During this period of public confusion and domestic trouble, Taylor composed an ‘Apology for authorized and set Forms of Liturgy,’ published in 1646, and his great work, a ‘Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying,’ published in 1647, “the first attempt on record to conciliate the minds of Christians to the reception of a doctrine which, though now the rule of action professed by all Christian sects, was then, by all sects alike, regarded as a perilous and portentous novelty.”[1] As such, it was received with distrust, if not disapprobation, by all parties; and if it was intended to inculcate upon the Episcopalians the propriety of conceding something to the prejudices of their opponents, as well as to procure an alleviation of the oppression exercised on the Episcopal church, we may see in the conduct of the government after the Restoration, that Taylor preached a doctrine for which neither the one nor the other were then ripe. It is the more to his honour that in this important point of Christian charity he had advanced beyond his own party, as well as those by whom his party was then persecuted. But though his views were extended enough to meet with disapprobation from his contemporaries, he gives a greater latitude to the civil power in repressing error by penal means, than the general practice, at least in Protestant countries, would now grant. “The forbearance which he claims, he claims for those Christians only who unite in the confession of the Apostles’ Creed,” and he advocates the drawing together of all who will subscribe to that ancient and comprehensive form of belief into one church, forgetting differences which do not involve the fundamental points of Christianity. And he inculcates the “danger and impropriety of driving men into schism by multiplying symbols and subscriptions, and contracting the bounds of communion, and the still greater wickedness of regarding all discrepant opinions as damnable in the life to come, and in the present capital.” For a fuller account of this remarkable work, we refer to the Life by Heber, p. 201–218, or still better, to the original. Footnote 1: Heber’s Life of Taylor, p. xxvii.