[135] Dedication to Taylor's 'Holy Dying,' p. 295, Bohn's Standard Library edition.—Ed.
[136] Appendix to Strype's 'Life of Cranmer.'—Ed.
[137] Slightly altered from the 'Worthy Communicant,' chap. iii. sect. v.; p. 523, vol. xv. of Heber's edition of Jeremy Taylor's works.—Ed.
APHORISM XX.
Jeremy Taylor.
Whatever is against right reason, that no faith can oblige us to believe. For though reason is not the positive and affirmative measure of our faith, and our faith ought to be larger than our [speculative] reason, and take something into her heart, that reason can never take into her eye; yet in all our creed there can be nothing against reason. If reason justly contradicts an article, it is not "of the household of Faith." In this there is no difficulty, but that in practice we take care that we do not call that reason, which is not so (see p. 122). For although reason is a right judge,[138] yet it ought not to pass sentence in an inquiry of faith, until all the information be brought in; all that is within, and all that is without, all that is above, and all that is below; all that concerns it in experience, and all that concerns it in act: whatsoever is of pertinent observation and whatsoever is revealed. For else reason may argue very well and yet conclude falsely. It may conclude well in logic, and yet infer a false proposition in theology (p. 115). But when our judge is fully and truly informed in all that whence she is to make her judgment, we may safely follow her whithersoever she invites us.
[138] Which it could not be, in respect of spiritual truths and objects super-sensuous, if it were the same with, and merely another name for "the faculty judging according to sense"—that is, the Understanding, or (as Taylor most often calls it in distinction from Reason) Discourse (discursus seu facultas discursiva vel discursoria). The Reason, so instructed and so actuated as Taylor requires in the sentences immediately following, is what I have called the Spirit. [See also note near the end of Aphorism VIII.—Ed.]
APHORISM XXI.
Jeremy Taylor.
He that speaks against his own reason, speaks against his own conscience: and therefore it is certain, no man serves God with a good conscience, who serves him against his reason.