Original sin, grace and free will in the works of Jeremy Taylor

Taylor is an early example of a divine who wanted to find a way of remaining an orthodox Christian while rejecting the Augustinian doctrine of original sin. Taylor could not see how the term ‘sin’could be correctly applied to anything but an individual’freely-chosen acts. However, he recognised that the reduction of the Christian concept of sin to particular sins constituted the Pelagian heresy. He attempted to avoid it by placing the insight behind the traditional doctrine in the challenge posed to the will by a naturalised version of the Augustinian fallen state, which was nonetheless morally indifferent in itself. The insights and confusions in Taylor’treatment of original sin and his anthropology, notably regarding the human will and its freedom, provide a fruitful basis for a more general consideration of the question of ‘orthodoxy’concerning original sin and the classical Christian doctrine of man