two weeks later with a full awareness of the
religious meaning of their new garment:
Let’s Cloath ourselves, my Dove,
With this Effulgeant Web and our pickt Love
Wrapt up therein, and lets, by walking right,
Loves brightest Mantle make still shine
more bright,
For then its glory shall ascend on high
The Highest One alone to glorify,
Which rising will let such a glory fall
Upon our Lives that glorify them shall.
(ll. 53–60)
By this point the finished web is simultane-
ously the poem itself, the love between two peo-
ple, their marriage, and an object like the robes
of ‘‘Huswifery’’ giving glory to God and gaining
glory unto itself in that act.
For Taylor, marriage was itself a convenient
metaphor to designate various acts of union:
‘‘All Union being a making One of Severall,
lyeth in joyning things together. Our Lord Styles
marriage Union a joyning together. Matth. 19. 5.
So the Mysticall Union is a joyning the Soule and
Christ together. I Cor. 6. 17. and So this Personall
Union, is a joyning the Godhead, and Manhood
together.’’ At six-week intervals Taylor contem-
plated these unions as he readied sacrament-day
sermons for his Westfield congregation. And after
composing each of these sermons (at least from
1682), he wrote a verse meditation based upon
the doctrine of the sermon he had just written.
These 217 ‘‘Preparatory Meditations’’—beginning
with ‘‘What hath thy Godhead, as not satisfide /
Marri’de our Manhood, making it its Bride?’’ of
Meditation One—naturally abound in references
to marriages, and not surprisingly present those
references from time to time in the garment image
of ‘‘Huswifery.’’
In Meditation I:41, for example, composed
in 1691, Taylor contemplates the ‘‘Clustered
Miracles’’ of the hypostatical union of human
and divine natures in the person of Christ:
Here is Gods Son,
Wove in a Web of Flesh, and Bloode rich
geere.
Eternall Wisdoms Huswifry well spun.
Which through the Laws pure Fulling mills
did pass.
And so went home the Wealthy’st Web that
was.
Here, of course, Christ is himself the glorious
garment; that is, the garment of flesh and blood
(the human nature) adorns the Person of the Son.
We see—as we might only have guessed from
‘‘Huswifery’’—that the fulling mills do not merely
‘‘finish’’ the fabric, but by abrasive action purify
it. The image is used again in a very similar way
as late as 1715, where, however, the stiffly bejew-
eled garment leads Taylor’s imagination abruptly
into the image of a temple. The opening lines
of that poem—Meditation II:128—present the
image clearly:
My Deare-Deare Lord, my Heart is Lodgd
in thee:
Thy Person lodgd in bright Divinity
And waring Cloaths made of the best web bee
Wove in the golde Loom of Humanity.
All lin’de and overlaide with Wealthi’st lace
The finest Silke of Sanctifying Grace. (ll. 1–6)
Shortly after, we learn that the garment in
this poem is the fabric covering the soul, as
in ‘‘Huswifery’’ the faculties of the soul are
adorned, though both soul and body belong to
Christ. The significant addition in this poem to
the ideas of ‘‘Huswifery’’ is the element of ‘‘Sanc-
tifying Grace,’’ which has not hitherto been asso-
ciated with the garment imagery, but which has
considerable importance for ‘‘Huswifery.’’
It is with regard to the other concept of
union—the union between the soul and Christ
experienced at the sacrament of the Lord’s
Supper—that Taylor’s weaving image comes
closest to the statement of ‘‘Huswifery.’’Medita-
tion I:42, written in 1691, pleads with Christ to
Unkey my Heart; unlock thy Wardrobe: bring
Out royall Robes: adorne my Soule, Lord: so,
My Love in rich attire shall on my King
Attend, and honour on him well bestow.
In glory he prepares for his a place
Whom he doth all beglory here with grace.
(ll. 19–24)
As in Meditation II:128, the garment inten-
tionally fuses with the glorious aspect of a pal-
ace—‘‘The Fathers House blancht o’re with
orient Grace’’ (l. 30)—and the word blancht
establishes the connection, suggesting that once
the soul is adorned with the ‘‘royall Robes,’’ it
possesses the heavenly kingdom through its
‘‘mystical’’ union with Christ:
Adorn me, Lord, with Holy Huswifry.
All blanch my Robes with Clusters of thy
Graces.
(ll. 37–38)
Again grace makes its appearance, as does
glory, but a new association also arises, the moreHuswifery