Muskets & Altars: Jeremy Taylor and the Last of the Anglicans

At the end of the English Civil War, Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), the most famous of the Caroline Divines, wrote for defeated Royalists. Holy Living and Holy Dying were instant best-sellers. On the battlefield Cambridge piety and classical learning had been pruned into plain speech, and into prayer as sharp as a pike, by a scholar who enlisted as an army 'Pity poor mankind whose portion is misery.'Immediately after the execution of Charles I, the Church of England faced destruction. Taylor's proposals for how an Anglican must exist without it are urgent and exhilarating.He writes at the moment when heaven and hell are being turned into mythology by the enlightened, and witches are being burned by the superstitious. His common sense, and the realism which insists on placing moral argument in the framework of eternity, help him show how to live happily in the presence of God, without fear of death.He expects the reader to tackle personal problems of heath, sex and status first. Lyrical about married love and the English virtue of being even-tempered in a tight spot, he redefines the holiness of a nation in terms of family life, so that good government, fair commercial dealing and honest professional life all reflect parental love and responsibility. He does not suppose holiness is confined to praying and bible reading, and his chapters on meditation and fasting appeal for the use of the imagination in the prattle of a holy life. His encouragement to believers who face hostility and the extinction of their old Church makes his appraisal a lively commentary for our own times, and his remedies as realistic and practical now and when hew wrote them.