In 1633, although still below the canonical age, he took holy orders, and accepted the invitation of Thomas Risden, a former fellow student, to supply his place for a short time as lecturer at St Paul's Cathedral.

Taylor did not vacate his fellowship at Cambridge before 1636, but he spent, apparently, much of his time in London, for Laud desired that his considerable talents should receive better opportunities for study and improvement than the obligations of constant preaching would permit.

In November 1635 he had been nominated by Laud to a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford,[7] where, says Antony Wood,[8] love and admiration still waited on him.

[3] In the autumn of the same year he was appointed to preach in St Mary's on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, and apparently used the occasion to clear himself of a suspicion, which, however, haunted him through life, of a secret leaning to the Roman Catholic position.

This suspicion seems to have arisen chiefly from his intimacy with Christopher Davenport, better known as Francis a Sancta Clara, a learned Franciscan friar who became chaplain to Queen Henrietta; but it may have been strengthened by his known connection with Laud, as well as by his ascetic habits.

In 1646 he is found in partnership with two other deprived clergymen, keeping a school at Newton Hall, in the parish of Llanfihangel Aberbythych, Carmarthenshire.

[12] The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living provided a manual of Christian practice, which has retained its place with devout readers.

It deals with the means and instruments of obtaining every virtue, and the remedies against every vice, and considerations serving to the resisting all temptations, together with prayers containing the whole Duty of a Christian.

A very charming piece of work of a lighter kind was inspired by a question from his friend, Katherine Philipps ("the matchless Orinda"), asking How far is a dear and perfect friendship authorised by the principles of Christianity?

[12] At the Stuart Restoration, instead of being recalled to England, as he probably expected and certainly desired, he was appointed to the see of Down and Connor,[7] to which was shortly added the additional responsibility for overviewing the adjacent diocese of Dromore.

Of the university he wrote: I found all things in a perfect disorder ... a heap of men and boys, but no body of a college, no one member, either fellow or scholar, having any legal title to his place, but thrust in by tyranny or chance.

[12]Accordingly, he set himself vigorously to the task of framing and enforcing regulations for the admission and conduct of members of the university, and also of establishing lectureships.

There were, at the date of the Restoration, about seventy Presbyterian ministers in the north of Ireland, and most of these were from the west of Scotland, with a dislike for Episcopacy which distinguished the Covenanting party.

No wonder that Taylor, writing to James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde shortly after his consecration, should have said, "I perceive myself thrown into a place of torment".

[12] This was Taylor's golden opportunity to show the wise toleration he had earlier advocated, but the new bishop had nothing to offer the Presbyterian clergy but the alternative of submission to episcopal ordination and jurisdiction or deprivation.

[12] As Reginald Heber says: No part of the administration of Ireland by the English crown has been more extraordinary and more unfortunate than the system pursued for the introduction of the Reformed religion.

[18] Although Taylor is named as the author on the title page of Contemplations of the State of Man in this Life, and in that which is to Come (1684),[21] the work is an abridgement of Vivian Mullineaux's 1672 English translation of Juan Eusebio Nieremberg's work De la diferencia entre lo temporal y lo eterno, y Crisol de Desengaños (On the Difference between the Temporal and the Eternal, and the Crucible of Deceptions, 1640), apparently compiled by Taylor.