Speaking of Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), a Church of England cleric, and his rejection of the Reformers’ understanding of Original Sin and Total Depravity, Kenneth Stevenson wrote:
Taylor’s theological reputation was not of the highest with people whom we might associate with him, for he published his Unum Necessarium (‘The One Thing Needful’) in 1655, which argued against the traditional interpretation of St. Augustine on original sin, backing it up with a sequel in the following year called Deus Justificatus (‘God justified’). These books are important for two reasons. First, he challenged the theological fashion of the day because he refused to believe that Adam ‘had any more strengths than we have’: God must be love, therefore he cannot be so cruel as to inflict suffering deliberately on the human race. Secondly, many of the Reformers exaggerated the effect of Adam’s ‘fall’ and spoke about the ‘total depravity’ of man, which was much further than Augustine was prepared to go. Taylor refused to accept that the unbaptized are damned—which lost him many friends and potential allies. (Kenneth Stevenson, Covenant of Grace Renewed: A Vision of the Eucharist in the Seventeenth Century [London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 1994], 113-14)
Such is a witness to a pedigree of theologians and others within so-called "orthodox" Christianity which rejects the "traditional" views of Original Sin.
