income with the inconsiderable estate he left at his death, will be easily convinced that charity was steward for a great proportion of his revenue. But the hungry that he fed, and the naked that he clothed, and the distressed that he supplied, and the fatherless that he provided for, the poor children that he put to apprentice, and brought up at school, and maintained at the university, will now sound a trumpet to that charity which he dispensed with his right hand, but would not suffer his left hand to have any knowledge of it.