Article
If all his errors and follies were articled against him, the man would seem vicious and miserable.
Jeremy Taylor
Clergyman and author, 1613-1667
Cited as Jer. Taylor. — 300 quotations
Abbreviature
This is an excellent abbreviature of the whole duty of a Christian.
Abet
Our duty is urged, and our confidence abetted.
Abjection
An abjection from the beatific regions where God, and his angels and saints, dwell forever.
Abuse
Their eyes red and staring, cozened with a moist cloud, and abused by a double object.
Act
That we act our temporal affairs with a desire no greater than our necessity.
Actual
Let your holy and pious intention be actual; that is . . . by a special prayer or action, . . . given to God.
Address
The five foolish virgins addressed themselves at the noise of the bridegroom's coming.
Admirable
In man there is nothing admirable but his ignorance and weakness.
Advocation
The holy Jesus . . . sits in heaven in a perpetual advocation for us.
Afflict
Men are apt to prefer a prosperous error before an afflicted truth.
Ambulatory
The priesthood . . . before was very ambulatory, and dispersed into all families.
Amiability
Every excellency is a degree of amiability.
Angry
God had provided a severe and angry education to chastise the forwardness of a young spirit.
Antepast
Antepasts of joy and comforts.
Apostolate
Judas had miscarried and lost his apostolate.
Appellative
God chosen it for one of his appellatives to be the Defender of them.
Appendage
Modesty is the appendage of sobriety.
Appendant
As they have transmitted the benefit to us, it is but reasonable we should suffer the appendant calamity.
Appetite
It God had given to eagles an appetite to swim.
Apprehend
We have two hands to apprehend it.
Apprehensive
A man that has spent his younger years in vanity and folly, and is, by the grace of God, apprehensive of it.
Apt
A river . . . apt to be forded by a lamb.
That our speech be apted to edification.
Arbitrary
It was wholly arbitrary in them to do so.
Arrest
We may arrest our thoughts upon the divine mercies.
The sad stories of fire from heaven, the burning of his sheep, etc., . . . were sad arrests to his troubled spirit.
Ascertain
When the blessed Virgin was so ascertained.
The very deferring [of his execution] shall increase and ascertain the condemnation.
Aspersion
Behold an immersion, not and aspersion.
Assert
I will assert it from the scandal.
Assertory
Arguments . . . assertory, not probatory.
Assoil
Many persons think themselves fairly assoiled, because they are . . . not of scandalous lives.
Assuefaction
Custom and studies efform the soul like wax, and by assuefaction introduce a nature.
Attend
Man can not at the same time attend to two objects.
Audit
It [a little brook] paid to its common audit no more than the revenues of a little cloud.
Avail
The avail of a deathbed repentance.
Aversation
Some men have a natural aversation to some vices or virtues, and a natural affection to others.
Awfulness
Producing in us reverence and awfulness.
Baptization
Their baptizations were null.
Battalia
A drawing up the armies in battalia.
Beauty
She stained her hair yellow, which was then the beauty.
Beggarly
Beggarly sins, that is, those sins which idleness and beggary usually betray men to; such as lying, flattery, stealing, and dissimulation.
Beneficiary
The rich men will be offering sacrifice to their Deity whose beneficiaries they are.
Big
God hath not in heaven a bigger argument.
Boot
A man's heaviness is refreshed long before he comes to drunkenness, for when he arrives thither he hath but changed his heaviness, and taken a crime to boot.
Cancel
A prison is but a retirement, and opportunity of serious thoughts, to a person whose spirit . . . desires no enlargement beyond the cancels of the body.
Catachrestic
[A] catachrestical and improper way of speaking.
Cathedral
Now, what solemnity can be more required for the pope to make a cathedral determination of an article!
Celibate
He . . . preferreth holy celibate before the estate of marriage.
Change
Look upon those thousands with whom thou wouldst not, for any interest, change thy fortune and condition.
Chrismation
Chrismation or cross-signing with ointment, was used in baptism.
Circumgestation
Circumgestation of the eucharist to be adored.
Cognation
As by our cognation to the body of the first Adam.
Collaterally
The will hath force upon the conscience collaterally and indirectly.
College
Then they made colleges of sufferers; persons who, to secure their inheritance in the world to come, did cut off all their portion in this.
Combing
The baldness, thinness, and . . . deformity of their hair is supplied by borders and combings.
Communicate
Where God is worshiped, there he communicates his blessings and holy influences.
She [the church] . . . may communicate him.
The primitive Christians communicated every day.
Commute
He . . . thinks it unlawful to commute, and that he is bound to pay his vow in kind.
Concerning
Let every action of concernment to begun with prayer.
Concreate
If God did concreate grace with Adam.
Condition
Many are apt to believe remission of sins, but they believe it without the condition of repentance.
Confidence
The cause was more confident than the event was prosperous.
Connive
To connive at what it does not approve.
Conservative
The Holy Spirit is the great conservative of the new life.
Consign
Consign my spirit with great fear.
Consignation
So is despair a certain consignation to eternal ruin.
A direct consignation of pardon.
The most certain consignations of an excellent virtue.
Consistence
We are as water, weak, and of no consistence.
Conspersion
The conspersion washing the doorposts.
Constitute
Laws appointed and constituted by lawful authority.
Consubstantiate
His soul must be consubstantiated with reason.
Consultive
He that remains in the grace of God sins not by any deliberative, consultive, knowing act.
Contemptuously
The apostles and most eminent Christians were poor, and used contemptuously.
Continence
Chastity is either abstinence or continence: abstinence is that of virgins or widows; continence, that of married persons.
Convenience
We are rather intent upon the end of God's glory than our own conveniency.
Craftless
Helpless, craftless, and innocent people.
Cross
He had received a cross answer from his mistress.
Crump
Crooked backs and crump shoulders.
Defervescence
A defervescency in holy actions.
deflour
He died innocent and before the sweetness of his soul was defloured and ravished from him.
Delate
When the crime is delated or notorious.
Deletery
They [the Scriptures] are the only deletery of heresies.
Deordination
Excess of riot and deordination.
Depauperate
Humility of mind which depauperates the spirit.
Deposit
The fear is deposited in conscience.
Derelict
The affections which these exposed or derelict children bear to their mothers, have no grounds of nature or assiduity but civility and opinion.
Derive
Derived to us by tradition from Adam to Noah.
Desire
She shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies.
Desponsation
For all this desponsation of her . . . she had not set one step toward the consummation of her marriage.
Desuetude
The desuetude abrogated the law, which, before, custom had established.
Detain
Detain not the wages of the hireling.
Digest
Well-digested fruits.
Disable
A Christian's life is a perpetual exercise, a wrestling and warfare, for which sensual pleasure disables him.
Disaffection
In the making laws, princes must have regard to . . . the affections and disaffections of the people.
Discommend
By commending something in him that is good, and discommending the same fault in others.
Disemployment
This glut of leisure and disemployment.
Disinterest
The measures they shall walk by shall be disinterest and even.
Disorder
The burden . . . disordered the aids and auxiliary rafters into a common ruin.
Dispark
The Gentiles were made to be God's people when the Jews' inclosure was disparked.
Disputable
Actions, every one of which is very disputable.
Disrepute
More inclined to love them than to disrepute them.
disseminative
The effect of heresy is, like the plague, infectious and disseminative.
Disserve
Have neither served nor disserved the interests of any party.
Distinguish
The little embryo . . . first distinguishes into a little knot.
Dyscrasy
Sin is a cause of dycrasies and distempers.
Ecstasy
The most ecstasied order of holy . . . spirits.
Edge
Death and persecution lose all the ill that they can have, if we do not set an edge upon them by our fears and by our vices.
Effective
Whosoever is an effective, real cause of doing his heighbor wrong, is criminal.
Effigiate
[He must] effigiate and conform himself to those circumstances.
Efform
Efforming their words within their lips.
Ejaculation
In your dressing, let there be jaculations fitted to the several actions of dressing.
Emanation
Those profitable and excellent emanations from God.
Embassy
He sends the angels on embassies with his decrees.
Enable
Receive the Holy Ghost, said Christ to his apostles, when he enabled them with priestly power.
Enemy
They . . . every day grow more enemy to God.
Ensober
Sad accidents to ensober his spirits.
Entertain
To baptize all nations, and entertain them into the services institutions of the holy Jesus.
Enumerative
Enumerative of the variety of evils.
Enunciation
By way of interpretation and enunciation.
Envious
No men are so envious of their health.
Envy
Who would envy at the prosperity of the wicked?
Epiphany
Whom but just before they beheld transfigured and in a glorious epiphany upon the mount.
Erroneous
An erroneous conscience commands us to do what we ought to omit.
Espy
He sends angels to espy us in all our ways.
Estate
God hath imprinted his authority in several parts, upon several estates of men.
Even
Whether the number of the stars is even or odd.
Evenness
It had need be something extraordinary, that must warrant an ordinary person to rise higher than his own evenness.
Exemplar
The exemplar piety of the father of a family.
Exinanition
Fastings to the exinanition of spirits.
Express
The only remanent express of Christ's sacrifice on earth.
Exprobration
A fearful exprobration of our unworthiness.
Extraordinary
Their extraordinary did consist especially in the matter of prayers and devotions.
Fain
To a busy man, temptation is fainto climb up together with his business.
Fermentation
It puts the soul to fermentation and activity.
Fiduciary
Instrumental to the conveying God's blessing upon those whose fiduciaries they are.
Firmament
Custom is the . . . firmament of the law.
Flatly
He that does the works of religion slowly, flatly, and without appetite.
Florid
Fruit from a pleasant and florid tree.
Foreknowingly
He who . . . foreknowingly loses his life.
Formality
The material part of the evil came from our father upon us, but the formality of it, the sting and the curse, is only by ourselves.
frail
Man is frail, and prone to evil.
Fringe
The confines of grace and the fringes of repentance.
Fugacious
Much of its possessions is so hid, so fugacious, and of so uncertain purchase.
Fugue
All parts of the scheme are eternally chasing each other, like the parts of a fugue.
Gabel
He enables St. Peter to pay his gabel by the ministry of a fish.
Garish
Garish like the laughters of drunkenness.
Ghostly
One of the gostly children of St. Jerome.
Gust
An ox will relish the tender flesh of kids with as much gust and appetite.
Idiot
St. Austin affirmed that the plain places of Scripture are sufficient to all laics, and all idiots or private persons.
Ignis fatuus
Scared and guided by the ignis fatuus of popular superstition.
Immerge
Their souls are immerged in matter.
Impatient
A violent, sudden, and impatient necessity.
Impenetrable
They will be credulous in all affairs of life, but impenetrable by a sermon of the gospel.
Imperfect
He . . . stammered like a child, or an amazed, imperfect person.
Impertinent
How impertinent that grief was which served no end!
Inadvertence
Inadvertency, or lack of attendance to the sense and intention of our prayers.
Incivility
Uncomely jests, loud talking and jeering, which, in civil account, are called indecencies and incivilities.
Incommodity
A great incommodity to the body.
Incompossible
Ambition and faith . . . are . . . incompossible.
Inconsideration
Blindness of mind, inconsideration, precipitation.
Incurious
Carelessnesses and incurious deportments toward their children.
Indeficient
Brighter than the sun, and indeficient as the light of heaven.
Indiction
Secular princes did use to indict, or permit the indiction of, synods of bishops.
Indifferent
Everything in the world is indifferent but sin.
Indiscernible
Secret and indiscernible ways.
Indulge
Persuading us that something must be indulged to public manners.
Ineffective
The word of God, without the spirit, [is] a dead and ineffective letter.
Ingredient
Acts where no sin is ingredient.
Inordination
Every inordination of religion that is not in defect, is properly called superstition.
Insecure
With sorrow and insecure apprehensions.
Instance
This story doth not only instance in kingdoms, but in families too.
Insult
Like the frogs in the apologue, insulting upon their wooden king.
Intemperance
God is in every creature; be cruel toward none, neither abuse any by intemperance.
Intendment
The intendment of God and nature.
Intenerate
So have I seen the little purls of a stream . . . intenerate the stubborn pavement.
Interpellation
Accepted by his interpellation and intercession.
Intransitive
And then it is for the image's sake and so far is intransitive; but whatever is paid more to the image is transitive and passes further.
Intricate
It makes men troublesome, and intricates all wise discourses.
Judgment
In judgments between rich and poor, consider not what the poor man needs, but what is his own.
Just
Fire fitted with just materials casts a constant heat.
Kneel
As soon as you are dressed, kneel and say the Lord's Prayer.
Latitude
In human actions there are no degrees and precise natural limits described, but a latitude is indulged.
Letter
We must observe the letter of the law, without doing violence to the reason of the law and the intention of the lawgiver.
Lightly
Flatter not the rich, neither do thou willingly or lightly appear before great personages.
measure
There is a great measure of discretion to be used in the performance of confession.
To secure a contented spirit, measure your desires by your fortunes, not your fortunes by your desires.
Mere
The sorrows of this world would be mere and unmixed.
Metal
Slaves . . . and persons condemned to metals.
Militia
The king's captains and soldiers fight his battles, and yet . . . the power of the militia is he.
Minister
We minister to God reason to suspect us.
Minute
Minutes and circumstances of his passion.
Mode
The duty of itself being resolved on, the mode of doing it may easily be found.
Monstrous
He, therefore, that refuses to do good to them whom he is bound to love . . . is unnatural and monstrous in his affections.
Necessitude
Between kings and their people, parents and their children, there is so great a necessitude, propriety, and intercourse of nature.
Need
Be governed by your needs, not by your fancy.
Nephew
If naturalists say true that nephews are often liker to their grandfathers than to their fathers.
Net
In the church's net there are fishes good or bad.
Nobleness
His purposes are full honesty, nobleness, and integrity.
Nolition
A nolition and a direct enmity against the lust.
Objection
He remembers the objection that lies in his bosom, and he sighs deeply.
Oblation
A peculiar . . . oblation given to God.
Obligatory
As long as the law is obligatory, so long our obedience is due.
Observation
We are to procure dispensation or leave to omit the observation of it in such circumstances.
Obsignation
The spirit of manifestation will but upbraid you in the shame and horror of a sad eternity, if you have not the spirit of obsignation.
Obtain
Sobriety hath by use obtained to signify temperance in drinking.
Occasion
After we have served ourselves and our own occasions.
Oratory
Do not omit thy prayers for want of a good oratory, or place to pray in.
Order
They are in equal order to their several ends.
Ordination
The holy and wise ordination of God.
Overthrow
His wife overthrew the table.
Painful
A very painful person, and a great clerk.
Peremptory
Think of heaven with hearty purposes and peremptory designs to get thither.
Period
Evils which shall never end till eternity hath a period.
Person
No man can long put on a person and act a part.
Pervious
God, whose secrets are pervious to no eye.
Pestilential
So pestilential, so infectious a thing is sin.
Phantasm
Figures or little features, of which the description had produced in you no phantasm or expectation.
Piazza
We walk by the obelisk, and meditate in piazzas.
Polemical
Polemical and impertinent disputations.
Preambulatory
Simon Magus had preambulatory impieties.
Presential
God's mercy is made presential to us.
Principality
The prerogative and principality above everything else.
Privative
Privative blessings, blessings of immunity, safeguard, liberty, and integrity.
Probation
When by miracle God dispensed great gifts to the laity, . . . he gave probation that he intended that all should prophesy and preach.
Prompt
God first . . . prompted on the infirmities of the infant world by temporal prosperity.
Proportion
Let the women . . . do the same things in their proportions and capacities.
Proposition
Some persons . . . change their propositions according as their temporal necessities or advantages do turn.
Propriety
So are the proprieties of a wife to be disposed of by her lord, and yet all are for her provisions, it being a part of his need to refresh and supply hers.
Prosperity
Prosperities can only be enjoyed by them who fear not at all to lose them.
Providence
He that hath a numerous family, and many to provide for, needs a greater providence of God.
Publication
His jealousy . . . attends the business, the recreations, the publications, and retirements of every man.
Puit
The puits flowing from the fountain of life.
Pursuance
Sermons are not like curious inquiries after new nothings, but pursuances of old truths.
Put
His chief designs are . . . to put thee by from thy spiritual employment.
Putative
Thus things indifferent, being esteemed useful or pious, became customary, and then came for reverence into a putative and usurped authority.
Ravel
The faith of very many men seems a duty so weak and indifferent, is so often untwisted by violence, or raveled and entangled in weak discourses!
Recession
Mercy may rejoice upon the recessions of justice.
Recreate
St. John, who recreated himself with sporting with a tame partridge.
Redargue
How shall I . . . suffer that God should redargue me at doomsday, and the angels reproach my lukewarmness?
Remanent
That little hope that is remanent hath its degree according to the infancy or growth of the habit.
Rescind
The blessed Jesus . . . did sacramentally rescind the impure relics of Adam and the contraction of evil customs.
Resentment
It is a greater wonder that so many of them die, with so little resentment of their danger.
Resolved
That makes him a resolved enemy.
Return
The fruit from many days of recreation is very little; but from these few hours we spend in prayer, the return is great.
Reverend
They must give good example and reverend deportment in the face of their children.
Rosary
Every day propound to yourself a rosary or chaplet of good works to present to God at night.
Rue
They [the exorcists] are to try the devil by holy water, incense, sulphur, rue, which from thence, as we suppose, came to be called herb of grace.
Sacrament
God sometimes sent a light of fire, and pillar of a cloud . . . and the sacrament of a rainbow, to guide his people through their portion of sorrows.
Sacramentary
Papists, Anabaptists, and Sacramentaries.
Salutation
In all public meetings or private addresses, use those forms of salutation, reverence, and decency usual amongst the most sober persons.
Sapidness
When the Israelites fancied the sapidness and relish of the fleshpots, they longed to taste and to return.
Sapiential
The sapiential books of the Old [Testament].
Savable
In the person prayed for there ought to be the great disposition of being in a savable condition.
Scantling
Reducing them to narrow scantlings.
School
Let no man be less confident in his faith . . . by reason of any difference in the several schools of Christians.
Seamless
Christ's seamless coat, all of a piece.
Season
Season their younger years with prudent and pious principles.
Serve
Turn it into some advantage, by observing where it can serve another end.
Severe
Let your zeal, if it must be expressed in anger, be always more severe against thyself than against others.
Sicle
The holy mother brought five sicles and a pair of turtledoves to redeem the Lamb of God.
Sit
The calamity sits heavy on us.
Society
The meanest of the people and such as have the least society with the acts and crimes of kings.
Soft
A longing after sensual pleasures is a dissolution of the spirit of a man, and makes it loose, soft, and wandering.
Solicitous
Enjoy the present, whatsoever it be, and be not solicitous about the future.
Sometimes
It is good that we sometimes be contradicted.
Spoil
Spiritual pride spoils many graces.
Stiff
It is a shame to stand stiff in a foolish argument.
Strength
Certainly there is not a greater strength against temptation.
Sublime
An ordinary gift can not sublime a person to a supernatural employment.
Superseminate
That can not be done with joy, when it shall be indifferent to any man to superseminate what he please.
Suppletory
Invent suppletories to excuse an evil man.
Symbol
They do their work in the days of peace . . . and come to pay their symbol in a war or in a plague.
The persons who are to be judged . . . shall all appear to receive their symbol.
Symbolic
The sacrament is a representation of Christ's death by such symbolical actions as he himself appointed.
Tacit
The tacit and secret theft of abusing our brother in civil contracts.
Tell
Tell the joints of the body.
Threne
The threns . . . of the prophet Jeremiah.
Till
Mediate so long till you make some act of prayer to God.
Topic
In this question by [reason] I do not mean a distinct topic, but a transcendent that runs through all topics.
Tragedy
All our tragedies are of kings and princes.
Treacle
We kill the viper, and make treacle of him.
Turn
Impatience turns an ague into a fever.
Underbuilder
An underbuilder in the house of God.
Untie
All the evils of an untied tongue we put upon the accounts of drunkenness.
Use
Thou art more obliged to pay duty and tribute, use and principal, to him.
Ustulation
It is not certain that they took the better part when they chose ustulation before marriage, expressly against the apostle.
Vacillation
There is a vacillation, or an alternation of knowledge and doubt.
Vap
In vain it is to wash a goblet, if you mean to put into it nothing but the dead lees and vap of wine.
Vegete
Even her body was made airy and vegete.
Vertical
Charity . . . is the vertical top of all religion.
Vertiginous
They [the angels] grew vertiginous, and fell from the battlements of heaven.
Vicinity
A vicinity of disposition and relative tempers.
Villain
If any of my ansectors was a tenant, and a servant, and held his lands as a villain to his lord, his posterity also must do so, though accidentally they become noble.
Walk
We walk perversely with God, and he will walk crookedly toward us.
Wolf
If God should send a cancer upon thy face, or a wolf into thy side.