Bishop and one of the foremost Anglican devotional writers. Short biography and "Pointers for Prayer".

Jeremy Taylor 1613-1667

Jeremy Taylor is perhaps the best known Anglican devotional author. His most popular writings are ‘The Role and Exercises of Holy Living’ and ‘The Role and Exercises of Holy Dying’ which were published in 1650 and 1657.

Born in Cambridge on 15th August 1613, he was ordained in the Church of England in 1633. At the unusually early age of 21 he was preaching in St Paul's Cathedral, and his outstanding ability and eloquence excited the florid comment that "He made his hearers take him for some young angel newly descended from the Realms of Glory." His ministry spans the Civil War, Cromwell’s Puritan Protectorate and the restitution of the monarchy.

He most certainly lived in very difficult times.In 1645 he was a fellow of two Cambridge colleges, and chaplain to both Archbishop Laud and King Charles I whom he accompanied on some of his campaigns. This made him politically suspect when Laud was tried for treason and executed by the Puritan Parliament. He was imprisoned by the Puritans three times. Forced into retirement from public ministry he served as chaplain to the Earl of Carberry at his home ‘Golden Grove’ in Wales.

In 1658 he was persuaded by some friends to seek a retreat in Ireland. Sir William Petty procured him a farm on advantageous terms. Cromwell granted him a passport and protection for himself and his family. In June, he settled near Killultagh, eight miles from Lisburn. There, in a half-ruined church, he occasionally preached to a small congregation of royalists. According to tradition, it was his habit occasionally to retire to Rams Island, in Lough Neagh, for study and devotion. Poor as he was, this is said to have been the happiest period of his life, as he had abundant time for daily if not hourly devotions and writing. On one occasion, in the dead of winter, he was brought before the Privy Council in Dublin, on a charge of using the sign of the cross in baptism.

When the monarchy was restored he was made bishop of Down and Connor in August 1660 - Dromore diocese was added a little later in April 1661. He was also appointedVice Chancellor of Dublin University 1661, and a member of the Irish Privy Council. His time as bishop in Ireland involved a period of dispute with Presbyterian ministers who had taken over churches in the diocese during the Puritan ascendancy. They refused to acknowledge his jurisdiction. His authority was resisted and his overtures rejected. Consequently in his first visitation of his diocese he declared thirty six churches vacant and forcible possession of these was taken on his orders.

Taylor had been called the Shakespeare and the Speaker of the pulpit. Many critics consider that his poetic imagination and mastery of fine metaphor are exemplary. His rhetoric and imagination were magnificent, and it was said that "no writer of English prose can rival the majestic harmony of his style." His mode of expression was marvelously eloquent, and perhaps too crowded with imagery and beautiful language for modern taste. Many of his pages are glowing with colour and music and imagination. Today his popularity is maintained through his sermons and devotional works rather than by his influence as a theologian or his importance as an ecclesiastic.

Taylor knew hardship in both his public and private life. His first wife died and he remarried. His second wife, Joanna, daughter of his friend and patron, Charles I, survived him some years. One of his daughters married Francis Marsh, Archbishop of Dublin. In 1661 he buried Edward the eldest son of his second marriage. The elder son of his first marriage was killed in a duel . His second son Charles, secretary to the Duke of Birmingham also died at a young age. The day after Edward’s funeral, Taylor caught fever from a person he visited and after ten days’ illness died in Lisburn on 13th August 1667, aged 54.

POINTERS FOR PRAYER

Here are two quotations from Jeremy Taylor to use as pointers for prayer:

+ Whatsoever we beg of God, let us also work for it.

+ When you lie down with a short prayer, commit yourself into the hands of your Creator, and when you have done so, trust Him with yourself, as you must do when you are dying.

Text - Copyright, Dean of Belfast, 2005.