Robert Sanderson (1587–1663)

Over the course of the reigns of the last two Tudors and first three Stuarts – just in excess of a century – the national established Church of England was disestablished twice and re-established twice. Following the return to Rome under Mary, Elizabeth's settlement re-established the English Church under the royal supremacy, set down church doctrine and liturgy, embarked on a reform of canon law and so consolidated an ecclesial polity which many today see as an Anglican via media between papal Rome and Calvinist Geneva. However, as a compromise, the settlement contained in itself seeds of discord: it outlawed Roman reconciliation and recusancy; it extended lay and clerical discipline by the use of ecclesiastical commissioners; and it drove Puritans to agitate for reform on Presbyterian lines. While James I continued Elizabeth's policy, disappointing both Puritans and Papists, Charles I married a Roman Catholic, sought to impose a prayer book on Calvinist Scotland, asserted divine-right monarchy, engaged in an 11-year personal rule without Parliament and favoured Arminian clergy. With these and other disputes between Crown and Parliament, civil war ensued, a directory of worship replaced the prayer book, episcopacy and monarchy were abolished and a Puritan-style republic was instituted. The republic failed, and in 1660 monarchy was restored, the Church of England was re-established and a limited form of religious toleration was introduced under the Clarendon Code. In all these upheavals, understandings of the nature, source and authority of human law, civil and ecclesiastical, were the subject of claim and counter-claim. Enter Robert Sanderson: a life begun under Elizabeth and ended under Charles II, a protagonist who felt the burdens and benefits of the age, Professor of Divinity at Oxford and later Bishop of Lincoln, and a clerical-jurist who thought deeply on the nature of human law and its place in a cosmic legal order – so much so, he may be compared with three of his great contemporaries: the lawyer Matthew Hale (1609–1676), the cleric Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1678).

Jeremy Taylor on the Practice of Theology

This article seeks to highlight the practical nature of the work of Jeremy Taylor, developing his understanding of the place of theoretical knowledge in its relation to moral living. I argue that Taylor is devoted to the realization of the theoretical in everyday life, and does not overemphasize the moral to the detriment of the theological. In exploring this argument, I analyze his description of the practice of the presence of God and the contemplation of the eternal, two examples from his work of the integration of the theoretical with the practical for the sake of moral improvement.

A Popular Asceticism

Jeremy Taylor cited Arnauld’s famous work on frequent communion in his Unum Necessarium of 1655, and made use of the French writer’s arguments in a later work, The Worthy Communicant. This chapter provides parallel discussions of the two theologians’ doctrines of repentance, which both were concerned to enlarge in scope in the context of what they considered the deficiencies in contemporary Protestant and Catholic approaches. The chapter concludes with a textual comparison between their arguments regarding the primitive practice of penance, which suggests that Taylor may have drawn directly on Arnauld’s work. In requiring that penitents should efface all affection to involuntary sin, or in other words be directed by a perfect contrition, both writers laid out a rigorist programme which dissolved the distinction between moral and ascetical theology.

Two Case Studies

Chapter 7 continues the argument of chapter 6 into two central topics which constitute tests for the apparent movement among mid- and later seventeenth-century Anglicans away from an Augustinian theological framework. Jeremy Taylor has been charged with abandoning the traditional doctrine of original sin, and by consequence that of the atonement. Section II analyses his teaching, and shows that attempts to identify his doctrine with that of Socinian thinkers should be rejected. Section III analyses Herbert Thorndike’s discussion of Jansen’s teaching on liberty in the Augustinus. Thorndike adopted an understanding of human liberty which seems to resemble that of Molina, but his surprisingly sympathetic treatment of Jansen reflects his admiration for Augustine’s analysis of original sin and its effects, and his continued commitment to the understanding of conversion which it underwrites.

Hearing, Speaking, Writing: Religious Discourse from the Pulpit, among the Congregations, and from the Prophets

During the Commonwealth period, Parliament ejected over 2000 Church of England clerics from their livings, and multiple new Protestant congregations were formed, bringing new styles of discourses of religion and spirituality. Ministers ejected from their parishes, such as Jeremy Taylor and Thomas Fuller, published ecclesiastical histories, books of devotion and meditation, and advice for enduring hardship. Protestant sectarians preached informed by the spirit rather than the university or ordination; such ‘mechanic preachers’ included John Bunyan and women such as Katherine Chidley, who led a London congregation. More radical sects such as the Fifth Monarchists preached the second coming of Christ, and prophets such as Anna Trapnel urged England to become a godly country for his return and judgment. The Quaker movement, begun by George Fox, gathered believers who challenged both social and religious hierarchies and customs, leading to their persecution and imprisonment.