[Notes on Jeremy Taylor]
I have not seen the late Bishop Heber's edition of Jeremy Taylor's
Works
; but I have been informed that he did little more than contribute the
Life
, and that in all else it is a mere London booksellers' job. This, if true, is greatly to be regretted. I know no writer whose works more require, I need not say deserve, the annotations, aye, and occasional animadversions, of a sound and learned divine. One thing is especially desirable in reference to that most important, because (with the exception perhaps of the
Holy Living and Dying)
the most popular, of Taylor's works,
The Liberty of Prophesying
; and this is a careful collation of the different editions, particularly of the first printed before the Restoration, and the last published in Taylor's lifetime, and after his promotion to the episcopal bench. Indeed, I regard this as so nearly concerning Taylor's character as a man, that if I find that it has not been done in Heber's edition, and if I find a first edition in the British Museum, or Sion College, or Dr. Williams's library, I will, God permitting, do it myself. There seems something cruel in giving the name, Anabaptist, to the English Anti-pædo-baptists; but still worse in connecting this most innocent opinion with the mad Jacobin ravings of the poor wretches who were called Anabaptists, in Munster, as if the latter had ever formed part of the Baptists' creeds. In short