Jeremy Taylor on the Danger of Eucharistic Idolatry

J. Neil Daniels

In his voluminous writings, the 17th-century Anglican divine Bishop Jeremy Taylor offered a theologically rigorous and biblically grounded critique of Roman Catholic eucharistic theology. One of his most striking warnings concerns the danger of rendering divine worship to Christ’s human nature as if it were locally present in the elements of the Eucharist. In his Works, Taylor offers this sobering reflection:

“We may not render divine worship to Him as present in the blessed Sacrament according to His human nature, without danger of idolatry, because He is not there according to His human nature, and therefore you give divine worship to a non ens, which must needs be idolatry.… He is present there by His divine power, and His divine blessing, and the fruits of His Body, the real effective consequents of His Passion; but for any other presence, it is idolum, it is nothing in the world. Adore Christ in heaven, for the heavens must contain Him till the time of restitution of all things.” (Works, vol. vi, p. 669)

Taylor draws a crucial distinction between Christ’s sacramental presence and His bodily presence, the latter of which is confined to heaven until the Second Coming (cf. Acts 3:21). He insists that divine worship directed toward the consecrated host—as if it contained the hypostatically united human nature of Christ—constitutes worship of a “non-ens,” a metaphysical non-entity, and therefore must be considered idolatrous. Such misdirected adoration, he argues, fails to recognize the ontological absence of Christ’s human nature from the sacrament and confuses signs with substance.

In contrast to Roman transubstantiation, Taylor maintains a Reformed eucharistic realism: Christ is truly present, but by the power of the Spirit and in the efficacy of His Passion, not by a change of the elements into His literal body and blood. To confuse this is to create “idolum”—a false object of devotion. His concluding exhortation is clear and reverent: worship Christ in heaven, not in the bread, for He is enthroned above until the consummation of all things. Taylor’s warning remains a powerful reminder that zeal without theological precision risks misdirecting piety into superstition.