His next onset was by Julian, and occidere presbyterium, that was his province. To shut up public schools, to force Christians to ignorance, to impoverish and disgrace the clergy, to make them vile and dishonorable, these are his arts; and he did the devil more service in this fineness of undermining, than all the open battery of ten great rams of persecution.
What felicity, what vivacity of expression! Many years ago Mr. Mackintosh gave it as an instance of my perverted taste, that I had seriously contended that in order to form a style worthy of Englishmen, Milton and Taylor must be studied instead of Johnson, Gibbon, and Junius; and now I see by his introductory Lecture given at Lincoln's Inn, and just published, he is himself imitating Jeremy Taylor, or rather copying his semi-colon punctuation, as closely as he can. Amusing it is to observe, how by the time the modern imitators are at the half-way of the long breathed period, the asthmatic thoughts drop down, and the rest is, — words! I have always been an obstinate hoper: and even this is a
datum
and a symptom of hope to me, that a better, an ancestral, spirit is forming and will appear in the rising generation.
Ib.
p. 5.
First, because here is a concourse of times; for now after that these times have been called the last times for 1600 years together, our expectation of the great revelation is very near accomplishing.
Rather a whimsical consequence, that because a certain party had been deceiving themselves for sixteen centuries they were likely to be in the right at the beginning of the seventeenth. But indeed I question whether in all Taylor's voluminous writings there are to be found three other paragraphs so vague and misty-magnific as this is. It almost reminds me of the "very cloudy and mighty alarming" in Foote.
S. i. p. 4.
If there be such a thing as the power of the keys, by Christ concredited to his Church, for the binding and loosing delinquents and penitents respectively on earth, then there is clearly a court erected by Christ in his Church.