Reformed Churchmen

We are Confessional Calvinists and a Prayer Book Church-people. In 2012, we remembered the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer; also, we remembered the 450th anniversary of John Jewel's sober, scholarly, and Reformed "An Apology of the Church of England." In 2013, we remembered the publication of the "Heidelberg Catechism" and the influence of Reformed theologians in England, including Heinrich Bullinger's Decades. For 2014: Tyndale's NT translation. For 2015, John Roger, Rowland Taylor and Bishop John Hooper's martyrdom, burned at the stakes. Books of the month. December 2014: Alan Jacob's "Book of Common Prayer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Common-Prayer-Biography-Religious/dp/0691154813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417814005&sr=8-1&keywords=jacobs+book+of+common+prayer. January 2015: A.F. Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation: 1489-1556" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-English-Reformation-1489-1556/dp/1592448658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420055574&sr=8-1&keywords=A.F.+Pollard+Cranmer. February 2015: Jaspar Ridley's "Thomas Cranmer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-Jasper-Ridley/dp/0198212879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422892154&sr=8-1&keywords=jasper+ridley+cranmer&pebp=1422892151110&peasin=198212879

Friday, December 3, 2010

26 November 1559: Bishop John Jewel Preaches at St. Paul’s, London


26 November 1559: Bishop John Jewel Preaches at St. Paul’s, London

A few discursive and unscientific thoughts about Jewel's sermon.

Luther is dead, 1546. Calvin is about to publish his magnum opus, The Institutes of Christian Religion. Cranmer and others have perished in the flames. Elizabeth is on the throne. Spaniards, France and Rome want England. Danger is everywhere in 1559.

Bishop John Jewel preaches at St. Paul’s on 26 November 1559.

A few observations on Anglicanism drawn from Horton Davies’ Worship and Theology in the Church of England: From Cranmer to Baxter and Fox, 1545-1690, Five Volumes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996).

Romanists had seven sacraments. Blue-suede-shoe and lime-green gabardine types, like the APA, Walter Grunsdorf and other Romewardizing Anglicans, have seven. Holy Orders was a Roman sacrament, but Ordination was not a sacrament, but a ceremony for the authorizing of Anglican ministry. Confirmation was important, but was never a sacrament; the same went for marriage. For Penance there was no equivalent at all, unless one points to the Declaration of the Remission of Sins by a minister in Christ’s name. Continental Reformers had the equivalent services, including confirmation. It was termed differently, but there is a service of recognition for becoming adult communicant in the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions, as well as Lutheran. Lutherans like Anglicans retained the service. There was no paedo-communion as theonomists like Ray Sutton have introduced. The Articles taught two sacraments.


The two major Gospel sacraments were retained—Baptism, as the sacrament of initiation to the visible Church and Holy Communion, the sacrament of spiritual nourishment.

According to Horton:

The Anglican objections to the Roman Mass were comprehensively and tersely listed by John Jewel in his notable "Challenge Sermon," preached at St. Paul's Cross November 26, 1559 and again on March 31, 1560, which had been repeated at Court exactly a fortnight earlier.

Jewel criticised these points: using Latin and not the vernacular, Communion in one kind, the teaching in the Canon on sacrifice, the adoration of the Sacrament, and private celebration.[i]

It is worth noting by way of practice: no elevation, no kissing of tables, no parading around, etc.

Jewel followed Cranmer on the Lord’s Supper. Three distinctions were made between Rome and early English Reformed theology: (1) There was a difference between the sign and the thing signified. (2) Christ is in heaven, not bodily on earth. Ubiquitarianism or Eutychianism was insurmountable for Cranmer, Jewel, as well as Continental, Swiss reformers. (3) The body of Christ was “eaten by faith only and none otherwise.” (Jewels’ Works, 1, 449 as cited by Davies, op.cit., 121.

Archbishop Grindal wryly observed:

Christ did eat the sacrament with the apostles: ergo, the sacrament is not Christ.” (The Remains of Edmund Grindal, D.D., ed. William Nicholson, p.43, cited by Davies, 121)

At one place, Hooker--he appears to be indifferent. This scribe has not been highly impressed with Hooker by comparison with Luther or Calvin. "Who cares about transubstantiation or consubstantiation?" asks Hooker.

“…why do we vainly trouble ourselves with so fierce contentions, whether by consubstantiation or else by transubstantiation the sacrament be first possessed with Christ or no? –a thing which no way can either further nor hinders us however it stand, because our participation with Christ in this sacrament dependeth on the co-operation of His omnipotent power which maketh it His body and blood to us, whether with change or without alteration of the elements such as they imagine, we need to not greatly to care of inquire.”[ii]

What are we to make of this? How does this comport with the Thirty-nine Articles?

At another point, it was said of Hooker: “…he too moved in the tracks laid down by Thomas Cranmer.”[iii] “The real presence is to be sought, according to Hooker, not in things but in person, not in consecrated elements but in consecrated persons receiving grace through faith.”[iv]

Back to Jewel and the sermon at St. Pauls on 26 November 1559. The sense of Jewel appears to follow Cranmer straight back to Calvin and Bucer rather than Zwingli. One must read Wallace's Calvin: The Word and Sacrament, which sounds very Cranmerian.

Beyond Jewel and a few years later, a scurrilous attack was given by a Rev. Bridges in a Sermon at St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1571. Lutherans would be affronted by this. Rev Bridges affirms that the Catholics had:

"…turned Chryst out of his owne likenesse, and made him looke lyke a rounde cake, nothyng lyke to Iesus Christe, no more than an apple is lyke an oyster, nor so mutche, for there appereth neyther armes nor handes, feete nor legges, back nor belly, heade nor body of Chryst: but all is visoured and disguysed under the fourme of a wafer, as lyghte as a feather, as thinne as a paper, as whyte as a kerchiefe, as round as a trenchour, as flat as a pancake, as smal as a shilling, as tender as the Priestes lemman that made it, as muche taste as a stycke, and as deade as a dore nayle to looke upon. O blessed God, dare they `thus disfigure our Lord and Saviour Iesus Christ?"[v]

Lutheran brethren will confessionally affirm that Anglicans did not get it correct, e.g. the "Black Rubric." Hooker’s view of indifference (?) will be unsatisfying to them. I think Calvin had a higher sacramental view than is current among Presbyterians. Baptists and enthusiasts are excluded. We know where the Papists are. Ridley was comfortable with Ratramnus's views, to wit, that in the 9th century he spoke without official rebuke.

Kissing tables, monstrances with the little glass holes in the boxes to “see an impanated Jesus” as bread worshippers, Holy Roods, choking incense, Marian invocations and all were affronts, except for the blue-suede-shoe types. We are reminded of Archbishop Grindal's question, to wit, "If Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper and celebrated it the last night before His death, did He eat Himself?"

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[i] Horton Davies’ Worship and Theology in the Church of England: From Cranmer to Baxter and Fox, 1545-1690, Five Volumes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), 122.
[ii] Richard Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, ed. by Keble, V, lxvii, 12, 359. Davies’, op.cit., footnote 79, 33. Hooker is some of the most wearying reading one can do.
[iii] Horton Davies’ Worship and Theology in the Church of England: From Cranmer to Baxter and Fox, 1545-1690, Five Volumes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), 122.
[iv] Richard Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, ed. by Keble, V, lxvii, 12, 359. Davies’, op.cit., footnote 170, 122.
[v] Horton Davies’ Worship and Theology in the Church of England: From Cranmer to Baxter and Fox, 1545-1690, Five Volumes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), 33.

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