Jeremy Taylor

English bishop and Caroline Divine whose devotional masterworks—Holy Living, Holy Dying, and The Liberty of Prophesying—shaped Anglican spirituality and theology for three centuries. A skilled theologian and eloquent preacher, he articulated a via media between Catholic and Protestant traditions that remains influential in Anglican moral theology.

Jeremy Taylor never developed a formal cult or hagiographic tradition. His veneration is entirely literary and theological—he is remembered through the influence of his writings on subsequent generations of Anglican, Methodist, and even Catholic spiritual direction. Holy Living and Holy Dying became spiritual classics, published in countless editions and translated into multiple languages. His emphasis on reason, charity, and moral virtue as expressions of faith influenced the development of later Anglican moral theology, particularly through the Caroline Divines and Tractarian traditions. His tolerationist arguments in The Liberty of Prophesying prefigured later Enlightenment religious thought. He has been celebrated in modern Anglican commemoration primarily for the enduring value of his spiritual writings rather than for any miraculous or hagiographic tradition.

Jeremy Taylor was born in 1613 in Cambridge, son of a barber-surgeon. He received his education at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he proved a gifted classicist and theologian. Ordained priest, he came to prominence as a preacher in London during the 1640s, where his sermons were celebrated for rhetorical beauty and theological sophistication.

Taylor's early career was marked by his loyalty to the Church of England's episcopal order and the monarchy. During the Civil War, he served as a chaplain to various royalist forces and later to the royal court. When Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth dissolved the established church, Taylor—like other royalist clergy—faced ejection from his benefices. During this period of enforced leisure (1651–1660), he composed his most influential works: Holy Living (1650), a treatise on Christian conduct and virtue ethics; Holy Dying (1651), a meditation on mortality and preparation for death; and The Liberty of Prophesying (1646), a treatise on religious toleration and the limits of ecclesiastical authority.

After the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, Taylor was rewarded for his loyalty with appointment as Bishop of Down and Connor in the Church of Ireland (1661). He spent his final years in Ireland as bishop and pastoral theologian, producing additional theological works and guiding his diocese through the volatile post-Restoration religious settlement. He died in 1667, having established himself as the preeminent theological voice of the Restoration Church.

Taylor's theological method emphasized reason in conjunction with tradition and Scripture, steering between rigid scholasticism and radical sectarianism. His moral theology drew heavily from classical virtue ethics integrated with Christian grace. His works on prayer, charity, and spiritual discipline remain widely read and have influenced Protestant and Catholic spirituality alike.

• Bishop
• Teacher