Daily Inspiration Quote by Jeremy Taylor

Violence, in Jeremy Taylor's hands, reads less like a lapse in Christian decorum than a calculated rhetorical jolt. "Dive on them and squash them if you must" is the kind of line a 17th-century clergyman deploys when he wants moral urgency to feel physical. The verbs are bodily and sudden: "dive" suggests instinct, a reflexive pounce; "squash" reduces the target to something small, stubborn, and finally silenced. It's not elegant persuasion. It's pastoral triage.

Taylor writes in the furnace of post-Reformation England, where belief isn't a private preference but a social fault line with legal consequences. In that world, a preacher isn't only shaping souls; he's policing boundaries. The line's specific intent is to authorize force as a last resort: if you must. That little clause performs crucial ethical laundering. It pretends reluctance while keeping the option close at hand, framing coercion as duty rather than appetite. The subtext is the classic move of religious authority under pressure: mercy is the ideal, control is the contingency plan, and both can be preached as love.

What's most revealing is the metaphorical slipperiness. Taylor can be talking about temptations, heresies, doubts, passions - internal "vermin" of the spirit - while leaving the language conveniently compatible with outward discipline. The phrase works because it collapses inner warfare and social enforcement into the same muscular image, letting the listener feel righteous even when they're acting rough.