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| Bishop John Jewel, Diocese of Salisbury |
An
Important 450th Anniversary in 2012
It is the 450th anniversary of the
publication of An Apology of the Church
of England, by Bishop John Jewell (1522-1572), Bishop of Salisbury and
Anglican Reformer. This book was the first scholarly defense of the Elizabethan
settlement. Jewell's works are an excellent statement of Protestant, Reformed,
Truly Catholic and Anglican Churchmanship.
The
Church Society, an English group with a stellar reputation and first-rate repertoire
of competent articles, carries a good article by an excellent and weighty scholar,
the Rev. Dr. G. W. Bromiley. See: http://churchsociety.org/issues_new/history/jewell/iss_history_jewell_bromiley-works.asp
If one wishes to read an electronic
version of Bishop John Jewel’s Apology of
the Church of England, see this:
http://books.google.com/books?id=soAXAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=John+Jewell+Apology&hl=en&sa=X&ei=T5GtT9_AC9S3twep8PHtCg&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=John%20Jewell%20Apology&f=false
John
Jewel by G.W. Bromiley
Jewell's Works
A brief review
of Jewell's main writings has been given in the account of his life. In the
present section it is proposed, first, to give a more extensive list of his
literary output, and then to give a more detailed resume of his masterpiece,
the Apology. The total number of Jewell's published writings is not
great, but many of the works are large, and all told they represent a very
considerable literary activity.
Jewell's
challenge sermon was delivered in 1560, and it has come down in written form.
The correspondence with Cole belongs to the same year. The Apology was
written in Latin in 1562, and the translation was first published in the same
year, and a further edition in 1564. The battle with Harding followed at once.
Harding issued an Answer in 1564, Jewell a Reply in 1565,
Harding his Confutation in the same year, and further Rejoinders
in 1566 and 1567. Jewell did not reply separately to the Confutation
and Rejoinders, but gathered up his answers in the Defence of the
Apology in 1568. Harding retaliated with his Detection in the
same year, but Jewell had the last word with his enlarged Defence in
1570, re-edited the following year. Apart from these writings three other
writings deserve notice: his letters to Zurich, his Sermons, and the valuable
Treatise on the Sacraments. Jewell's works were first collected in 1609, when
Bancroft (then Archbishop) directed the preparation of a folio volume.
Apology
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| Salisbury Cathedral, Bishop Jewel's episcopal seat |
The
Apology consists of six main sections, although in some editions it
has been divided up in different ways. In the first section Jewell considers
the slanders and violence with which Protestantism was assailed in his day. He
lays it down as a general axiom that the supporters of the truth must always
undergo misrepresentation and persecution. It had been so with the Jews under
the old dispensation. Christ Himself was falsely accused and violently
assaulted. Stephen and Paul had suffered similarly. In the early days of the
Church slander and ill-treatment had been the lot of those who knew and
proclaimed the truth. In the sixteenth century the Protestants as the
representatives of true Christianity were defamed and persecuted in exactly the
same way. Accusations of schism, heresy, irreligion, anarchy, lack of
discipline were freely levelled against them. They had been granted no hearing
at the so-called General Council of Trent. Yet in spite of and even because of
this shameful treatment they could claim the truth with a good conscience,
because they had the support of Scripture. In this respect they followed in the
footsteps of the Fathers, who in the refutation of heretics always used the
Scriptures as the court of appeal. Jewell challenged his opponents to submit to
the honest test, not of misrepresentation, not of physical force, but of
Scripture itself.
In
the second part Jewell follows the example of the early apologists. He gives a
brief but clear exposition of the Protestant doctrine held and taught by the
Church of England. Those who in our own day profess an anxiety to discover what
the Anglican formularies of the period were supposed to teach could hardly do
better than begin with this short but lucid statement. Jewell dealt with the
main doctrines. He made it clear that Anglican Protestantism maintained the
historic creedal positions. It taught nothing new with regard to the Trinity,
the Incarnation, the Cross, the Resurrection and Ascension, the Final Judgment,
and the Holy Spirit. Jewell also put forward a Reformed doctrine of the
universal Church as the Kingdom, the body, and the spouse of Christ, its true
Head. He took the offensive against Rome over the question of the ministry. All
ministers were equal in status. The claim of the Pope to pre-eminence had no
support in the ancient Fathers and the early Councils. Jewell asserted the need
for a lawful calling of ministers, and the power of the keys, along much the
same lines as Calvin in the Institutes. He strongly attacked the
Romanist doctrine of penance, explained matrimony as a holy and honourable
estate (not a sacrament conferring grace), accepted the full authority of
Scripture canonically received, and accepted the two sacraments as means of confirming
faith and sealing grace. Upon the controverted questions concerning the Lord's
Supper Jewell maintained the Reformed position, attacking private masses, the
denial of the cup to the laity, transubstantiation, and the false practices of
carrying about and worshipping the elements. Likewise he dismissed the teaching
of Rome on Purgatory, and complained of the multiplication of ceremonies, the
use of an unknown tongue, and the teaching of other mediators apart from
Christ. Finally, he stated briefly the Reformed teaching upon original sin,
remission, justification, and the resurrection.
In
a third section Jewell makes the bold claim that the Reformed Church of England
is in the true line of succession from the Fathers and Councils, in opposition
to Rome and the Pope with their heresies and errors. He does not deny errors on
the Protestant side. The Anabaptists and Schwenkfeldians had erred. But within
the pure Church, even from the beginning, there had always been teachers of
error-Simon, the Gnostics, and so on. The errors of the Anabaptists were no
proof that Protestantism itself was false. But was not Protestantism sectarian-some
following Luther, some Zwingli, and some Calvin? So it had been at Corinth in
the apostolic Church, and even within Rome itself the Thomists and the Scotists
did not agree in doctrine, nor the monks and friars in matters of religious
practice. The more general charges, godlessness and licentiousness, had as
little substance in them as the similar charges preferred against the
Christians in the days of the Apologists. Jewell could grant that some
Protestants sinned, but he could prove from Cyprian and other Fathers that
there have always been sinners as well as righteous, and at times few
righteous, in the true Church of Christ.
Jewell
can conclude that the charges brought by Romanists in no way disprove the claim
of the Reformed churches to be truly apostolic and catholic. He moves on to the
offensive in the fourth section, and shows then any scandals, especially in
sexual indulgence and in poisoning and violence, into which error has plunged
the so-called true Church of Rome. Jewell claims no perfection for Protestants,
but he does claim that Protestants do at least make a serious attempt at
Christian living. The Romanists on the other hand had flagrantly and boastfully
set at naught all the laws of true godliness. Protestants were charged with
treason; but while they exhorted their adherents to fulfilment of their duties
to the powers that be, the pontiffs of Rome had openly set themselves up as
political rulers and interfered constantly and shamelessly in the affairs of
government. Protestants were charged with schism, but it was Rome which had
broken the unity of the Church by departing from the apostolic rule and
plunging the Church into heresy and idolatry. Protestants wished and prayed for
Christian unity, but they could not remain in a body which trampled true
religion underfoot. The Roman claim to be the catholic and apostolic Church
Jewell could not allow. But could it be held that God would suffer His Church
to fall into widespread error? Jewell pointed to the example of the Jewish
Church in the Old Testament, and of the Christian Church in its early history,
at the time of the Arian controversy, for instance. He found witness to a
widespread declension in such varied writings as Hilary, Gregory, Bernard,
Roger Bacon, Pope Adrian, and Phigius. In any case Rome could not be the true
Church, for it pushed Scripture into the background, and thus fell by the test
of Chrysostom: “God's Word is the candle whereby the thief is espied.”
The
argument is carried a stage further in section five. Jewel now examines more
closely the Roman claim that they have the support of the ancient doctors and
holy Fathers. On general grounds Jewell cannot agree that a thing apparently
novel is necessarily false. Christianity itself had been attacked as novel, as
was Protestantism in the sixteenth century. On the other hand Jewell denies
that Romanism has antiquity behind it: Romanism is the New Learning and
Protestantism the Old, as Turner showed in his book The Old and the New
Learning. Jewell could argue, for example, that the early Fathers had
attacked the tendency to multiply ceremonies. Again, the old Councils had
resisted things allowed or commanded by Rome: concubinage of priests, the civil
powers of bishops, non-preaching bishops, the use of an unknown tongue. Against
the argument that the decisions of old Councils no longer fitted the times,
Jewell scornfully compared the new practices with the old: salt, water,
oil-boxes, spittle, palms, bulls, jubilees, pardons, crossings and censings,
and an endless rabble of ceremonies. The infallibility of the Roman Church
Jewell compared with the freedom from adultery of the Lacedaemonians: they
could not commit adultery because they had their wives in common. Finally,
Jewell could admit that the Protestants had departed from the Roman Church, but
not from the Church of the Apostles and of Christ. He, challenges his opponents
to set the doctrine and practice of the Church of England and the Church of
Rome alongside the practice and doctrine of the early Church: in sacraments, in
public prayer, in the estimation of Scripture.
In
the concluding section Jewell deals with the Romanist argument that the
controverted points have been submitted to a General Council, the decisions of
which ought to be accepted. He gives his reasons why he cannot allow Trent to
be a valid council or its judgments to carry weight. Ignorant men,
non-representative of the Church, opposed to Scripture, and themselves under
judgment, have no right to act as judges in the matters raised. Jewell asks on
what grounds Christian kings have been excluded, contrary to Old Testament
example and the example of the early Church. He cannot in any case grant the
infallibility of General Councils. He again attacks the false and boastful
claims of the Bishop of Rome to supremacy. In a concluding paragraph Jewell
defends the refusal of the Protestant churches to return to the bosom of Rome.
Peace within the Church is a priceless boon, but not peace for the sake of
worldly advantages and at the expense of truth. He prays finally: That God
might open the eyes of them all, that they may be able to see that blessed
hope, whereinto they have been called. In that way and in that way only true
peace might be attained.
Jewell
made bold claims on behalf of the Reformed Anglican Church. He accepted its
Protestant nature, but, quite irrespective of any historical succession of
bishops, he claimed for it a full communion with the apostolic and catholic
Church of the earliest days. He did so on the grounds of a substantial consent
in doctrine and in practice. Whilst not attempting to assert an impossible
perfection, he refuted the false slanders of the Romanist detractors. He
defended the defection from Rome as a defection from heresy to the truth. The
purity of Anglicanism and the corruption of Romanism he asserted on the twin
authority of Scripture and the early Fathers and Councils. He did not deploy
all his learning in defence of this assertion in the Apology itself,
but in the later Defence he showed that he had made neither an idle
nor a boasting assertion. A tendency of the present age is to try to defend the
catholicity of the Church of England by asserting and stressing kinship with
Rome. Churchmen loyal to the Reformed basis of Anglicanism might do well to
remember wherein true catholicity consists. They may remember too that in its
main essentials the contention of Jewell has never been overthrown.
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