Of some causes of error in the exercise of reason, which are inculpate in themselves.
It is a lamentable misuse of the term, reason, — thus to call by that name the mere faculty of guessing and babbling. The making reason a faculty, instead of a light, and using the term as a mere synonyme of the understanding, and the consequent ignorance of the true nature of ideas, and that none but ideas are objects of faith — are the grounds of all Jeremy Taylor's important errors.
Ib.
But men may understand what they please, especially when they are to expound oracles.
If this sentence had occurred in Hume or Voltaire!
Ib.
s. iii. p. 103.
And then if ever truth be afflicted, she shall also be destroyed.
Here and in many other passages of his other works Jeremy Taylor very unfairly states this argument of the anti-prelatic party. It was not that the Church of England was afflicted (the Puritans themselves had been much more afflicted by the prelates); but that having appealed to the decision of the sword, the cause was determined against it. But in fact it is false that the Puritans ever did argue as Taylor represents them. Laud and his confederates had begun by incarcerating, scourging, and inhumanly mutilating their fellow Christians for not acceding to their fancies, and proceeded to goad and drive the King to levy or at least maintain war against his Parliament: and the Parliamentary party very naturally cited their defeat and the overthrow of the prelacy as a judgment on their blood-thirstiness, not as a proof of their error in questions of theology.
Ib.