Study of Jeremy Taylor (1613 -67) as an interpreter of the spiritual life

Two omissions from this work should be mentioned and explained. With the exception of a few relevant remarks in the first chapter there is very little in this thesis about Jeremy Taylor's life, as such; nor is there any more than the briefest glimpse into the seventeenth century background. The facts of that life and the nature of that background have informed the writing at every turn. But they have not appeared openly in greater proportion for the simple and sufficient reason that the real concerns of this study, as an examination of the precis reveals, lie in other areas. The phrase in the title -- 'interpreter of the spiritual life' -- immediately suggests a somewhat specialized and limited exploration of Jeremy Taylor's thought. Inevitably, as we all know, every Christian interprets his experience of God. In so doing thoughtfully sensitive Christians like Jeremy Taylor make a distinctive contribution to the firmness with tich we grasp the subtler implications and demands of the Christian life. In his case, this interpretative effort is preserved in nearly eight thousand closely printed pages which are highly varied in subject matter and purpose, parts being primarily theological, polemical, casuistic, or devotional as need, circumstance, and spirit directed. Within all of this variety, however, it is abundantly clear that Jeremy Taylor always lived with an overmastering concern for the nurture of the spiritual life. That concern is the fact out of which this study grows and from which it draws its working materials. This means that the entire work has necessarily become a striving after something less obvious and considerably more elusive than TaylorTs doctrine. Such an analysis is not needed, for with the one exception of his teaching on original sin his doctrinal position departs very little from that core of belief which the noblest sons of the Church of England, within the flexible framework of their differences, have always shared and loved. If doctrine, then, emerges on nearly every page, still this is not primarily a doctrinal study. Rather, it is an attempt to share Jeremy TaylorTs consuming interest in the full living of the spiritual life by coming to grips with his conception of its structure and content. In the third chapter, for instance, whilst suggesting something of what he believed about the Sacraments, there is no attempt at a full setting forth of his doctrine of them. This is so just because the method employed is to consult doctrine only until it begins to point beyond itself to the larger and finer reality of a man being caught up by the Truth with which it is a doctrine's function to bring us into living contact. Basically this is perhaps best described as a study of the experience of sanctification. For two questions endlessly made their solemn way back and forth through the corridors of his fine mind: How does a Christian crow unto 'the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ!? 'Why should it be so? This work, then, is humbly submitted as a preliminary effort to find Jeremy Taylor's answers to these crucial questions